With ink in it;-a china cup

that was

What it will never be again, I think,

A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
The liquor doctors rail at-and which I

Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die
We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea,
And cry out,-heads or tails? where'er we be.
Near that a dusty paint box, some old hooks,
An half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures, disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott's memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near them a most inexplicable thing,
With least in the middle-I'm conjecturing
How to make Henry understand;-but-no,
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.

And here like some weïrd Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,

Ruffling the ocean of their self content ;-
I sit and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them-Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound,

I heed him more than them-the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines
Are trembling wide in all their trelliced lines-
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast;-the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of heaven smiles, like the age of love
On the unquiet world;-while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? The shriek of the world's carrion jays,
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?.

You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees In vacant chairs, your absent images,

And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not.-I demand if ever we

Shall meet as then we met;-and she replies,
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;

"I know the past alone-but summon home
"My sister Hope, she speaks of all to come."
But I, an old diviner, who know well
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In acting every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion.-How on the sea shore
We watched the ocean and the sky together,

Under the roof of blue Italian weather;

How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek:-and how we often made
Treats for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,

As it well might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;-and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not, or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe; or sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world :—and then anatomize
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years; —or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are;
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme;-in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps; or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining the sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady! then indued
The language of a land which now is free,
And winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,

And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,

My name is Legion!"—that majestic tongue

Which Calderon over the desart flung

Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion;-thou wert then to me
As is a nurse-when inarticulately

A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,

If hawks chase doves through the aerial way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast
Out of the forest of the pathless past

These recollected pleasures?

You are now

In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see

You will see C- -; he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure

Intense irradiation of a mind,

Which, with its own internal lustre blind,

Flags wearily through darkness and despair—
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,

A hooded eagle among blinking owls.

You will see H-t; one of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it is a tomb; Who is, what others seem;-his room no doubt

F

Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,
With graceful flowers, tastefully placed about;
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,

And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,
The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,

Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns
Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, "I'm poor!"
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever said in book,
Except in Shakespear's wisest tenderness.
You will see H—, and I cannot express
His virtues, though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades, the gate
Within which they inhabit;--of his wit
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit.
He is a pearl within an oyster shell,

One of the richest of the deep. And there
Is English P- with his mountain Fair
Turned into a Flamingo,-that shy bird

That gleams i'the Indian air. Have you not heard
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him? but you
Will see him and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
Matched with this cameleopard; his fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots;-let his page
Which charms the chosen spirits of the age,