Race link’d to race, in him and thee. 
The child repelleth not at all
Her touch as uncongenial,
But loves the old Nurse like another—­
Its sister—­or its natural mother;
And to the nurse a pride it gives
To think (though old) that still she lives
With one, who may not hope in vain
To live her years all o’er again!

          TO EMMA, LEARNING LATIN, AND DESPONDING

        (By Mary Lamb. ? 1827)

        Droop not, dear Emma, dry those falling tears,
        And call up smiles into thy pallid face,
        Pallid and care-worn with thy arduous race: 
        In few brief months thou hast done the work of years. 
        To young beginnings natural are these fears. 
        A right good scholar shalt thou one day be,
        And that no distant one; when even she,
        Who now to thee a star far off appears,
        That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid—­
        The language-loving Sarah[15] of the Lake—­
        Shall hail thee Sister Linguist.  This will make
        Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid,
        A recompense most rich for all their pains,
        Counting thy acquisitions their best gains.

[Footnote 15:  Daughter of S.T.  Coleridge, Esq.; an accomplished linguist in the Greek and Latin tongues, and translatress of a History of the Abipones. [Note in Blackwood.]]

LINES

Addressed to Lieut.  R.W.H.  Hardy, R.N., on the Perusal of his Volume of Travels in the Interior of Mexico

        ’Tis pleasant, lolling in our elbow chair,
        Secure at home, to read descriptions rare
        Of venturous traveller in savage climes;
        His hair-breadth ’scapes, toil, hunger—­and sometimes
        The merrier passages that, like a foil
        To set off perils past, sweetened that toil,
        And took the edge from danger; and I look
        With such fear-mingled pleasure thro’ thy book,
        Adventurous Hardy!  Thou a diver[16] art,
        But of no common form; and for thy part
        Of the adventure, hast brought home to the nation
        Pearls of discovery—­jewels of observation.

        ENFIELD, January, 1830.

[Footnote 16:  Captain Hardy practised this art with considerable success. [Note in Athenaeum.]]

LINES

    [For a Monument Commemorating the Sudden Death by
    Drowning of a Family, of Four Sons and Two Daughters]

(1831)

        Tears are for lighter griefs.  Man weeps the doom,
        That seals a single victim to the tomb. 
        But when Death riots—­when, with whelming sway,
        Destruction sweeps a family away;
        When infancy and youth, a huddled mass,
        All in an instant to oblivion pass,
        And