’Tis past!—the shades of deprivation lour,
Numbing, with influence cold, the heavy hour.
Thy joys, O Friendship! fly ere well begun,
Like the mild shining of yon liquid sun
Through this short winter’s day:—and yet I hear
Haylean accents vibrate on my ear;
Still on that countenance I seem to gaze,
Whence mingled stream the intellectual rays.
But ah! the sweet ideal mockery flies,
Silence and vacancy around me rise!
Wrap my chill’d spirit in their icy vest,
And chace each dear illusion from my breast.
Haste, ye tir’d steeds, that o’er the miry way
To my lone home these listless limbs convey!
There Hayley’s mute resemblance still remains,
To sooth the absent friend’s regretful pains;
Yet well she knows that the repining sigh,
The tear, that dims the disappointed eye,
Shall prove how weak the pencil’s utmost art
To match the faithful tablet of the heart.
But when the form, there shrin’d, too oft survey’d,
Beneath the ardent beam of Thought shall fade,
For the mark’d lines that Memory’s tints display
In contemplation’s fire will melt away,
Then, Romney, nor till then, my soul shall own
Thy perfect skill, and each regret atone,
For more than mortal art no longer pine,
And cease to boast superior power to thine.
And now, illumined by the crystal rays,
Fair spires, again ye meet my wonted gaze!
Your forms majestic, in the fleecy skies,
As conscious of recorded honours, rise;
Shield for your Bards, and Chiefs, of former days,
The warrior-laurel, and the classic bays.
Chiefs, o’er whose sunk, sepulchral, mossy stone,
The suns and storms of countless years have flown;
And they, of later times, who wing’d afar
From your high towers, the volleying bolts of war.
For that fam’d Pair, in youth’s delightful spring,
Pluming beneath your shade their eaglet wing,
What time, to fire each passion of the heart,
Ye saw young GARRICK form his matchless art,
Your stripling JOHNSON, build the lofty rhyme,
Or ruminate the moral thought sublime.
And late ye saw, at evening’s solemn hours,
As sigh’d the winter-blast amid your towers,
Britain’s distinguish’d Bard beneath you stray,
And bend through your long aisles his musing way;
Observe the gleams, from your half-lighted choir,
Throw the long levell’d line of paly fire
High o’er the darksome arch, and awful spread
Ambiguous glimmer round his pensive head;
While the faint rays o’er distant objects wave,
That seem the sombre spectres of the grave.
O! will that honour’d Bard, in future time,
Remember her, who view’d the thought sublime,
Enthron’d majestic in his earnest eye,
Slow as the gloomy figures glided by?
With one kind sigh will his great soul repay
Pledg’d hours of letter’d joys his flight has borne away?
And now again this roof, so lately blest,
Receives me musing on its transient guest.
Slow as my step, with joyless thought, I turn,
The known apartments seek, and entering mourn,
Instant each object to my sense recalls
The Friend, so widely wandering from these walls.
Though the mild sun, in this hybernal hour,
Turns his gold eye on yonder moss-grown tower,
Yet the lone graces of the quiet scene,
The vale, still grassy, and the lake serene,
Distinct and clear present themselves in vain;
Dim, as the sailing cloud, surcharg’d with rain,
My swimming eyes have drawn the misty veil,
O’er sunny tower, blue lake, and grassy dale;
For through the walls a sullen silence reigns,
So late resounding with delightful strains;
Accents that Friendship’s hallow’d powers inspire,
Aonian lays, and more than attic fire.
And now the clamorous bell’s unwelcome peal
Calls me, reluctant, to the cheerless meal;
No bounding step along the hall I hear,
But turn my head, and hide the starting tear.
High-soul’d attachment, by thy powerful sway,
Of deep regrets how large a sum we pay
For joys, that triumph in their proud increase,
And rashly pass the level line of Peace!