HUNTER, Anne

To My Daughter On Being Separated from Her on Her Marriage

Dear to my heart as life’s warm stream

Which animates this mortal clay,

For thee I court the waking dream,

And deck with smiles the future day;

And thus beguile the present pain

With hopes that we shall meet again.

Yet, will it be as when the past

Twined every joy, and care, and thought,

And o’er our minds one mantle cast

Of kind affections finely wrought?

Ah no! the groundless hope were vain,

For so we ne’er can meet again!

May he who claims thy tender heart

Deserve its love, as I have done!

For, kind and gentle as thou art,

If so beloved, thou art fairly won.

Bright may the sacred torch remain,

And cheer thee till we meet again!

Winter

Behold the gloomy tyrant’s awful form

Binding the captive earth in icy chains;

His chilling breath sweeps o’er the watery plains,

Howls in the blast, and swells the rising storm.

See from its centre bends the rifted tower,

Threat’ning the lowly vale with frowning pride,

O’er the scared flocks that seek its sheltering side,

A fearful ruin o’er their heads to pour.

While to the cheerful hearth and social board

Content and ease repair, the sons of want

Receive from niggard fate their pittance scant;

And where some shed bleak covert may afford,

Wan poverty, amidst her meagre host

Casts round her haggard eyes, and shivers at the frost.

The Roundelay

Forget, forget the playful time,

Let every trace be done away,

When I with many an idle rhyme

Was wont to waste the summer's day.

Then hope was new, and love was young,

And fancy on her poet smil'd,

And as my roundelay I sung

The cares of life my song beguil'd.

Now hope is fled, the heart grows cold,

And fancy wears a cypress crown;

The roundelay grows dull and old,

And all the gay delights are flown.

Forget, forget the playful time

The Song at Maria’s Grave

PART I

Come, gentle maidens, gather round.

Bring sprigs of rosemary and rue,

Strew virgin lilies on the ground,

And the wild rose embalm'd in dew.

Emblem of hope, upon the thorn

Their transient beauties bloom and die,

While yet their sweets perfume the morn,

They on Maria's grave shall lie.

For she was fair, as fairest flower,

And gentle as the breath of peace;

But now her charms exist no more,

And soon their memory shall cease.

I raise the song, a name so dear

From cold oblivion's power to save;

Come, gentle maidens, round, and hear

The mournful story at her grave.

Methinks I see her on the beach,

Her eyes still fixed upon the sea;

Her thoughts beyond the ocean reach.

Oh, Henry, they were fix’d on thee.

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