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　　LETTER 105

　　CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

　　March, 1803.

　　Dear Manning, I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month since. If you have interest with the Abbé de Lisle, you may get 'em translated: he has done as much for the Georgics.

　　HESTER

　　When maidens such as Hester die,

　　Their place ye may not well supply,

　　Though ye among a thousand try,

　　With vain endeavour.

　　A month or more hath she been dead,

　　Yet cannot I by force be led

　　To think upon the wormy bed,

　　And her together.

　　A springy motion in her gait,

　　A rising step, did indicate

　　Of pride and joy no common rate,

　　That flush'd her spirit.

　　I know not by what name beside

　　I shall it call:—if 'twas not pride,

　　It was a joy to that allied,

　　She did inherit.

　　Her parents held the Quaker rule,

　　Which doth the human feeling cool,

　　But she was train'd in Nature's school,

　　Nature had blest her.

　　A waking eye, a prying mind,

　　A heart that stirs, is hard to bind,

　　A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind,

　　Ye could not Hester.

　　My sprightly neighbour, gone before

　　To that unknown and silent shore,

　　Shall we not meet, as heretofore,

　　Some summer morning,

　　When from thy cheerful eyes a ray

　　Hath struck a bliss upon the day,

　　A bliss that would not go away,

　　A sweet forewarning?

　　[This letter is possibly only a fragment. I have supplied "Hester" from the 1818 text.

　　The young Quaker was Hester Savory, the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith of the Strand. She was married July 1, 1802, and died a few months after.

　　"The Abbé de Lisle." L'Abbé Jacques Delille (1738-1813), known by his Géorgiques, 1770, a translation into French of Virgil's Georgics.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5