LINES SUGGESTED ON VISITING NEWSTEAD ABBEY.*
What makes the poet?—Nothing but to feel
More keenly than the common sense of feeling;
To have the soul attuned to the appeal
Of the dim music through all nature stealing.
Ah! poetry is like love, its own avenger;
Sweet thoughts, fine fancies, by its footsteps roam;
It wanders through the world a lonely stranger,
To find this weary world is not its home.
Cares, envyings, blame, disturb its bright dominion;
Fretted, it labours with its own unrest;
The wounded dove folds up its drooping pinion,
And pines and fevers on its lonely nest.
Or rather say, it is the falcon, scorning
The shaft by which he met his mortal blow;
Stately he rose to meet the golden morning—
Ere noontide came, the gallant bird lay low.
Ah! who may know what gloomy guests, unbidden,
Await such spirits in their unstrung hours!
Thoughts by the better nature vainly chidden,
Forcing allegiance to the darker powers.
And who may know how sad and how subdued
When, with its own o’ertasking, faint and weary,
The mind sinks down into that gloomy mood,
To which all future hours seem dark and dreary!
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