The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 12

Vex not, maidens, nor regret Thus to part with Margaret.

Charms like your's can never stay Long within doors; and one day You'll be going.

TO A YOUNG FRIEND

_On Her Twenty-First Birth-Day_

Crown me a cheerful goblet, while I pray A blessing on thy years, young Isola; Young, but no more a child. How swift have flown To me thy girlish times, a woman grown Beneath my heedless eyes! in vain I rack My fancy to believe the almanac, That speaks thee Twenty-One. Thou should'st have still Remain'd a child, and at thy sovereign will Gambol'd about our house, as in times past.

Ungrateful Emma, to grow up so fast, Hastening to leave thy friends!--for which intent, Fond Runagate, be this thy punishment.

After some thirty years, spent in such bliss As this earth can afford, where still we miss Something of joy entire, may'st thou grow old As we whom thou hast left! That wish was cold.

O far more ag'd and wrinkled, till folks say, Looking upon thee reverend in decay, "This Dame for length of days, and virtues rare, With her respected Grandsire may compare."-- Grandchild of that respected Isola, Thou should'st have had about thee on this day Kind looks of Parents, to congratulate Their Pride grown up to woman's grave estate.

But they have died, and left thee, to advance Thy fortunes how thou may'st, and owe to chance The friends which Nature grudg'd. And thou wilt find, Or make such, Emma, if I am not blind To thee and thy deservings. That last strain Had too much sorrow in it. Fill again Another cheerful goblet, while I say "Health, and twice health, to our lost Isola."

TO THE SAME

External gifts of fortune, or of face, Maiden, in truth, thou hast not much to show; Much fairer damsels have I known, and know, And richer may be found in every place.

In thy _mind_ seek thy beauty, and thy wealth.

Sincereness lodgeth there, the soul's best health.

O guard that treasure above gold or pearl, Laid up secure from moths and worldly stealth-- And take my benison, plain-hearted girl.

SONNETS

HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS

By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill, Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk: The fair Maria, as a vestal, still; And Emma brown, exuberant in talk.

With soft and Lady speech the first applies The mild correctives that to grace belong To her redundant friend, who her defies With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song.

O differing Pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing, What music from your happy discord rises, While your companion hearing each, and seeing, Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes; This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike, That harmonies may be in things unlike!

WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE

(_August_ 15. 1819)

I was not train'd in Academic bowers, And to those learned streams I nothing owe Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; Mine have been any thing but studious hours.

Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, And I walk _gowned_; feel unusual powers.

Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain; And my scull teems with notions infinite.

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite!

TO A CELEBRATED FEMALE PERFORMER IN THE "BLIND BOY"

(1819)

Rare artist! who with half thy tools, or none, Canst execute with ease thy curious art, And press thy powerful'st meanings on the heart, Unaided by the eye, expression's throne!

While each blind sense, intelligential grown Beyond its sphere, performs the effect of sight: Those orbs alone, wanting their proper might, All motionless and silent seem to moan The unseemly negligence of nature's hand, That left them so forlorn. What praise is thine, O mistress of the pa.s.sions; artist fine!

Who dost our souls against our sense command, Plucking the horror from a sightless face, Lending to blank deformity a grace.

WORK

(1819)

Who first invented work, and bound the free And holyday-rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business in the green fields, and the town-- To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?

Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel-- For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-- In that red realm from which are no returnings; Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and his thoughts, keep pensive working-day.

LEISURE

(1821)

They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke, That like a mill-stone on man's mind doth press, Which only works and business can redress: Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke, Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.

But might I, fed with silent meditation, a.s.soiled live from that fiend Occupation-- _Improbus Labor_, which my spirits hath broke-- I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit: Fling in more days than went to make the gem, That crown'd the white top of Methusalem: Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit, Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity.

DEUS n.o.bIS HAEC OTIA FECIT.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.

(1829)

Rogers, of all the men that I have known But slightly, who have died, your Brother's loss Touch'd me most sensibly. There came across My mind an image of the cordial tone Of your fraternal meetings, where a guest I more than once have sat; and grieve to think, That of that threefold cord one precious link By Death's rude hand is sever'd from the rest.

Of our old Gentry he appear'd a stem-- A Magistrate who, while the evil-doer He kept in terror, could respect the Poor, And not for every trifle hara.s.s them, As some, divine and laic, too oft do.

This man's a private loss, and public too.