 | The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale |  |
VERSES ADDRESSED TO OXFORD.
FAIR seat of sages, and of bards divine!
Terrestrial residence of all the nine!
Oh! had my ardent, and aspiring youth
Felt in thy hallowed groves, important truth;
Inhaled, in them, the God's inspiring ray;
Caught the strong thought, and waked the glowing lay;
Then, reason, fancy, happily combined,
And tuneful diction, had my verse refined:
Then would thy liberal sons have raised my fame;
And high above my merit, fixed my name.
Terrestrial residence of all the nine!
Oh! had my ardent, and aspiring youth
Felt in thy hallowed groves, important truth;
Inhaled, in them, the God's inspiring ray;
Caught the strong thought, and waked the glowing lay;
Then, reason, fancy, happily combined,
And tuneful diction, had my verse refined:
Then would thy liberal sons have raised my fame;
And high above my merit, fixed my name.
377
But now, my life's, my mind's meridian o'er;
Poetick vigour, active hope, no more;
Thy shades, my faint, my setting fires, receive,
Just ere our vital hemisphere they leave.
Yet, could I live, one effort more to make,
For verse's and for fairer virtue's sake,
(Oh! might I fill our ancient province, here;
And prove at once, a poet, and a seer!)
Haply, some verdict, of decisive praise,
Would crown my memory with perpetual bays:
Oxford herself might mark my merit's tomb;
Restore it's life, and bid it's honours bloom.
Poetick vigour, active hope, no more;
Thy shades, my faint, my setting fires, receive,
Just ere our vital hemisphere they leave.
Yet, could I live, one effort more to make,
For verse's and for fairer virtue's sake,
(Oh! might I fill our ancient province, here;
And prove at once, a poet, and a seer!)
Haply, some verdict, of decisive praise,
Would crown my memory with perpetual bays:
Oxford herself might mark my merit's tomb;
Restore it's life, and bid it's honours bloom.
Thus (for, like Maro's swain, an object small
I near a great one place) at Dryden's call,
Britons enamoured grew of nature's rules,
And spurned the jargon of the doating schools;
To genius, and to taste, were converts made;
With wonder Milton's vast sublime surveyed;
Imbibed seraphick rapture from his page,
To glory rescued from a barbarous age.
I near a great one place) at Dryden's call,
Britons enamoured grew of nature's rules,
And spurned the jargon of the doating schools;
To genius, and to taste, were converts made;
With wonder Milton's vast sublime surveyed;
Imbibed seraphick rapture from his page,
To glory rescued from a barbarous age.
Middleton-Stoney, Oxfordshire, July 10th, 1794.
| The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale | |