There are my writings--you shall never spend Your precious moments to so poor an end; Our [peasants’] children may be taught by those Who have no powers such wonders to compose; So let me call them--what the world allows, Surely a poet without shame avows; 810 Come, let us count what numbers we believe Will buy our work--Ah! sister, do you grieve? You weep; there’s something I have said amiss, And vex’d my sister--What a world is this! And how I wander!--Where has fancy run? Is there no poem? Have I nothing done? Forgive me, Lucy, I had fix’d my eye, And so my mind, on works that cannot die, _Marmion_ and _Lara_ yonder in the case; And so I put me in the poet’s place. 820 “‘Still, be not frighten’d; it is but a dream; I am not lost, bewilder’d though I seem; I will obey thee--but suppress thy fear-- I am at ease--then why that silly tear?’ “Jane, as these melancholy fits invade The busy fancy, seeks the deepest shade; She walks in ceaseless hurry, till her mind Will short repose in verse and music find; Then her own songs to some soft tune she sings, And laughs, and calls them melancholy things; 830 Not frenzy all; in some her erring Muse Will sad, afflicting, tender strains infuse; Sometimes on death she will her lines compose, Or give her serious page of solemn prose; And still those favourite plants her fancy please, And give to care and anguish rest and ease. * * * * * “‘Let me not have this gloomy view, About my room, around my bed; But morning roses, wet with dew, To cool my burning brows instead. 840 As flow’rs that once in Eden grew, Let them their fragrant spirits shed, And every day the sweets renew, Till I, a fading flower, am dead. “‘Oh! let the herbs I loved to rear Give to my sense their perfumed breath; Let them be placed about my bier, And grace the gloomy house of death. I’ll have my grave beneath an hill, Where, only Lucy’s self shall know; 850 “‘Where runs the pure pellucid rill Upon its gravelly bed below; There violets on the borders blow, And insects their soft light display, Till, as the morning sunbeams glow, The cold phosphoric fires decay. “‘That is the grave to Lucy shown, The soil a pure and silver sand; The green cold moss above it grown, Unpluck’d of all but maiden hand: 860 In virgin earth, till then unturn’d, There let my maiden form be laid, Nor let my changed clay be spurn’d, Nor for new guest that bed be made.