Newman Reader - Verses on Various Occasions

2. My Birthday

{5}
LET the sun summon all his beams to hold

Bright pageant in his court, the cloud-paved sky

Earth trim her fields and leaf her copses cold;

Till the dull month with summer-splendours vie.

It is my Birthday;—and I fain would try,

Albeit in rude, in heartfelt strains to praise

My God, for He hath shielded wondrously

From harm and envious error all my ways,

And purged my misty sight, and fixed on heaven

my gaze.

Not in that mood, in which the insensate crowd

Of wealthy folly hail their natal day,—

With riot throng, and feast, and greetings loud,

Chasing all thoughts of God and heaven away.

Poor insect! feebly daring, madly gay,

What! joy because the fulness of the year

Marks thee for greedy death a riper prey?

Is not the silence of the grave too near?

Viewest thou the end with glee, meet scene for

harrowing fear? {6}

Go then, infatuate! where the festive hall,

The curious board, the oblivious wine invite;

Speed with obsequious haste at Pleasure's call,

And with thy revels scare the far-spent night.

Joy thee, that clearer dawn upon thy sight

The gates of death;—and pride thee in thy sum

Of guilty years, and thy increasing white

Of locks; in age untimely frolicksome,

Make much of thy brief span, few years are yet to

come!

Yet wiser such, than he whom blank despair

And fostered grief's ungainful toil enslave;

Lodged in whose furrowed brow thrives fretful care,

Sour graft of blighted hope; who, when the wave

Of evil rushes, yields,—yet claims to rave

At his own deed, as the stern will of heaven.

In sooth against his Maker idly brave,

Whom e'en the creature-world has tossed and

driven,

Cursing the life he mars, "a boon so kindly given."
[Note 1] {7}

He dreams of mischief; and that brainborn ill

Man's open face bears in his jealous view.

Fain would he fly his doom; that doom is still

His own black thoughts, and they must aye

pursue.

Too proud for merriment, or the pure dew

Soft glistening on the sympathising cheek;

As some dark, lonely, evil-natured yew,

Whose poisonous fruit—so fabling poets speak—

Beneath the moon's pale gleam the midnight hag

doth seek.

No! give to me, Great Lord, the constant soul,

Nor fooled by pleasure nor enslaved by care;

Each rebel-passion (for Thou canst) controul,

And make me know the tempter's every snare.

What, though alone my sober hours I wear,

No friend in view, and sadness o'er my mind

Throws her dark veil?—Thou but accord this

prayer,

And I will bless Thee for my birth, and find

That stillness breathes sweet tones, and solitude is

kind. {8}

Each coming year, O grant it to refine

All purer motions of this anxious breast;

Kindle the steadfast flame of love divine,

And comfort me with holier thoughts possest;

Till this worn body slowly sink to rest,

This feeble spirit to the sky aspire,—

As some long-prisoned dove toward her nest—

There to receive the gracious full-toned lyre,

Bowed low before the Throne 'mid the bright

seraph choir.

Oxford.
February 21, 1819. [Note 2]

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Notes

1. "Is life a boon so kindly given," &c., vide Childe
Harold, Canto ii.
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2. The diction of these Verses has been altered in
some places at a later date.
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