University of Virginia Library

Search this document 
  

collapse sectionI. 
  
  
  
collapse section 
  
  
  
  
  
collapse section 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
collapse section 
  
VERSES ADDRESSED TO OXFORD.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
collapse sectionII. 
collapse section 
  
collapse section 
  
collapse sectionI. 
 I. 
 II. 
collapse sectionII. 
 I. 
 II. 
 III. 
collapse sectionIII. 
 I. 
 II. 
collapse sectionIV. 
 I. 
 II. 
collapse sectionV. 
 I. 
  
  
  
collapse section 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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.

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.
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.
Middleton-Stoney, Oxfordshire, July 10th, 1794.