| A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes | |
|
VII.
Let those toil for gold who please,
Or for fame renounce their ease.
What is fame? an empty bubble,
Gold? a transient, shining trouble.
Let them for their country bleed,
What was Sidney's, Raleigh's meed?
Man's not worth a moment's pain,
Base, ungrateful, fickle, vain.
Then let me, sequester'd fair,
To your Sibyl grot repair,
On yon hanging cliff it stands
Scoop'd by Nature's salvage hands,
Bosom'd in the gloomy shade
Of cypress not with age decay'd.
Where the owl still-hooting sits,
Where the bat incessant flits,
There in loftier strains I'll sing
Whence the changing seasons spring,
Tell how storms deform the skies,
Whence the waves subside and rise,
Trace the comet's blazing tail,
Weigh the planets in a scale;
Bend, great God, before thy shrine,
The bournless macrocosm's thine.
| A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes | |
|