Charles Lamb

Margaret, in happy hour Christen'd from that humble flower Which we a daisy call! May thy pretty name-sake be In all things a type of thee, And image thee in all. Like it you show a modest face, An unpretending native grace;— The tulip, and the pink, The china and the damask rose, And every flaunting flower that blows, In the comparing shrink. Of lowly fields you think no scorn; Yet gayest gardens would adorn, And grace, wherever set. Home-seated in your lonely bower, Or wedded—a transplanted flower— I bless you, Margaret!

There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly — , And should you thousand ages try The life you've taken to supply, You could not do it. You surely must have been devoid Of thought and sense, to have destroy'd A thing which no way you annoy'd — You'll one day rue it. Twas but a fly perhaps you'll say, That's born in April, dies in May; That does but just learn to display His wings one minute, And in the next is vanish'd quite. A bird devours it in his flight — Or come a cold blast in the night, There's no breath in it. The bird but seeks his proper food — And Providence, whose power endu'd That fly with life, when it thinks good, May justly take it. But you have no excuses for't — A life by Nature made so short, Less reason is that you for sport Should shorter make it. A fly a little thing you rate — But, Robert do not estimate A creature's pain by small or great; The greatest being Can have but fibres, nerves, and flesh, And these the smallest ones possess, Although their frame and structure less Escape our seeing.

A child's a plaything for an hour; Its pretty tricks we try For that or for a longer space; Then tire, and lay it by. But I knew one, that to itself All seasons could controul; That would have mock'd the sense of pain Out of a grieved soul. Thou, straggler into loving arms, Young climber up of knees, When I forget thy thousand ways, Then life and all shall cease.

I saw where in the shroud did lurk A curious frame of Nature's work. A flow'ret crushed in the bud, A nameless piece of Babyhood, Was in a cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb! She did but ope an eye, and put A clear beam forth, then strait up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Through glasses of mortality. Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without fault? Could she flag, or could she tire, Or lack'd she the Promethean fire (With her nine moons' long workings sicken'd) That should thy little limbs have quicken'd? Limbs so firm, they seem'd to assure Life of health, and days mature: Woman's self in miniature! Limbs so fair, they might supply (Themselves now but cold imagery) The sculptor to make Beauty by. Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, That babe, or mother, one must die; So in mercy left the stock, And cut the branch; to save the shock Of young years widow'd; and the pain, When Single State comes back again To the lone man who, 'reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivel'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells and baby clothes; Coral redder than those lips, Which pale death did late eclipse; Music framed for infants' glee, Whistle never tuned for thee; Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them, Loving hearts were they which gave them. Let not one be missing; nurse, See them laid upon the hearse Of infant slain by doom perverse. Why should kings and nobles have Pictured trophies to their grave; And we, churls, to thee deny Thy pretty toys with thee to lie, A more harmless vanity?

I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I loved a love once, fairest among women; Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her — All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man; Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces — How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

May the Babylonish curse, Strait confound my stammering verse, If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide or scant) To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love, thee so, That, whichever thing I shew, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, And the passion to proceed More from a mistress than a weed. Sooty retainer to the vine, Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon Thy begrimed complexion, And, for thy pernicious sake, More and greater oaths to break Than reclaimed lovers take 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay Much too in the female way, While thou suck'st the laboring breath Faster than kisses or than death. Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, That our worst foes cannot find us, And ill fortune, that would thwart us, Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man, thro' thy heightening steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem, And all about us does express (Fancy and wit in richest dress) A Sicilian fruitfulness. Thou through such a mist dost shew us, That our best friends do not know us, And, for those allowed features, Due to reasonable creatures, Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, Monsters that, who see us, fear us Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion. Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou, That but by reflex can'st shew What his deity can do, As the false Egyptian spell Aped the true Hebrew miracle? Some few vapours thou may'st raise, The weak brain may serve to amaze, But to the reigns and nobler heart Can'st nor life nor heat impart. Brother of Bacchus, later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant - only thou His true Indian conquest art And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. Scent to match thy rich perfume Chemic art did ne'er presume Through her quaint alembic strain, None so sov'reign to the brain. Nature, that did in thee excel, Fram'd again no second smell. Roses, violets, but toys For the smaller sort of boys, Or for greener damsels meant; Thou art the only manly scent. Stinking'st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite — Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 'Twas but in a sort I blam'd thee; None e'er prosper'd who defam'd thee; Irony all, and feign'd abuse, Such as perplext lovers use, At a need, when, in despair To paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe, — Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot Whether it be pain or not. Or, as men, constrained to part With what's nearest to their heart, While their sorrow's at the height, Lose discrimination quite, And their hasty wrath let fall, To appease their frantic gall, On the darling thing whatever Whence they feel it death to sever, Though it be, as they, perforce, Guiltless of the sad divorce. For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave the. For thy sake, TOBACCO, I Would do any thing but die, And but seek to extend my days Long enough to sing thy praise. But, as she, who once hath been A king's consort, is a queen Ever after, nor will bate Any tittle of her state, Though a widow, or divorced, So I, from thy converse forced, The old name and style retain, A right Katherine of Spain; And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys Of the blest Tobacco Boys; Where, though I, by sour physician, Am debarr'd the full fruition Of thy favours, I may catch Some collateral sweets, and snatch Sidelong odours, that give life Like glances from a neighbour's wife; And still live in the by-places And the suburbs of thy graces; And in thy borders take delight, An unconquer'd Canaanite.

Come my little Robert near— Fie! what filthy hands are here! Who that e'er could understand The rare structure of a hand, With its branching fingers fine, Work itself of hands divine, Strong, yet delicately knit, For ten thousand uses fit, Overlaid with so clear skin You may see the blood within, And the curious palm, disposed In such lines, some have supposed You may read the fortunes there By the figures that appear— Who this hand would chuse to cover With a crust of dirt all over, Till it look'd in hue and shape Like the fore-foot of an Ape? Man or boy that works or plays In the fields or the highways May, without offence or hurt, From the soil contract a dirt, Which the next clear spring or river Washes out and out for ever— But to cherish stains impure, Soil deliberate to endure, On the skin to fix a stain Till it works into the grain, Argues a degenerate mind, Sordid, slothful, ill inclin'd, Wanting in that self-respect Which does virtue best protect. All-endearing Cleanliness, Virtue next to Godliness, Easiest, cheapest, needful'st duty, To the body health and beauty, Who that's human would refuse it, When a little water does it?