To Fortune

To the editor of the ‘‘Morning Chronicle’’ Sir, — The following poem you may perhaps deem admissible into your journal — if not, you will commit it. — I am, with more respect and gratitude than I ordinarily feel for Editors of Papers, your obliged, &c.,Cantab. — S.T.C. [Composed during a walk to and from the Queen’s Head, Gray’s Inn Lane, Holborn, and Hornsby’s and Co., Cornhill.]

Promptress of unnumber’d sighs, O snatch that circling bandage from thine eyes! O look, and smile! No common prayer Solicits, Fortune! thy propitious care! For, not a silken son of dress, I clink the gilded chains of politesse, Nor ask thy boon what time I scheme Unholy Pleasure’s frail and feverish dream; Nor yet my view life’s dazzle blinds — Pomp! — Grandeur! Power! — I give you to the winds! Let the little bosom cold Melt only at the sunbeam ray of gold — My pale cheeks glow — the big drops start — The rebel Feeling riots at my heart! And if in lonely durance pent, Thy poor mite mourn a brief imprisonment — That mite at Sorrow’s faintest sound Leaps from its scrip with an elastic bound! But oh! if ever song thine ear Might soothe, O haste with fost’ring hand to rear One Flower of Hope! At Love’s behest, Trembling, I plac’d it in my secret breast: And thrice I’ve view’d the vernal gleam, Since oft mine eye, with Joy’s electric beam, Illum’d it — and its sadder hue Oft moisten’d with the Tear’s ambrosial dew! Poor wither’d floweret! on its head Has dark Despair his sickly mildew shed! But thou, O Fortune! canst relume Its deaden’d tints — and thou with hardier bloom May’st haply tinge its beauties pale, And yield the unsunn’d stranger to the western gale!