Lines on Receiving a Seal With the Campbell Crest, From K. M — , Before Her Marriage
This wax returns not back more fair
The impression of the gift you send,
Than stamped upon my thoughts I bear
The image of your worth, my friend!
We are not friends of yesterday;—
But poet’s fancies are a little
Disposed to heat and cool (they say),—
By turns impressible and brittle.
Well! should its frailty e’er condemn
My heart to prize or please you less,
Your type is still the sealing gem,
And mine the waxen brittleness.
What transcripts of my weal and woe
This little signet yet may lock,—
What utterances to friend or foe,
In reason’s calm or passion’s shock!
What scenes of life’s yet curtained page
May own its confidential die,
Whose stamp awaits the unwritten page,
And feelings of futurity!
Yet wheresoe’er my pen I lift
To date the epistolary sheet,
The blest occasion of the gift
Shall make its recollection sweet;
Sent when the star that rules your fates
Hath reached its influence most benign—
When every heart congratulates,
And none more cordially than mine.
So speed my song—marked with the crest
That erst the adventurous Norman75 wore,
Who won the Lady of the West,
The daughter of Macaillain Mor.
Crest of my sires! whose blood it sealed
With glory in the strife of swords,
Ne’er may the scroll that bears it yield
Degenerate thoughts or faithless words!
Yet little might I prize the stone,
If it but typed the feudal tree
From whence a scattered leaf, I’m blown
In Fortune’s mutability.
No!—but it tells me of a heart,
Allied by friendship’s living tie;
A prize beyond the herald’s art—
Our soul-sprung consanguinity!
Katherine! to many an hour of mine
Light wings and sunshine you have lent;
And so adieu, and still be thine
The all-in-all of life—Content!
Notes
75 A Norman leader, Gilliespie le Camile, in the service of the king of Scotland, married the heiress of Lochaw in the twelfth century, and from him the Campbells are sprung.