Note 15 — GEORGE HARTPOLE.
Reading edition
I cannot better illustrate the state of a person so chased by misery, than by quoting a few unpublished lines, the composition of a very young lady, Miss M. T., with whom, and with whose amiable family, I have the pleasure of being intimate.
I am aware that I do her great injustice by quoting these particular verses—some of the most inferior of her writings; but they seem so much to the point, that I venture to risk her displeasure. She is not, indeed, irritable; and I promise to atone for my error by a few further quotations from her superior compositions.
I.
I never sought a day’s repose
But some sharp thorn pierced my breast;
I never watch’d the evening’s close,
And hoped a heaven of rest;
But soon a darkling cloud would come
Athwart the prospect bright,
And, pale as twilight on a tomb,
My hopes grew dim in night.
II.
Oft have I mark’d the heav’nly moon
Wandering her pathless way
Along the midnight’s purple noon,
More fair—more loved than day:
But soon she flung her shadowy wreath
O’er dark eternity,
As a faint smile on the cheek of death
’Twixt hope and agony.
III.
Oft on the rainbow’s bloom I’ve gazed,
Arch’d as a gate of heaven,
Till gushing showers its portals razed,
And bathed the brow of even.
’Tis thus young hopes illume the sky
Of Life’s dark atmosphere,
Yet, like the rainbow’s splendid dye,
They meet and disappear.
IV.
Ev’n so, the mirth of man is madness;—
His joy as a sepulchral light,
Which shows his solitude and sadness,
But chaseth not the night.