The Works of William Mason :: :: University of Virginia Library

Friend of my youth, who, when the willing Muse
Stream'd o'er my breast her warm poetic rays,
Saw'st the fresh seeds their vital powers diffuse,
And fed'st them with the fost'ring dew of praise!
Whate'er the produce of the unthrifty soil,
The leaves, the flowers, the fruits, to thee belong:
The labourer earns the wages of his toil;
Who form'd the Poet, well may claim the song.
Yes, 'tis my pride to own, that taught by thee
My conscious soul superior flights essay'd;
Learnt from thy lore the Poet's dignity,
And spurn'd the hirelings of the rhyming trade.
Say, scenes of Science, say, thou haunted stream!
[For oft my Muse-led steps did'st thou behold]
How on thy banks I rifled every theme,
That Fancy fabled in her age of gold.
How oft' I cried, “Oh come, thou tragic Queen!
“March from thy Greece with firm majestic tread!

105

“Such as when Athens saw thee fill her scene,
“When Sophocles thy choral Graces led:
“Saw thy proud pall its purple length devolve;
“Saw thee uplift the glitt'ring dagger high;
“Ponder with fixed brow thy deep resolve,
“Prepared to strike, to triumph, and to die.
“Bring then to Britain's plain that choral throng;
“Display thy buskin'd pomp, thy golden lyre;
“Give her historic forms the soul of song,
“And mingle Attic art with Shakspeare's fire.”
“Ah, what, fond boy, dost thou presume to claim?”
The Muse replied: “Mistaken suppliant, know,
“To light in Shakspeare's breast the dazzling flame
“Exhausted all Parnassus could bestow.
“True; Art remains; and, if from his bright page
“Thy mimic power one vivid beam can seize,
“Proceed; and in that best of tasks engage,
“Which tends at once to profit, and to please.”
She spake; and Harewood's towers spontaneous rose
Soft virgin warblings echo'd through the grove;
And fair Elfrida pour'd forth all her woes,
The hapless pattern of connubial love.
More awful scenes old Mona next display'd;
Her caverns gloom'd, her forests wav'd on high,
While flamed within their consecrated shade
The genius stern of British liberty.
And see, my Hurd! to thee those scenes consign'd;
Oh! take and stamp them with thy honour'd name.

106

Around the page be friendship's chaplet twin'd;
And, if they find the road to honest Fame,
Perchance the candour of some nobler age
May praise the Bard, who bade gay Folly bear
Her cheap applauses to the busy stage,
And leave him pensive Virtue's silent tear:
Chose too to consecrate his fav'rite strain
To him, who, grac'd by ev'ry liberal art
That best might shine among the learned train,
Yet more excell'd in morals and in heart:
Whose equal mind could see vain fortune shower
Her flimsy favours on the fawning crew,
While, in low Thurcaston's sequester'd bower,
She fix'd him distant from Promotion's view;
Yet, shelter'd there by calm Contentment's wing,
Pleased he could smile, and, with sage Hooker's eye,
“See from his mother earth God's blessings spring,
“And eat his bread in peace and privacy.”

Written in 1759.

This Elegy was prefixed to the former editions of Caractacus, as dedicatory of that poem.

Nil equidem feci (tu scis hoc ipse) theatris:
Musa nec in plausus ambitiosa mea est.

Ovid. Trist. Lib. V. El. vii. 23.

Verbatim from a letter of Hooker's to Archbishop Whitgift. “But, my Lord, I shall never be able to finish what I have begun,” [viz. his immortal Treatise on Ecclesiastical Polity] “unless I be removed into some quiet country parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread in peace and privacy.” See his Life in the Biographia Britannica.