Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845

"Now, that's all right," said Mr Roe. "This young gentleman is the one I talked of, Gus — that I wants to buy this house for. I don't think your daughter will care to give it up to poor Charles that she took such a fancy to" —

"They seem attached, sir," replied Mr Howard. "And if they like to marry" —

"Bah! — he's to be married next week to my little grandchild, Fanny Smith, and we'll include the pictures in the purchase-money, for one of them is a portrait that was left by mistake when Bill Wilkins bought the hall, and he would never give it back to the real owners. But, now that Charles Walrond is to be my grandson, I'll take good care he recovers his grandmother's likeness. Come — shall I go on and give these ladies the facts of some of your other stories, or will you close with my terms at once?"

Mr Gillingham Howard did not take long to decide, and a very short time saw Surbridge Hall once more in the ancient line; and old Mr Roe, in relating the means he used to expel the vainglorious descendant of his partner, generally concluded with the moral, if not the words of Shakspeare — "Men's pleasant vices make whips to scourge them."

VANITIES IN VERSE

By B. Simmons

Letters of the Dead

To Livia

I

How few the moons since last, immersed
In thoughts of fev'rish, worldly care,
My casket's heap'd contents reversed,
I sought some scroll I wanted there;
How died at once abstraction's air —
How fix'd my frame, as by a spell,
When on THY lines, so slight, so fair,
My hurrying glance arrested fell!

II

My soul that instant saw thee far
Sit in thy crown of bridal flowers,
And with Another watch the star
We watch'd in vanish'd vesper hours.
And as I paced the lonely room,
I wonder'd how that holy ray
Could with its light a world illume
So fill'd with falsehood and decay.

III

Once more — above those slender lines
I bend me with suspended breath —
The hand that traced them now reclines
Clasp'd in th' unclosing hand of Death.
The worm hath made that brow its own
Where Love his wreath so lately set;
And in this heart survive alone
Forgiveness — pity — and regret.

IV

'Twas 'mid the theatre's gay throng —
Life's loveliest colours round me spread —
That mid the pauses of a song,
I caught the careless "She is dead!"
The gaudy crowd — thy sudden grave —
I shrank in that contrasting shock,
Like midnight Listener by the wave,
When splits some bark upon the rock.

V

This Early Death — within its pale
Sad air each angry feeling fades —
An evening haze, whose tender veil
The landscape's harsher features shades.
Ah, Scornful One — thy bier's white hue
Stole every earth-stain from thy cheek,
And left thee all to Memory's view
That Hope once dared in thee to seek.

    1836.

Parting Precepts

I

How graceful was that Grecian creed
Which taught that tongues, of old,
Dwelt in the mountain and the mead,
And where the torrent roll'd,
And that in times of sacred fear,
With sweet mysterious moans,
They spoke aloud, while some pale Seer
Interpreted their tones.[21 - Although the allusion refers, in the verses, to Delphi, it was, I think, at Dodona, in the earliest period of oracular influence, that this belief prevailed.]

II

And, Lady, why should we not deem
That in each echoing hill,
And sounding wood, and dancing stream,
A language lingers still?
No lovelier scenes round Delphi spread
Than round thee stretch divine;
Nor Grecian maid bent brighter head
By haunted stream than thine.

III

Then fancy thus that to thine ear,