Samuel Rogers. 1763-1855.
Sweet Memory! wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail.
The Pleasures of Memory. Part ii. i.
She was good as she was fair,
None—none on earth above her!
As pure in thought as angels are:
To know her was to love her.[455:1]
Jacqueline. Stanza 1.
The good are better made by ill,
As odours crushed are sweeter still.[455:2]
Jacqueline. Stanza 3.
A guardian angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
Human Life.
Fireside happiness, to hours of ease
Blest with that charm, the certainty to please.
Human Life.
The soul of music slumbers in the shell
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!
Human Life.
Then never less alone than when alone.[455:3]
Human Life.
Those that he loved so long and sees no more,
Loved and still loves,—not dead, but gone before,[455:4]—
He gathers round him.
Human Life.
Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.
A Wish.
[456]
That very law which moulds a tear
And bids it trickle from its source,—
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course.
On a Tear.
Go! you may call it madness, folly;
You shall not chase my gloom away!
There 's such a charm in melancholy
I would not if I could be gay.
To ——.
To vanish in the chinks that Time has made.[456:1]
Pæstum.
Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it:
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.
Epigram.
Footnotes
[455:1] See Burns, page 452.
None knew thee but to love thee.—Halleck: On the Death of Drake.
[455:2] See Bacon, page 165.
[455:3] See Gibbon, page 430.
Numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam quum otiosus, nec minus solum, quam quum solus esset (He is never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when he is alone).—Cicero: De Officiis, liber iii. c. 1.
[455:4] This is literally from Seneca, Epistola lxiii. 16. See Matthew Henry, page 283.
[456:1] See Waller, page 221.