Was the subject of this Sonnet wholly imaginary, or was there some unfortunate story which, for sufficient reasons, his biographers have suppressed? It is true, that in his letters, written at a much later period, he speaks of marriage in a manner not to be reconciled with the idea that he was then suffering from recollections of that description; but he may, in the interval of two years, have partially recovered from his loss. Kirke White was buried in the Church of All Saints, Cambridge, but no monument was erected to him until a liberal minded American, Mr. Francis Boott, of Boston, placed a tablet to his memory, with a medallion, by Chantrey, with the following inscription, by Professor Smyth, one of his numerous friends: "Warm'd with fond hope and learning's sacred flame, To Granta's bowers the youthful Poet came; Unconquer'd powers the immortal mind display'd, But worn with anxious thought, the frame decay'd: Pale o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired, The martyr student faded and expired. Oh! genius, taste, and piety sincere, Too early lost 'midst studies too severe! Foremost to mourn, was generous Southey seen, He told the tale, and show'd what White had been, Nor told in vain. For o'er the Atlantic wave A wanderer came, and sought the Poet's grave; On yon low stone he saw his lonely name, And raised this fond memorial to his fame." POEMS. _CLIFTON GROVE._ _DEDICATION._ _To Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire, the following trifling effusions of a very youthful Muse are, by permission, dedicated by her Grace's much obliged and grateful Servant,_ _HENRY KIRKE WHITE_ _Nottingham._ PREFACE. The following attempts in Verse are laid before the Public with extreme diffidence. The Author is very conscious that the juvenile efforts of a youth, who has not received the polish of Academical discipline, and who has been but sparingly blessed with opportunities for the prosecution of scholastic pursuits, must necessarily be defective in the accuracy and finished elegance which mark the works of the man who has passed his life in the retirement of his study, furnishing his mind with images, and at the same time attaining the power of disposing those images to the best advantage. The unpremeditated effusions of a Boy, from his thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary information, but in the more active business of life, must not be expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a Virgil, or the vigorous compression of a Horace. Men are not, I believe, frequently known to bestow much, labour on their amusements; and these poems were, most of them, written merely to beguile a leisure hour, or to fill up the languid intervals of studies of a severer nature.