The Hillsborough Recorder

WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM

For me, oh world! no chaplet weave.
Thy frowns I fear not, and believe
Thy wintry smiles, thy summer glow,
Deceptive as returning snow,
For me thy grandeur's all too high
Then not for me thy chaplet weave,
For all thy pleasures but deceive.

Let Beauty, with its eyes of fire,
With maddening love the gay inspire;
Let War in panoply array'd,
Unsheathe the Chieftain's ready blade:
Let Glory wear its plumed crest,
And dazzle with its glittering vest;
Yet not for me thy chaplet weave,
Thy smiles are false—thy hopes deceive.

Let the full cup of Pleasure brim
With draughts from fair Calypso's stream;
Which shrouds the soul's immortal flame,
Beneath the brute's degraded frame:
Though fair the flowers that here entice,
Ah, all too costly in their price:
Such chaplets therefore do not weave,
The flowers decay—the draughts deceive.

Nor weave for me Ambition's wreath,
It is the bloody meed of death:
Asp-like, foul murder nestles there,
Entwined with folds of grim despair
And oh! weave not the wreath that binds
The brows of sordid, selfish minds.
Like these entwine no wreath for me,
They show too much, oh world, of thee

Nor the bright wreath of Riches twine,
Dug from Golconda's purest mine;
Nor dazzling stones, that proudly gem
An empire's envied diadem
No—wreathe for me the Christian's crown,
Be virtue still my best renown—
And let the wreath that decks my brow
From pure Religion's branches grow.