Impromptu, written in the blank leaves of Miss Anna Burt’s Repository of Friendship

Before thine altar, Virtue, ever kneel
The maid whose beauty charms the kindling heart!
The maid, ordain’d Affection’s power to feel,
In Nature’s truth and in the scorn of Art!

Enchanting ANNA, if aright I read,
Stands in the level of that cordial prayer;
Hers be the rosy and the amaranth wreath,
Which Love and Friendship for the Good prepare!

So may her years in placid currents flow,
Gay as her smile, and radiant as her eye;
Pure as her blush, where those soft colours glow
Warm May diffuses in the orient sky!

Live, gentle Nymph, to bless and to be blest,
Tho’ rare such lot in life’s ambiguous maze;
Transient, at least, be all that wounds thy breast
Till melt thy finite in eternal days!