Ye few! my soul, my life is yours, From smooth deceit and terror sprung, 66 Friendship is Love without his wings!' Fictions and dreams inspire the bard Friendship and Truth be my reward - If laurell'd Fame but dwells with lies, Whose heart and not whose fancy sings; December, 1806. THE PRAYER OF NATURE. 1 FATHER of Light! great God of Heaven! [It is difficult to conjecture for what reason,- but these stanzas were not included in the publication of 1807; though few will hesi Father of Light, on thee I call! Thou see'st my soul is dark within; Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall, Avert from me the death of sin. No shrine I seek, to sects unknown; Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth. Let bigots rear a gloomy fane, Let superstition hail the pile, Let priests, to spread their sable reign, Shall man confine his Maker's sway Earth, ocean, heaven thy boundless throne.1 Shall man condemn his race to hell, Must perish in the mingling storm? tate to place them higher than any thing given in that volume. "Written when the author was not nineteen years of age, this remarkable poem shows," says Moore, "how early the struggle between natural piety and doubt began in his mind." In reading the celebrated critique of the Edinburgh Review on the" Hours of Idleness," the fact that the volume did not include this Prayer of Nature ought to be kept in mind.] 1 [The poet appears to have had in his mind one of Mr. Southey's juvenile pieces, beginning, "Go, thou, unto the house of prayer, Shall each pretend to reach the skies, Shall these, by creeds they can't expound, Shall those who live for self alone, Father! no prophet's laws I seek, Thy laws in Nature's works appear; I own myself corrupt and weak, Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear! Thou, who canst guide the wandering star Through trackless realms of æther's space; Who calm'st the elemental war, Whose hand from pole to pole I trace : Thou, who in wisdom placed me here, To Thee, my God, to thee I call! If, when this dust to dust's restored, But, if this fleeting spirit share With clay the grave's eternal bed, To Thee I breathe my humble strain, And hope, my God, to thee again December 29. 1806. TO EDWARD NOEL LONG, ESQ.1 While clouds the darken'd noon deform, [This young gentleman, who was with Lord Byron both at Harrow and Cambridge, afterwards entered the Guards, and served with distinction in the expedition to Copenhagen. He was drowned early in 1809, when on his way to join the army in the Peninsula; the transport in which he sailed being run foul of in the night by another of the convoy. "Long's father," says Lord Byron," wrote to me to write his son's epitaph. I promisedbut I had not the heart to complete it. He was such a good, amiable being as rarely remains long in this world, with talent and accomplishments, too, to make him the more regretted."-Byron Diary, 1821.] Yon heaven assumes a varied glow, Some lurking envious fear intrude, 'Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing To soothe its wonted heedless flow; |