Shall the bright Queen who rules the tide Now forward thrown, now bridled back, Smile o'er each answering smile, then hide Her grandeur in the transient rack, And yield her power, and veil her pride, And move along a ruffled track: And shall not I give jest for jest, Though king of fancy all the while, Catch up your wishes half expressed, Endure your whimsies void of guile, Albeit with risk of such unrest As may disturb, but not defile? Oh, twine me myrtle round the sword, Soft wit round wisdom over-keen: Let me but lead my peers, no lord With brows high arched; and lofty mien, Set comrades round my council board For bold debates, with jousts between. There quiver lips, there glisten eyes, There throb young hearts with generous hope; Thence, playmates, rise for high emprize; For, though he fail, yet shall ye cope With worldling wrapped in silken lies, With pedant, hypocrite, and pope. REPARABO The world will rob me of my friends, For time with her conspires; But they shall both to make amends Relight my slumbering fires. For while my comrades pass away To bow and smirk and gloze, Come others, for as short a stay; And dear are these as those. And who was this? they ask; and then The loved and lost I praise: "Like you they frolicked; they are men: "Bless ye my later days." Why fret? the hawks I trained are flown: 'Twas nature bade them range; I could not keep their wings half-grown, I could not bar the change. With lattice opened wide I stand To watch their eager flight; With broken jesses in my hand I muse on their delight. And, oh! if one with sullied plume Should droop in mid career, My love makes signals:--"There is room, Oh bleeding wanderer, here." A BIRTHDAY The graces marked the hour, when thou Didst leave thine ante-natal rest, Without a cry to heave a breast Which never ached from then till now. That vivid soul then first unsealed Would be, they knew, a torch to wave Within a chill and dusky cave Whose crystals else were unrevealed. That fine small mouth they wreathed so well In rosy curves, would rouse to arms A troop then bound in slumber-charms; Such notes they gave the magic shell. Those straying fingerlets, that clutched At good and bad, they so did glove, That they might pick the flowers of love, Unscathed, from every briar they touched. The bounteous sisters did ordain, That thou one day with jest and whim Should'st rain thy merriment on him Whose life, when thou wert born, was pain. For haply on that night they spied A sickly student at his books, Who having basked in loving looks Was freezing into barren pride.