ON THE ROYAL INFANT, Still-born, Nov. 5, 1817. A THRONE on earth awaited thee; A nation long'd to see thy face, Heir to a glorious ancestry, And father of a mightier race. Vain hope that throne thou must not fill; Thee may that nation ne'er behold; Thine ancient house is heirless still, Thy line shall never be unroll'd, Yet while we mourn thy flight from earth, Thine was a destiny sublime; Caught up to Paradise in birth, Pluck'd by Eternity from Time. The Mother knew her offspring dead: That broke her heart?-The spirit fled To seek her nameless child above..... Led by his natal star, she trod The path to heaven :-the meeting there, And how they stood before their God, The day of judgement shall declare. T A MIDNIGHT THOUGHT. IN a land of strange delight, My transported spirit stray'd, I awake where all is night, Silence, solitude, and shade. Is the dream of Nature flown? Is the universe destroy'd, Man extinct, and I alone Breathing through the formless void? No:-my soul, in God rejoice; Through the gloom his light I see, In the silence hear his voice, And his hand is over me. When I slumber in the tomb, He will guard my resting-place; Fearless in the day of doom, May I stand before his face! A NIGHT IN A STAGE-COACH: BEING A Meditation on the way between London and Bristol, Sept. 23, 1815. In vain I close my weary eyes, But, like the watchers of the skies, My thoughts are wandering wild and far; From earth to heaven they dart; Now wing their flight from star to star, Now dive into my heart. Backward they roll the tide of time, And live through vanish'd years; Or hold their " colloquy sublime” With future hopes and fears ; Then passing joys and present woes Chase through my troubled mind ; Repose still seeking,—but repose Not for a moment find. So yonder lone and lovely moon Illumines those around her noon," Yet westward points her eye. Nor wind nor flood her course delay, Through heaven I see her glide; She never pauses on her way, She never turns aside. |