What visions rise! to charm, to melt! The lost, the loved, the dead are near! Oh, hush that strain too deeply felt! And cease that solace too severe! But thou serenely silent art! By heaven and love wast taught to lend A milder solace to the heart, The sacred image of a friend. All is not lost! if, yet possest, To me that sweet memorial shine:— If close and closer to my breast I hold that idol all divine. Or, gazing through luxurious tears, Melt o’er the loved departed form, Till death’s cold bosom half appears With life, and speech, and spirit warm. She looks! she lives! this trancèd hour, Her bright eye seems a purer gem Than sparkles on the throne of power, Or glories wealthy diadem. Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid A treasure to my soul has given, Where beauty’s canonisèd shade Smiles in the sainted hues of heaven No spectre forms of pleasure fled, Thy softening, sweetening tints restore; For thou canst give us back the dead, E’en in the loveliest looks they wore. Then blest be Nature’s guardian Muse, Whose hand her perished grace redeems! Whose tablet of a thousand hues The mirror of creation seems. From Love began thy high descent; And lovers, charmed by gifts of thine, Shall bless thee mutely eloquent; And call thee brightest of the Nine! [87] Alluding to the well-known tradition respecting the origin of painting, that it arose from a young Corinthian female tracing the shadow of her lovers profile on the wall, as he lay asleep. DRINKING-SONG OF MUNICH. Sweet Iser! were thy sunny realm And flowery gardens mine, Thy waters I would shade with elm To prop the tender vine; My golden flagons I would fill With rosy draughts from every hill; And under every myrtle bower, My gay companions should prolong The laugh, the revel, and the song, To many an idle hour. Like rivers crimsoned with the beam Of yonder planet bright, Our balmy cups should ever stream Profusion of delight; No care should touch the mellow heart, And sad or sober none depart; For wine can triumph over woe, And Love and Bacchus, brother powers, Could build in Iser’s sunny bowers A paradise below. LINES ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER. And call they this Improvement?—to have changed, My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore, Where Nature’s face is banished and estranged, And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more; Whose banks, that sweetened May-day’s breath before, Lie sere and leafless now in summer’s beam, With sooty exhalations covered o’er; And for the daisied green sward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam.