from The Bijou Literary Annual, 1828
author: By Lady Caroline Lamb
source date: 1828
edition published: 20170606
availability: Freely available via a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

The Bijou;
or Annual of Literature and the Arts

compiled by William Fraser
William Pickering London
1828
pp. 89-90

To a Friend, On Sending a Fancy Drawing, After Promising Her Own Picture in the Character of a Gypsey

By Lady Caroline Lamb

THE glowing tints beneath thy care
Have traced a form divinely fair,
Have given it charms and beauties rare,
And shown the power of art;
But in the ideal head I trace,
No features of the gypsey's face,
The living smile, the nameless grace,
That nature doth impart.

Here roving looks, and eyes of fire,
Awake the soul of young desire; —
The spells — which Beauty may inspire,
By thee are well exprest.
But soon the varying tints will fade,
And time with leaden hand shall shade,
The colours that once vivid played
In thy bright eye and breast!

So hope that paints our morning sky,
When viewed with youth's unclouded eye;
So pleasures airy dreams must fly
O'erpowered with care and gloom.
For life's a fearful passing dream,
And those that gay and thoughtless seem,
Alike sail down its swelling stream
To meet the general doom.