Hymn For The Anniversary Of The Death Of The Princess Charlotte. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

Lo! where youth and beauty lie,
Cold within the tomb!
As the spring's first violets die,
Withered in their bloom.
O'er the young and buried bride,
Let the cypress wave:
A kingdom's hope, a kingdom's pride,
Recline in yonder grave.

Place the vain expected child,
Gently, near her breast!
It never wept, it never smiled,
But seeks its mother's rest.
Hark! we hear the general cry!
Hark! the passing bell!
A thousand, thousand bosoms sigh,
A long and last farewell!

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English cleric, poet, and critic who was born on 24th September 1762 and died on 7th April 1850. He is best known for his sonnets, which were highly praised by the Romantic poets. Bowles's work significantly influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Besides his poetry, he wrote extensively on literary criticism and editing. Bowles spent much of his clerical career in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

William Lisle Bowles

Evening

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Sketches In The Exhibition, 1805.

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

On Landing At Ostend

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Epitaph On Robert Southey.

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Village Bells. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

Who does not love the village bells,
Their cheerful peal, and solemn toll!
One of the rustic wedding tells,
And one bespeaks a parting soul.

The lark in sunshine sings his song,
And, dressed in garments white and gay,
The village lasses trip along,
For this is Susan's wedding-day.

Ah! gather flowers of sweetest hue,
Young violets from the bank's green side,
And on poor Mary's coffin strew,
For in the bloom of life she died.

So passes life! the smile, the tear,
Succeed, as in our path we stray,
Thy kingdom come, for we are here
As guests who tarry but a day.

William Lisle Bowles

In Memoriam. - Mrs. Georgiana Ives Comstock,

Died at Hartford, April 30th, 1861, aged 22.


I saw a brilliant bridal.
                    All that cheers
And charms the leaping heart of youth was there;
And she, the central object of the group,
The cherished song-bird of her father's house,
Array'd in beauty, was the loved of all.
Would I could tell you what a world of flowers
Were concentrated there--how they o'erflow'd
In wreaths and clusters--how they climb'd and swept
From vase to ceiling, with their gay festoons
Whispering each other in their mystic lore
Of fragrance, and consulting how to swell,
As best they might, the tide of happiness.

A few brief moons departed and I sought
The same abode. There was a gather'd throng
Beyond the threshold stone. A few white flowers
Crept o'er...

Lydia Howard Sigourney

To Lady Valletort, On Hearing Her Sing "Gloria In Excelsis," With Three Other Young Ladies, At Lacock Abbey, October 1831.

Fair inmate of these ivied walls, beneath
Whose silent cloisters Ella sleeps in death,
Let loftier bards, in rich and glowing lays,
Thy gentleness, thy grace, thy virtue praise!
Be mine to breathe one prayer; when all rejoice,
One parting prayer, still mindful of that voice,
And musing on the sacred song which stole,
Sweet as the spell of peace, upon the soul;
In those same scenes, where once the chapel dim
Echoed the cloistered sisters' vesper hymn: -
Live long! live happy! tranquil through the strife
And the loud stir of this tumultuous life!
Live long, live happy! and when many a day
Hath passed in the heart's harmony away;
When Eve's pale hand the gates of life shall close,
And hush the landscape to its last repose;
May sister seraphs meet with welcome son...

William Lisle Bowles

Address To The Scholars Of The Village School

I come, ye little noisy Crew,
Not long your pastime to prevent;
I heard the blessing which to you
Our common Friend and Father sent.
I kissed his cheek before he died;
And when his breath was fled,
I raised, while kneeling by his side,
His hand:, it dropped like lead.
Your hands, dear Little-ones, do all
That can be done, will never fall
Like his till they are dead.
By night or day blow foul or fair,
Ne'er will the best of all your train
Play with the locks of his white hair,
Or stand between his knees again.
Here did he sit confined for hours;
But he could see the woods and plains,
Could hear the wind and mark the showers
Come streaming down the streaming panes.
Now stretched beneath his grass-green mound
He rests a prisoner of the ground....

William Wordsworth

London Voluntaries - To Charles Whibley - I - Grave

St. Margaret's bells,
Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles,
Sing in the storied air,
All rosy-and-golden, as with memories
Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas
Disconsolate for that the night is nigh.
O, the low, lingering lights!    The large last gleam
(Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!)
Touching these solemn ancientries, and there,
The silent River ranging tide-mark high
And the callow, grey-faced Hospital,
With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!
The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees,
And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky
(Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!)
Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.
The sober Sabbath stir -
Leisurely voices, desultory feet! -
Comes from the dry, dus...

William Ernest Henley

Chantrey's Sleeping Children.

Look at those sleeping children; softly tread,
Lest thou do mar their dream, and come not nigh
Till their fond mother, with a kiss, shall cry,
'Tis morn, awake! awake! Ah! they are dead!
Yet folded in each other's arms they lie,
So still - oh, look! so still and smilingly,
So breathing and so beautiful, they seem,
As if to die in youth were but to dream
Of spring and flowers! Of flowers? Yet nearer stand -
There is a lily in one little hand,
Broken, but not faded yet,
As if its cup with tears were wet.
So sleeps that child, not faded, though in death,
And seeming still to hear her sister's breath,
As when she first did lay her head to rest
Gently on that sister's breast,
And kissed her ere she fell asleep!
The archangel's trump alone shall wake that slumb...

William Lisle Bowles