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TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS,

ON HIS LINES UPON THE STORY OF RIMINI.

REYNOLDS, whose Muse, from out thy gentle em

braces,

Holding a little crisp and dewy flower,

Came to me in my close-entwined bower,

Where many fine-eyed Friendships and glad Graces,
Parting the boughs, have looked in with like faces,
And thanked the song which had sufficient power
With Phoebus to bring back a warmer hour,
And turn his southern eye to our green places:
Not for this only, but that thou dost long
For all men's welfare, may there be a throng
Of kind regards, wherever thou appearest;
And in thy home, firm-handed Health, a song
Girt with rich-hearted friends, and she the nearest
To whom the warble of thy lip is dearest.

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ON HIS GIVING ME A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR.

I FELT my spirit leap, and look at thee
Through my changed colour with glad grateful stare,
When after shewing us this glorious hair,

Thou didst turn short, and bending pleasantly
With gracious hand gav'st the great lock to me.
An honouring gift indeed! which I will wear
About me, while I breathe this strenuous air,
That nursed his Apollonian tresses free.
I'll wear it, not as my inherited due,
(For there is one, whom had he kept his art
For Freedom still, nor left her for the crew
Of lucky slaves in his misgiving heart,
I would have begged thy leave to give it to)
Yet not without some claims, though far apart.

TO THE SAME,

ON THE SAME SUBJECT.

It lies before me there, and my own breath
Stirs it's thin outer threads, as though beside
The living head I stood in honoured pride,
Talking of lovely things that conquer death.
Perhaps he pressed it once, or underneath

Ran his fine fingers, when he leant, blank-eyed,
And saw, in fancy, Adam and his bride

With their heaped locks, or his own Delphic wreath.
There seems a love in hair, though it be dead.
It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread
Of our frail plant, -a blossom from the tree
Surviving the proud trunk;-as if it said,

Patience and Gentleness is Power. In me
Behold affectionate eternity.

TO THE SAME,

ON THE SAME OCCASION.

A LIBERAL taste, and a wise gentleness
Have ever been the true physician's dower,
As still is visible in the placid power

Of those old Grecian busts; and helps to bless
The balmy name of Haller, and the address
Of cordial Garth; and him in Cowley's bower,
Harvey; and Milton's own exotic flower,
Young Deodati, plucked from his caress.

To add to these an ear for the sweet hold

Of music, and an eye, ay and a hand

For forms which the smooth Graces tend and follow,

Shews thee indeed true offspring of the bland

And vital god, whom she of happy mould,

The Larissæan beauty, bore Apollo.

THE NILE.

Ir flows through old hushed Egypt and it's sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, And times and things, as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands,—

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roamed through the young world, the glory

extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong, As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake, And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along Twixt villages, and think how we shall take Our own calm journey on for human sake.

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