[Page 79]

ELEGY.

1 HASTE, haste, ye solemn messengers of night,
2 Spread the black mantle on the shrinking plain;
3 But, ah! my torments still survive the light,
4 The changing seasons alter not my pain.
5 Ye variegated children of the spring;
6 Ye blossoms blushing with the pearly dew;
7 Ye birds that sweetly in the hawthorn sing;
8 Ye flow'ry meadows, lawns of verdant hue,
9 Faint are your colours; harsh your love-notes thrill,
10 To me no pleasure Nature now can yield:
11 Alike the barren rock and woody hill,
12 The dark-brown blasted heath, and fruitful field.
13 Ye spouting cataracts, ye silver streams;
14 Ye spacious rivers, whom the willow shrowds;
15 Ascend the bright-crown'd sun's far-shining beams,
16 To aid the mournful tear-distilling clouds.
17 Ye noxious vapours, fall upon my head;
18 Ye writhing adders, round my feet entwine;
19 Ye toads, your venom in my foot-path spread;
20 Ye blasting meteors, upon me shine.
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21 Ye circling seasons, intercept the year;
22 Forbid the beauties of the spring to rise;
23 Let not the life-preserving grain appear;
24 Let howling tempests harrow up the skies.
25 Ye cloud-girt, moss-grown turrets, look no more
26 Into the palace of the god of day:
27 Ye loud tempestuous billows, cease to roar,
28 In plaintive numbers, thro' the valleys stray.
29 Ye verdant-vested trees, forget to grow,
30 Cast off the yellow foliage of your pride:
31 Ye softly tinkling riv'lets, cease to flow,
32 Or swell'd with certain death and poison, glide.
33 Ye solemn warblers of the gloomy night,
34 That rest in lightning-blasted oaks the day,
35 Thro' the black mantles take your slow-pac'd flight,
36 Rending the silent wood with shrieking lay.
37 Ye snow-crown'd mountains, lost to mortal eyes,
38 Down to the valleys bend your hoary head,
39 Ye livid comets, fire the peopled skies —
40 For — lady Betty's tabby cat is dead.

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About this text

Title (in Source Edition): ELEGY.
Author: Thomas Chatterton
Themes: animals
Genres: heroic quatrain; elegy

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Source edition

Chatterton, Thomas, 1752-1770. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse; by Thomas Chatterton, the supposed author of the poems published under the names of Rowley, Canning, &c. London: printed for Fielding and Walker, Pater-Noster Row, MDCCLXXVIII., 1778, pp. 79-80. xxxii,245,[3]p.,plates; 8⁰. (ESTC T39457; OTA K039720.000) (Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [Harding C 696 (1)].)

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Other works by Thomas Chatterton