Warton! didst the theme inspire,
My inexperienced hand upon the lyre, 160
And soon with transient touch faint music made,
As soon forgotten!
So I loved to lie
By the wild streams of elfin poesy,
Rapt in strange musings; but when life began,
I never roamed a visionary man;
For, taught by thee, I learned with sober eyes
To look on life's severe realities.
I never made (a dream-distempered thing)
Poor Fiction's realm my world; but to cold Truth 170
Subdued the vivid shapings of my youth.
Save when the drisly woods were murmuring,
Or some hard crosses had my spirit bowed;
Then I have left, unseen, the careless crowd,
And sought the dark sea roaring, or the steep
That braved the storm; or in the forest deep,
As all its gray leaves rustled, wooed the tone
Of the loved lyre, that, in my springtide gone,
Waked me to transport.
Eighteen summers now 180
Have smiled on Itchin's margin, since the time
When these delightful visions of our prime
Rose on my view in loveliness. And thou
Friend of my muse, in thy death-bed art cold,
Who, with the tenderest touches, didst unfold
The shrinking leaves of Fancy, else unseen
And shelterless: therefore to thee are due
Whate'er their summer sweetness; and I strew,
Sadly, such flowerets as on hillocks green,
Or mountain-slope, or hedge-row, yet my hand 190
May cull, with many a recollection bland,
And mingled sorrow, Warton, on thy tomb,
To whom, if bloom they boast, they owe their bloom!

[79] Catherine Hill.

[80] St Cross Hospital.

[81] Homer.

[82] See the last book.

[83] Theocritus.

[84] [Greek: Megale moira.]--_Soph._

[85] Philoctetes, see Sophocles. Youthful impressions on first reading
it.

[86] See Warton's "Ode to Fancy."

[87] Alluding to some pathetic lines in Warton's "Ode to Fancy."

[88] See Warton's "Ode on West's Translation of Pindar."

EPITAPH ON H. WALMSLEY, ESQ.,

IN ALVERSTOKE CHURCH, HANTS.

Oh! they shall ne'er forget thee, they who knew
Thy soul benevolent, sincere, and true;
The poor thy kindness cheered, thy bounty fed,
Whom age left shivering in its dreariest shed;
Thy friends, who sorrowing saw thee, when disease
Seemed first the genial strea