Think nothing done while aught remains to do.
Category: Samuel Rogers
Samuel Rogers (30 July 1763 – 18 December 1855) was an English poet, during his lifetime one of the most celebrated, although his fame has long since been eclipsed by his Romantic colleagues and friends Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron.
Sweet Memory! wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail.
She was good as she was fair,
She was good as she was fair,
None–none on earth above her!
As pure in thought as angels are:
To know her was to love her.
The good are better made by ill,
The good are better made by ill,
As odours crushed are sweeter still.
A guardian angel o’er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.
Fireside happiness, to hours of ease
Blest with that charm, the certainty to please.
The soul of music slumbers in the shell
Till waked and kindled by the master’s spell;
And feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!
Then never less alone than when alone.
Those that he loved so long and sees no more,
Loved and still loves,–not dead, but gone before,
He gathers round him.
Mine be a cot beside the hill;
Mine be a cot beside the hill;
A beehive’s hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.
That very law which moulds a tear
That very law which moulds a tear
And bids it trickle from its source,–
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course.
Go! you may call it madness, folly;
Go! you may call it madness, folly;
You shall not chase my gloom away!
There ‘s such a charm in melancholy
I would not if I could be gay.
To vanish in the chinks that Time has made.