Newman Reader - Verses on Various Occasions

20. Seeds in the Air
For an Album

{59}
"Igneus est ollis vigor, et cœlestis origo
Seminibus."

COULD I hit on a theme

To fashion my verse on,

Not long would I seem

A lack-courtesy person.

But I have not the skill,

Nor talisman strong,

To summon at will

The Spirit of song.—

Bright thoughts are roaming

Unseen in the air;

Like comets, their coming

Is sudden and rare.

They strike, and they enter,

And light up the brain,

Which thrills to its centre

With rapturous pain. {60}

Where the chance-seed

Is piously nursed,

Brighter succeed

In the path of the first.—

One sighs to the Muse,

Or the sweet nightingale,

One sips the night-dews

Which moon-beams exhale.

All this is a fiction;

I never could find

A suitable friction

To frenzy my mind.

What use are empirics?

No gas on their shelf

Can make one spout lyrics

In spite of oneself!

Dartington.
July 18, 1831.