Exquisite artist! could I praise thee more
  Than by the silent admiration? no! 
And now I try to praise I must deplore
  How feeble is the verse that tells thee so;
But thou art gaining for thyself a fame
Worthy thyself, thy sex, and thy dear father’s name!

LINES

SUGGESTED BY THE DEATH OF

THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.

Genius of England! wherefore to the earth
  Is thy plumed helm, thy peerless sceptre cast? 
Thy courts of late with minstrelsy and mirth
  Rang jubilant, and dazzling pageants past;
Kings, heroes, martial triumphs, nuptial rites—­

Now, like a cypress, shiver’d by the blast,
  Or mountain-cedar, which the lightning smites,
In dust and darkness sinks thy head declined,
  Thy tresses streaming wild on ocean’s reckless wind.

Art thou not glorious?—­In that night of storms,
  When He, in Power’s supremacy elate,
  Gaul’s fierce Usurper! fulminating fate,
    The Goth’s barbaric tyranny restored,
And science, art, and all life’s fairer forms,
    Sunk to the dark dominion of the sword: 
Didst thou not, champion of insulted man! 
  Confront this stern Destroyer in his pride? 
    Didst thou not crush him in the battle shock,
While recent victory shouted in his van,
  And shrunk the nations, shadow’d by his stride? 
    Yea, chain him howling to yon desert rock,
  Where, thronging ghastly from uncounted graves,
  His victims murmur ’midst the groans of waves,
And mock his soul’s despair, his deep blaspheming ban!

Nor erst, in Liberty’s avenging day,
  When, launching lightnings in her wrath divine,
  She rose, and gave to never-dying fame,
Platae, Marathon, Thermopylae,
  Did each, did all, sublimer laurels twine
  Round Graecia’s conquering brows, than Waterloo on thine!

Then, wherefore, Albion! terror-struck, subdued,
  Sitt’st thou, thy state foregone, thy banner furl’d? 
What dire infliction shakes that fortitude,
  Which propt the falling fortunes of the world?—­
Hush! hark! portentous, like a withering spell
  From lips unblest—­strange sounds mine ear appal;
Now the dread omens more distinctly swell—­
  That thrilling shriek from Claremont’s royal hall,
The death-note peal’d from yon terrific bell,
  The deepening gale with lamentation swoln—­
These, Albion! these, too eloquently tell,
  That from her radiant sphere, thy brightest star has fall’n!

And art thou gone?—­graced vision of an hour! 
  Daughter of Monarchs! gem of England’s crown! 
Thou loveliest lily! fair imperial flower! 
  In beauty’s vernal bloom to dust gone down;
Gone when, dispers’d each inauspicious cloud,
  In blissful sunshine ’gan thy hopes to glow: 
From pain’s fierce grasp, no refuge but the shroud,
  Destin’d a Mother’s pangs, but not her joys, to know.