Think, think, my friend, when next we meet,
Our long-wish'd intercourse, how sweet!
From this my hope of rapture springs,
While youthful hearts thus fondly swell,
Absence, my friend, can only tell,
'Friendship is Love without his wings!'"
Whether the verses I am now about to give are, in any degree, founded
on fact, I have no accurate means of determining. Fond as he was of
recording every particular of his youth, such an event, or rather era,
as is here commemorated, would have been, of all others, the least
likely to pass unmentioned by him;--and yet neither in conversation
nor in any of his writings do I remember even an allusion to it.[66]
On the other hand, so entirely was all that he wrote,--making
allowance for the embellishments of fancy,--the transcript of his
actual life and feelings, that it is not easy to suppose a poem, so
full of natural tenderness, to have been indebted for its origin to
imagination alone.
"TO MY SON!
"Those flaxen locks, those eyes of blue,
Bright as thy mother's in their hue;
Those rosy lips, whose dimples play
And smile to steal the heart away,
Recall a scene of former joy,
And touch thy Father's heart, my Boy!
"And thou canst lisp a father's name--
Ah, William, were thine own the same,
No self-reproach--but, let me cease--
My care for thee shall purchase peace;
Thy mother's shade shall smile in joy,
And pardon all the past, my Boy!
"Her lowly grave the turf has prest,
And thou hast known a stranger's breast.
Pages:
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153