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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb: Poems and plays
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Poems and plays Author:Charles Lamb Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-98, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB FROM PERIODICALS SONNET (Summer, 1795) r I ""HE Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, L An... more »d 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow ; Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy detested walls, Proud City! and thy sons I leave behind, A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind ; Brute things, who shut their ears when Freedom calk. I pass not thee so lightly, well-known spire, That minded me of many a pleasure gone, Of merrier days, of love and Islington; Kindling afresh the flames of past desire. And I shall muse on thee, slow journeying on To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. '795 TO THE POET COWPER On hia Recovery from an Indisposition. Written some Tims Back (Summer, 1796) Cowper, I thank my God, that thou art heal'd. Thine was the sorest malady of all; And I am sad to think that it should light Upon the worthy head: but thou art heal'd, And thou art yet, we trust, the destin'd man, Born to re-animate the lyre, whose chords Have slumber'd, and have idle lain so long; To th' immortal sounding of whose strings Did Milton frame the stately-paced verse ; Among whose wires with lighter finger playing Our elder bard, Spencer, a gentler name, The lady Muses' dearest darling child, Enticed forth the deftest tunes yet heard In hall or bower; taking the delicate ear Of the brave Sidney, and the Maiden Queen. Thou, then, take up the mighty epic strain, Cowper, of England's bards the wisest and the best! December i, 1796 LINES Addressed, from London, to Sara and S. T. C. at Bristol, in the Summer of 1796. Was it so hard a thing ? I did but ask A fleeting holiday, a little week. What, if the jaded ...« less