full
Of the deformed, and of the beautiful,
In life and manners; wit above her sex,
Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks;
Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth,
To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth;
A noble nature, conqueror in the strife
Of conflict with a hard discouraging life,
Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power
Of those whose days have been one silken hour,
Spoil’d fortune’s pamper’d offspring; a keen sense
Alike of benefit, and of offence,
With reconcilement quick, that instant springs
From the charged heart with nimble angel wings;
While grateful feelings, like a signet sign’d
By a strong hand, seem burnt into her mind. 
If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer
Richer than land, thou hast them all in her;
And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon,
Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown.

THE SELF-ENCHANTED

(1833)

I had a sense in dreams of a beauty rare,
Whom Fate had spell-bound, and rooted there,
Stooping, like some enchanted theme,
Over the marge of that crystal stream,
Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind,
With Self-love fond, had to waters pined. 
Ages had waked, and ages slept,
And that bending posture still she kept: 
For her eyes she may not turn away,
’Till a fairer object shall pass that way—­
’Till an image more beauteous this world can show,
Than her own which she sees in the mirror below. 
Pore on, fair Creature! for ever pore,
Nor dream to be disenchanted more;
For vain is expectance, and wish is vain,
’Till a new Narcissus can come again.

TO LOUISA M[ARTIN], WHOM I USED TO CALL “MONKEY”

(1831)

Louisa, serious grown and mild,
I knew you once a romping child,
Obstreperous much and very wild. 
Then you would clamber up my knees,
And strive with every art to tease,
When every art of yours could please. 
Those things would scarce be proper now. 
But they are gone, I know not how,
And woman’s written on your brow. 
Time draws his finger o’er the scene;
But I cannot forget between
The Thing to me you once have been
Each sportive sally, wild escape,—­
The scoff, the banter, and the jape,—­
And antics of my gamesome Ape.

CHEAP GIFTS:  A SONNET

(1834)

[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the ’Lives of the Saints, written in Spanish by the learned and reverend father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of the order of St. Dominick, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno 1630,’ bought at a Catholic book-shop in Duke Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted flower, seemingly coeval with the book itself; and did not, for some time, discover that it opened in the middle, and was the cover to a very humble draught of a St. Anne, with the Virgin and Child; doubtless the performance of some poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it assisted.]