XXVI

=Anacreontics=

[Published in The Gem:  a Literary Annual.  London:  W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]

  With roses musky breathed,
  And drooping daffodilly,
  And silverleaved lily,
  And ivy darkly-wreathed,
  I wove a crown before her,
  For her I love so dearly,
  A garland for Lenora. 
  With a silken cord I bound it. 
  Lenora, laughing clearly
  A light and thrilling laughter,
  About her forehead wound it,
  And loved me ever after.

XXVII

[Published in The Gem:  a Literary Annual.  London:  W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]

      O sad No more! O sweet No more!
                O strange No more!
      By a mossed brookbank on a stone
      I smelt a wildweed flower alone;
      There was a ringing in my ears,
      And both my eyes gushed out with tears. 
  Surely all pleasant things had gone before,
  Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee,
                NO MORE!

XXVIII

=Sonnet=

[Published in the Englishman’s Magazine, August, 1831.  London:  Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street.  Reprinted in Friendship’s Offering:  a Literary Album for 1833.  London; Smith and Elder.]

  Check every outflash, every ruder sally
    Of thought and speech; speak low, and give up wholly
    Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy;
  This is the place.  Through yonder poplar alley
  Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly;
    But in the middle of the sombre valley
    The crisped waters whisper musically,
  And all the haunted place is dark and holy. 
  The nightingale, with long and low preamble,
    Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches,
    And in and out the woodbine’s flowery arches
  The summer midges wove their wanton gambol,
    And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above—­
    When in this valley first I told my love.

XXIX

=Sonnet=

[Published in Friendships Offering:  a Literary Album for 1832.  London:  Smith and Elder.]

  Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh: 
    Thy woes are birds of passage, transitory: 
    Thy spirit, circled with a living glory,
  In summer still a summer joy resumeth. 
  Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh,
    Like a lone cypress, through the twilight hoary,
  From an old garden where no flower bloometh,
    One cypress on an inland promontory. 
  But yet my lonely spirit follows thine,
    As round the rolling earth night follows day: 
  But yet thy lights on my horizon shine
    Into my night when thou art far away;
  I am so dark, alas! and thou so bright,
  When we two meet there’s never perfect light.