The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale :: :: University of Virginia Library

From Calpe's rock; from famed Numidia's strand,
To the bleak north of Caledonia's land,
A feeling mind, though oft depressed with pains,
Hath seized bright moments for poetic strains;
Shut out a world, distressing, and distressed,
In it's own orb, it's own elysium, blessed.

And did not Bards peculiar transports know,
How “could” they “suffer being here below!”
To them a strange mysterious frame is given,
Too fine for earth, not pure enough for heaven;
Placed betwixt angels, in the middle way,
And common masses of enlivened clay.

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The true, the ardent votaries of the muse,
To mind, from matter, sublimate their views;
Attached to freedom's, as to virtue's cause,
Of vulgar mortals spurn the vulgar laws;
Improvident for age, in rapturous youth,
In love with Pope's, and Plato's beauteous truth.
When she presents her charms. cold interest flies,
The love of artificial splendour dies;
The bold adventurer, in her service, braves,
The shoals of malice, and misfortune's waves:
Exulting fancy spreads her purple sail;
Ambition lends her strong, and steady gale:
He steers, intrepidly, to fair renown,
Through the pert sneer, the supercilious frown;
And as he shoots beyond Discretion's plan,
All that promotes the Poet, hurts the Man.
Him Plutus views with unauspicious eye,
Whose smiles the elements, and man defy;
All capital defects his power supplies,
Makes villains, virtuous, and the stupid, wise;
Transmutes a sentiment, inverts a name;
Hastings, with him, and Justice, are the same.

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But where is worth, without his magick store?
The aggregate of crimes, is, to be poor.

Yet, thou, my soul, till some extorted verse
Withheld, through life, at length, adorns my herse;
While dulness growls, and lighter fools deride,
Keep thy humility, and keep thy pride;—
Humility, attentive still to show
What humble ignorance desires to know;
That sooner would abjure it's own repose,
Than give addition to the poor man's woes;
Humility, whose triumph 'tis to find
That years, and letters, meliorate my mind.

Keep too that pride, which, conscious that the muse
Opens, to poets, rich, and varied views;
Views more extensive than earth, air, or sky,
Impervious to the common mental eye;—
That pride, which, conscious of a heart, and mind,
Formed to describe, and to befriend mankind,
Moves in it's natural, honourable sphere,
Unchecked by power, as unappalled by fear;
Sees, unconcerned, our insects of a day
Presume to frolick in the muse's ray;

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On perseverance founds it's glorious fate,
Nor meanly envies the factitious great;
With strength, and lustre, forms the moral line,
By time's conspiring power, secure to shine;
Feels the pure bliss; enjoys the orient glow,
Which gold, and scarves, and garters ne'er bestow.
Oh! keep that pride, which never should despair,
While nature's all-sufficient gifts we share;
While God is guardian of the human kind;
Supreme, omnipotent, paternal mind;
But chiefly souls, fraught with ethereal flame,
Born for celebrity, for deathless fame,
Whom intellectual force, whom genius fills;
Should speed their course, regardless of their ills;
Should never, in a dark, ignoble, hour,
When fancy droops, a loaded, sickly flower,
Their titles to preeminence forego;
For glory's warmth annihilates all woe;
Gives persecuted bards a second birth,
Their criticks mouldering in our mother earth;
Their works long sunk, by Lethe's leaden sway,
As dead, as buried, as unknown as they.

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Yes, keep that pride, which, from low envy free,
True genius in a Jerningham can see;
Admires the poet, and esteems the friend;
Whose lays, whose manners, still to virtue tend;
Who, in his brilliant picture of the town,
Can view neglected conflicts for renown;
On the back ground can view a poet thrown,
While dunces, dull, and large as life, are shown;
And oft, expelling fashion from his breast,
With no unpleasing melancholy blessed,
Revolves the world's capricious, motley tale;
And sighs, that art o'er nature should prevail;
That they to whom the trust of power is given,
Should never act like delegates of heaven;
On wings of christian love should never fly,
With his acute and sympathetick eye;
Genius to soothe; to call it's vigour forth;
Nor croak it's faults, while he could sing it's worth.

And still the Poet's glorious pride retain:
Heedless of fortune, pour the tuneful strain;
Along the stream of time adventurous sail;
Though power affects contempt, and criticks rail.
The distant laurel view with fixed regard;

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Of genius oft the late, but sure reward:
Think, that, if envy urges all her hate,
And strives to ruin our exalted fate;—
Think that her malice proves us truly great.
From universal laws must thou be free?
That power which hates all freedom, must hate thee.
Factitious great-ones ever will detest,
Their betters, with innate distinctions blessed;
But, haply, while they tremble on time's verge,
Thy name, at least to glory shall emerge;
Think that a flood of light shall crown thy day,
When their poor tapers long have died away;
Think, that they oft are short-lived, puny things,
Mere sporting butterflies, with painted wings.
Should every hostile circumstance conspire,
Through life, to damp thy fancy's genial fire;
Should fate repel thee to Northumbrian snows,
To where a sprig of laurel never grows,
Should no protector, feeling for thy muse,
Give her a seat adapted to her views;
Where Flora wantons, and where Zephyrs breathe;
And, hence, obtain, himself, a lasting wreath;
Bring great examples to thy moral thought;
Think in what plight immortal Dryden wrote;

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Assert the path which former poets trod;
Thy mind, thy climate; and thy patron, GOD!

Though taste poetick from our isle is fled;
And, hence, poetick force is almost dead;
No Oxford, now, nor St. John, to inspire,
A youthful Pope; to set his soul on fire;
Imagine that thou hearest future praise;
Approximate thy fame in after days:
Hence, work thy verses warmly, till they shine:
And if they never grow, like Pope's, divine,
Still be his independent spirit thine.
Thus shall my efforts for a hero's prize,
Surpass the poet's, whom I idolize;
Wealth, friends, and glory, fanned his generous flame;
But mine, oppressive ills conspire to tame:
The force, opposing Pope, was but a snake,
Of common fabrick, issuing from a brake;
Mine rears a hundred heads, from Lerna's lake;
And if poetick strength subdues the throng,
A soul Herculean must direct my song.

Tossed on life's ocean, where the adventurer braves,
Not fewer dangers than on Neptune's waves;

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Tempests, and rocks escaped, I, grateful court,
The guardian angels of a sacred port;
Where mild retirement beckons to her bowers;
And promises her soft, yet active hours;
Parnassian laurels, and Parnassian flowers.

Beneath the classick Wear's romantick shades,
Where Smart, and Dongworth, wooed the tuneful maids;
Where, as the trees impend, the river winds,
The charms of nature fire poetick minds;
Where men the liberal hearts of England share,
And christian candour dignifies the fair;
Genius, again, may give it's powerful spring,
And taste, it's lustre, to the muse's wing.

Sure on this hallowed spot, Religion's seat,
Where she hath, long, enjoyed a calm retreat,
Envy, and malice, unrelenting foes,
Dare not disturb contemplative repose;—
Where christianity her golden laws,
So oft proclaims—where Hinchliffe pleads her cause.

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Well pleased I roam through Durham's green retreats;
Worthy it's banks to be the muses' seats;
Thrice welcome to my numbers is the Wear;
Thou to a poet must be ever dear:
Thy course meandering, thy romantick shades;
Thy pendent rocks, thy venerable glades;
Are fit recesses for the tuneful maids:
There I should boldly hope, that all the nine,
Would breathe their fervour through my embryo line.
In Twickenham's verse, the Thames shall ever flow,
His stately oaks, his weeping willows, grow;
There, still, shall Windsor tower, shall Richmond bloom,
And all their gales breathe Araby's perfume.
Our Akenside, great poet of the North,
There, by his magick, calls luxuriance forth;
Newcastle owes a splendour to his lay,
Compared with which, its riches die away;
He flings his sweet enchantment o'er the Tyne;
Oh! might the charming Wear improve by mine!

While near it's winding stream retired I rove;
While distant temples aggrandize the grove;

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While deeper in the sacred shades I stray,
Enlightened softly by the lunar ray;
(Celestial orb! instructive doom to shine!
Connecting human nature with divine!)
All that I view, though nought my organs hear,
Preaches distinctly to my fancy's ear.
Methinks, as I pursue some sacred theme,
The shade of Butler meets the silver gleam!
I feel a stronger, purer warmth; from Heaven,
To aid my sacred flame, a saint is given.
Sublime analogist! thy thoughts, thy views,
Demand the tribute of a grateful muse!
Why will our unbelievers blindly err?
Immortal life, from thee, we might infer:
Could thy intuitive, expansive soul,
Our earth pervading, and the starry pole,
Steal from the confines of inferiour day,
And sink, and die, a mass of senseless clay!
No; in thy work, by close, ingenuous art,
'Tis proved, that, here, we but exist in part;
There, with their own transcendent beauty, shine,
The fair proportions of the scheme divine.

Still more, to me to consecrate the ground,
Sharp's manes floats, or seems to float around!

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With spirit awed, but not unmanned, I trace
His open aspect; every moral grace;
His well known lineaments his presence prove,
Composed of dignity, and christian love;
My Father's friend! my early guide to truth!
The kind protector of my helpless youth!
With demonstration was thy system fraught,
Thy life evincing what thy precepts taught;
In Durham still survives thy pious fame;
Still Rothbury, with a sigh, repeats thy name!

Oft might I pass, at Cocken, rural hours!
Where nature wantons in Elysian bowers:
Where woods, and hills, and vales, and distant spires,
Arrest the mind, and wake poetick fires;
Where, here, a chain of towering rocks is seen;
There, flocks are browsing on the vivid green;
Where Wear, through Fairy-land, his flexile course
Bends, with more eloquent, emphatick force;
Where some new object, still, the fancy finds;
Where the long terrace by the water winds;
Where artless ramparts, lofty rocks arise;
Where serpentine, the clasping verdure vies

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With their relief; where nature's varied mien
Works, in the soul, the grave, and the serene;
While Finchall Abbey consecrates the scene.

Here, while we feel the musick of the Wear,
Far “more is meant than meets the” bounded “ear;”
Here orators, and poets may be taught;
Here Pope, not Spence, should have reclined, and thought:
Here we may sit, and charm our cares away;
Forget that passion wounds, that men betray;
Image to fancy, in this hallowed space,
A world uninjured by the human race.

Here, too, a model of the female mind
Attracts attention: simple yet refined.
A virtuous fair; a tender, faithful wife,
Pleased with the merit of connubial life,
The splendid triumphs of her sex might claim,
Of woman fond of universal fame.
By nature taught spontaneously to please;
And liberal art has but improved her ease.

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To softness feminine, engaging grace,
All that heart's emanation in the face,
She joins our stronger sense; our fixed resolve;
Steady to act, sagacious to revolve;
Prepared to meet misfortune's rudest storm,
A Cato's firmness, in a woman's form.
A muse, with pure, disinterested lay,
Homage to rare desert is proud to pay:
Oh! might the amaranth preserve my rhyme;
And Ibbetson transmit to latest time!

If while my mind retraces Cocken's charms,
Again their imagery my fancy warms;
If, on this theme, my strains auspicious flow,
Watkins, to you their origin I owe;
Accessible your friendship made my way
To vales, where Horace would have wished to stray;
Where soft retreats deserved his sportive lyre,
And female virtue, all his moral fire.

The pleasures of that sabbath are impressed,
For ever, deeply, in a feeling breast.
The sanctuary's worship o'er, we found,
That still we trod on consecrated ground:

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The Bramin's larger temple fired the soul;
And on the bosom new religion stole;
The trees, the streams, the circumambient air,
Were comments on your text, on every prayer.
Yes, nature warrants all our holy fanes;
She warrants all devotion's ardent strains.

Watkins, through life, pursue your generous road;
Let other Priests devour a patron's Toad;
The certain ways to high preferment take;
Instead of sermons, matchless pointers make;
Or, at elections, murder, with his grace,
All worth of heart, all modesty of face;
While you exert the nobler human powers,
With literature, and science, fill your hours,
Or, spreading knowledge, lead ingenuous youth,
Through classick fields, to salutary truth.

In Durham, too, my friendship finds its parts;
Gains an asylum in my Ambler's heart;
Who sense, and literature, with humour blends,
Humour, which makes no foes, and wounds no friends;
Whom, in our early youth, his poet knew,
When quick, and bright, the rapid moments flew;

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When festive mirth prevailed, and vigorous thought;
When honest Woty sung, and Churchill wrote.

Oh! London! what calamities I see,
“In my mind's eye,” whene'er I think on thee!
Years lost in folly, keen reflections bring;
The death of friends inflicts an equal sting!
Delusive Capital! where talents bloom
In vigorous flower, to-day; but in the tomb,
They set, for ever, with to-morrow's light,
Wrapt in the darkness of eternal night!
Garrick, who thrilled my soul in Drury Lane;
Charmed me, at Hampton, in his Shakespear's fane;
Passed his great bard's irremeable “bourn,”
Whence “no” exempted “travellers return.”
Johnson, and Hawkesworth, Goldsmith, too, I knew;
They all, uncloyed with fame, from life withdrew:
When such illustrious men resign their breath,
Even London lessens, by the work of death.
Delusive London! adverse to my strains!
Specious, thy pleasures; but severe, thy pains!
Oh! may I sing thee, in some happier page,
The great Lyceum of my tranquil age!

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And, Ambler, from our practice may we find
That virtue fits all places to the mind;
Freed from life's noise, and glare, may you, and I,
Live like true men, that like them we may die:
But long before the tributary tear
Of friendship, and of love, bedews thy bier,
May fair Hygeia to thy bosom bring
All her salubrious power, on downy wing!

Nor, in his daring sallies for renown,
Here, will the bard expect the Church's frown;
If he hath, still, been dangerously sincere,
What, now, to him, is earthly hope, or fear!
“He, in a Bishop, too, desert can spy;”
Nor prejudice, nor flattery, taints his eye;
But, in seditious times, he's proud to feel
An honest ardour for our common weal;
While real wolves, pretended saints, assail,
With vulgar virulence, our sacred pale.
Hence, in bright vision, to the muse is shown
A candid glory circling Durham's Throne;

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Hence is she proud for Barrington to claim
A place distinguished in the roll of fame;
Not timorously ashamed, to bid her lays
Flow in just unison with publick praise;
So shall he reach, if but inspired she sings,
A height sublimer than the choice of kings.

You, but a few, I hope, with sullen phlegm,
Who the gay lives of young Divines condemn;
Who, in the church of Christ, exalted high,
Ne'er view his deeds with emulation's eye;
Who from fine sensibility of heart,
Require the Dutchman's coarse, mechanick part;
If through your acts, as mean a tenour runs,
As operas, and perfumes, as hounds, and guns;
My verse with temper evangelick hear;
Turn, for a moment, the fastidious ear,
(While in Religion's cause, my fancy flows)
From slaves who lull you with their sleepy prose.

Would you employ a salutary power?
Survey yourselves;—your GOD;—in silent hour,
Humbly look down on despicable pride;
Nobly look up to our celestial Guide;

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Healer divine of body, and of mind;
The Lord, and yet the Friend, of human kind;
Whose penetration “knew what was in man;”
Hence, he was lenient our defects to scan;
Attentive, hence, our blooming hopes to guard;
To give our merit more than it's reward:
To guilt He deigned, averse from frown severe,
His heavenly comfort, and his heavenly tear.

Perhaps, these verses might advantage bear
To some who “sit” enthroned “in Moses' chair;”
If holy wealth would generously refine,
Nor spurn the doctrine of a poor divine.

But would you (as Ithuriel, with his spear,
Struck the dire toad, at Eve's invaded ear)
Probe, with your searching pen, the mind's disease?
The sickly frame salubrious truths displease,
Howe'er adorned, from fancy's moral store;
For “touch” but guilt, “no minister so sore.”

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But should my liberal strain, no manners mend,
Our worthy prelate it should ne'er offend;
In adamantine panoply, his breast,
From wholesome satire feels perpetual rest;
For, sure, Omniscient Heaven the life approves
Of Him, whom Lansdowne hates, and Virtue loves.

The god of Riches.

The school of Aristotle.

The goddess of Health.

See Paradise Lost. B. IV, L. 810.

Maker of heaven, and earth!—of human kind!
Of Universe the Parent, Source of mind!
Hence, may my age expunge the faults of youth,
Devoted firmly to the cause of truth!
Not to those truths alone, which lead to fame;
To write strong verse; to argue; to declaim;
But to that truth, by which, in life, we show
Thy beauteous moral government, below.
That government, by whose benign controul,
We keep the body subject to the soul;
Beneath whose power our happiness is wrought
By virtuous action, and exalted thought.

May I, by temperance, live exempt from pain,
And health, vivacity, and glory gain;

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And while the muse's pure, ethereal ray,
My night illumines, and adorns my day;
And while the social hour, propitious, blends
A few select, and literary friends,
Or, by the influence of the virtuous fair,
Breathes through my verses a diviner air;
Content shall soothe me, should no titled dame
Pronounce me foremost in the lists of fame;
Should no factitious bliss my life beguile;
The splendid circle, and the courtly smile.

What though my chamber seldom can admit
Deep living science, or illustrious wit;
Yet Plutarch visits me, and with him brings
A wondrous train of Sages, Heroes, Kings;
Whose vast exploits our little deeds efface;
A species different from the modern race.

When wintry horrours chill the drooping year,
Will not the gloom an Aristides cheer?
Feels not my bosom emulation's flame,
With his, my form, my origin, the same?
Alike of peace, and war, the generous guide,
At once, the shame of Athens, and the pride!

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In other countries, in the worst of times,
Men are, in general, banished for their crimes;
His virtues drove him from his parent state,
His justice doomed him to an exile's fate.

Sertorius flies from Sylla's dreadful power,
And deigns to actuate my sequestered hour;
Again bids freedom in Iberia bloom;
And colonizes, there, a second Rome;
But ah! at Rome, his mother yields her breath;
Long mourns the hero for maternal death;
Then with new spirit is his vengeance hurled
Against the ruthless tyrant of the world.

See Cato animate the Grecian page;
The first of mortals, in the vilest age;
Yet (the fine magick such of virtue's charms)
Without a weapon, ruffians he disarms;
Awed by his presence; pierced by virtue's ray,
The aggregated bands dissolve away.

In Afric he renews the patriot's toils;
A hero is the same in different soils;

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Anxious to save his poor, transplanted Rome;
To counteract expiring freedom's doom:
At length, he sheaths his unsuccessful sword;
Determined, soon, to plunge it in it's lord.
Feeling for others, yet with look serene,
Behold him close his last, his awful scene!
See how august a great man's grief appears!
Cato collected; every friend in tears;
Those friends (no private fears his soul annoy)
His latest cares, his latest breath, employ.

Unvexed with envy, let me, still behold
All the delusive magick wrought by gold;
It's baubles rattle, and it's tinsel shine;
While nature's amphitheatre is mine.

Oft, in a vernal morn, with early dawn,
Let my steps brush the dew-drops from the lawn;
See Sol's majestick orb, with orient ray,
Rise, mount, and flame, and dart more vigorous day.
The little, active lark, inhales his fire,
It's note preluding nature's grateful choir;
Melodious warblers carol all around;
An ancient forest multiplies the sound;

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With stronger flush the red carnation blows;
A livelier tint adorns each opening rose;
With glowing colours, fragrant odours vie;
Creation wafts it's incense to the sky!

When the day's ardour, with it's toil is o'er,
The sun descending to the western shore;
When sight uninjured meets his gentle rays,
“Shorne of their” fiercer “beams,” of noon-tide blaze;
When with his calmer fires the mind is blessed,
And sinks, in pleasing sympathy, to rest;
When deeper shades dismiss the parting day;
Let me the majesty of night survey.

See, from the East, the placid, “peerless queen,”
Emerging, bids us read the solemn scene;
Hail, heavenly monitor, refulgent moon!
To me still dearer than the god of noon!
Higher, and higher, now behold her rise,
And silver all the azure of the skies;
The sweet Enthusiast says, or seems to say
(She shoots an argument in every ray)

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Can I, oh! man, can all our system shine,
And move harmonious, but by Power Divine!
In the rapt soul her eloquence we feel;
While silence listens to her fair appeal!

Celestial apparatus! while the muse
Your dread magnificence, your beauty views;
How even shall candour soften my disdain
Of trifles which attract the thoughtless train!
Must I not villas, palaces despise,
That charm, and sicken, vulgar, envious eyes!
Yes, all these childish toys of tortured art,
“Play round the head, but ne'er affect the heart;”
A Sandby's, and a Brown's ingenious plan,
Direct my thoughts to terminate in man;
While Phœbe, sailing in her orient car;
The strong theology of every star;
The foliage of the grove, of every tree,
Of every flower, presents my GOD to me.

“Shorne of his beams,” is an expression of Milton.

Mr. Sandby of Windsor-park; a Gentleman equally well known, as a masterly architect; and as a man of amiable manners, and of a friendly heart.