LORD ARDEN'S TALE.

“Rear'd in a court, a man while yet a boy,

Hermes said‘ Rise,’ and Venus sigh'd‘ Enjoy;’

My earlier dreams, like tints in rainbows given,

Caught from the Muse, glow'd but in clasping heaven;

The bird-like instinct of a sphere afar

Pined for the air, and chafed against the bar.

But can to Guelphs Augustan tastes belong?

Or Georgium Sidus look benign on song?

My short-lived Muse the ungenial climate tried,

Breathed some faint warbles, caught a cold, and died!

Wise kinsmen whisper'd‘ Hush! forewarn'd in time;

The feet that rise are not the feet of Rhyme;

Your cards are good, but all is in the lead,

Play out the heart, and you are lost indeed:

Leave verse, my boy, to unaspiring men —

The eagle's pinion never sheds a pen!’

“So fled the Muse! What left the Muse behind?

The aimless fancy and the restless mind;

The eyes, still won by whatsoe'er was bright,

But lost the star's to prize the diamond's light.

Man, like the child, accepts the bauble boon.

And clasps the coral where he ask'd the moon.

Forbid the pomp and royalty of heaven,—

To the born Poet still the earth is given;

Duped by each glare in which Corruption seems

To give the glory imaged on his dreams:

Thus, what had been the thirst for deathless fame,

Grew the fierce hunger for the Moment's name;

Ambition placed its hard desires in Power,

And saw no Jove but in the Golden Shower.

No miser I — no niggard of the store —

The end Olympus, but the means the ore:

I look'd below — there Lazarus crawl'd disdain'd;

I look'd aloft — there, who but Dives reign'd?

He who would make the steeps of power his home,

Must mask the Titan till he rules the Gnome.

If I insist on this, my soul's disease,

Excuse for fault thy practised sight foresees:

It makes the moral of my tale, in truth,

And boyhood sow'd the poison of my youth.

“Meanwhile men praised, and women smiled;— the wing,

Bow'd from the height, still bask'd beneath the spring.

Pass by the Paphian follies of that day,—

When true love comes, it is to close our May.

Well, ere my boyish holiday was o'er,

The grim god came, and mirth was mine no more:

A well-born pauper, I seem'd doom'd to live

By what great men to well-born paupers give:

I had an uncle high in power and state,

Who ruled three kingdoms’ and one nephew's fate.

This uncle loved, as English thanes will all,

An autumn's respite in his rural hall;

In slaughtering game, relax'd his rigid breast;

And so,— behold me martyr'd to his guest!