1805.

* * * * *

1.

  When I hear you express an affection so warm,
    Ne’er think, my belov’d, that I do not believe,
  For your lip, would the soul of suspicion disarm,
    And your eye beams a ray, which can never deceive.

2.

  Yet still, this fond bosom regrets whilst adoring,
    That love like the leaf, must fall into the sear,
  That age will come on, when remembrance deploring,
    Contemplates the scenes of her youth, with a tear.

3.

  That the time must arrive, when no longer retaining
    Their auburn, these locks must wave thin to the breeze. 
  When a few silver hairs of those tresses remaining,
    Prove nature a prey to decay, and disease.

4.

  ’Tis this, my belov’d, which spreads gloom o’er my features
    Tho’ I ne’er shall presume to arraign the decree;
  Which God has proclaim’d as the fate of his creatures,
    In the death which one day will deprive me of thee.

5.

  No jargon of priests o’er our union was mutter’d,
    To rivet the fetters of husband and wife;
  By our lips, by our hearts, were our vows alone utter’d,
    To perform them, in full, would ask more than a life.

6.

  But as death my belov’d, soon or late, shall o’ertake us,
    And our breasts which alive with such sympathy glow,
  Will sleep in the grave, till the blast shall awake us,
    When calling the dead, in earth’s bosom laid low.

7.

  Oh! then let us drain, while we may, draughts of pleasure,
    Which from passion like ours will unceasingly flow;
  Let us pass round the cup of love’s bliss in full measure,
    And quaff the contents as our nectar below.

1805.

* * * * *

ON A DISTANT VIEW OF THE VILLAGE AND SCHOOL OF HARROW ON THE HILL. 1806.

  Ye scenes of my childhood, whose lov’d recollection,
    Embitters the present, compar’d with the past;
  Where science first dawn’d on the powers of reflection,
    And friendships were form’d, too romantic to last.

2.

  Where fancy yet joys, to retrace the resemblance,
    Of comrades in friendship, and mischief allied;
  How welcome once more your ne’er fading remembrance,
    Which rests in the bosom, though hope is deny’d.

3.

  Again I revisit the hills where we sported,
    The streams where we swam, and the fields where we fought;
  The school where loud warn’d by the bell we resorted,
    To pore o’er the precepts by Pedagogues taught.

4.

  Again I behold where for hours I have ponder’d,
    As reclining at eve on yon tombstone I lay;
  Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wander’d,
    To catch the last gleam of the sun’s setting ray.