The Poetical Works of Henry Brooke :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Poetical Works of Henry Brooke

... In Four Volumes Octavo. Revised and corrected by the Original Manuscript With a Portrait of the Author, and His Life By Miss Brooke. The Third Edition

Brooke, Henry (1703?-1783)

VOL. I.

JACK THE GIANT QUELLER, AN OPERA.

II.

III.

II.

PROLOGUE TO THE EARL OF ESSEX,

PROLOGUE TO THE EARL OF WESTMORLAND,

ANOTHER PROLOGUE TO THE EARL OF WESTMORLAND.

EPILOGUE TO THE PLAY OF WHAT WE MUST ALL COME TO.

TO THE MEMORY OF Lieutenant Colonel HENRY CLEMENTS.

A CHARACTER.

TO Mr. B---

THE PATRIOTISM OF IRELAND,

II.

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

II.

III.

IV.

THE SPARROW and the DOVE.

THE FEMALE SEDUCERS.

LOVE AND VANITY.

CONRADE:

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THE FEMALE SEDUCERS.

'Tis said of widow, maid, and wife,
That Honour is a woman's life:
Unhappy sex! who only claim
A being, in the breath of Fame,
Which tainted, not the quickening gales
That sweep Sabæa's spicy vales,
Nor all the healing sweets restore,
That breathe along Arabia's shore.

The traveller, if he chance to stray,
May turn uncensured to his way;
Polluted streams again are pure,
And deepest wounds admit a cure:
But woman no redemption knows;
The wounds of Honour never close!

Tho' distant every hand to guide,
Nor skill'd on life's tempestuous tide,
If once her feeble bark recede,
Or deviate from the course decreed,
In vain she seeks the friendless shore—
Her swifter folly flies before;
The circling ports against her close,
And shut the wanderer from repose;
'Till, by conflicting waves opprest,
Her foundering pinnace sinks to rest.

“Are there no offerings to atone,
“For but a single error?”—None.
Tho' woman is avow'd, of old,
No daughter of celestial mould,
Her tempering not without allay,
And form'd but of the finer clay,
We challenge from the mortal dame
The strength angelic natures claim;
Nay more; for sacred stories tell,
That even Immortal Angels fell.

“Whatever fills the teeming sphere
“Of humid earth, and ambient air,

“With varying elements endued,
“Was form'd to fall, and rise renew'd.

“The stars no fix'd duration know;
“Wide oceans ebb, again to flow;
“The moon repletes her waining face,
“All-beauteous, from her late disgrace;
“And suns, that mourn approaching night,
“Refulgent rise with new-born light.

“In vain may Death and Time subdue,
“While Nature mints her race anew,
“And holds some vital spark apart,
“Like Virtue, hid in every heart:
“'Tis hence, reviving warmth is seen
“To cloath a naked world in green;
“No longer barr'd by winter's cold,
“Again the gates of life unfold;
“Again each insect tries his wing,
“And lifts fresh pinions on the spring;
“Again, from every latent root,
“The bladed stem and tendril shoot,
“Exhaling incense to the skies,
“Again to perish, and to rise.

“And must weak woman then disown
“The change, to which a world is prone?
“In one meridian brightness shine,
“And ne'er like evening suns decline?
“Resolved and firm alone?—Is this
“What we demand of woman?”—Yes.

“But should the spark of vestal fire,
“In some unguarded hour expire;
“Or should the nightly thief invade
“Hesperia's chaste and sacred shade,
“Of all the blooming spoil possest,
“The dragon Honour charm'd to rest;
“Shall Virtue's flame no more return?
“No more with virgin splendor burn?
“No more the ravaged garden blow
“With spring's succeeding blossom?”—No:
Pity may mourn, but not restore;
And woman falls, to rise no more!

WITHIN this sublunary sphere,
A country lies—no matter where;
The clime may readily be found,
By all who tread poetic ground.

A stream, call'd Life, across it glides,
And equally the land divides:
And here, of Vice the province lies;
And there, the hills of Virtue rise!

Upon a mountain's airy stand,
Whose summit look'd to either land,
An Ancient Pair their dwelling chose,
As well for prospect, as repose;
For mutual faith they long were famed,
And Temperance, and Religion, named.

A numerous progeny divine,
Confest the honours of their line:
But in a little Daughter fair,
Was center'd more than half their care;
For Heaven, to gratulate her birth,
Gave signs of future joy to earth:
White was the robe this infant wore,
And Chastity the name she bore.

As now the Maid in stature grew,
A flower just opening to the view!
Oft thro' her native lawns she stray'd,
And wrestling with the lambkins play'd:

Her looks diffusive sweets bequeath'd,
The breeze grew purer as she breath'd;
The morn her radiant blush assumed,
The spring with earlier fragrance bloom'd;
And Nature yearly took delight,
Like her, to dress the world in white.

But when her rising form was seen
To reach the crisis of fifteen,
Her parents up the mountain's head,
With anxious step their darling led;
By turns they snatch'd her to their breast,
And thus the fears of age exprest.

“O joyful cause of many a care!
“O daughter, too divinely fair!
“Yon world, on this important day,
“Demands thee to a dangerous way;
“A painful journey all must go,
“Whose doubtful period none can know;
“Whose due direction who can find,
“Where Reason's mute, and Sense is blind?
“Ah, what unequal leaders these,
“Thro' such a wide perplexing maze!
“Then mark the warnings of the wise,
“And learn what love and years advise.

“Far to the right thy prospect bend,
“Where yonder towering hills ascend:
“Lo, there the arduous path's in view,
“Which Virtue, and her sons pursue;
“With toil o'er lessening earth they rise,
“And gain, and gain, upon the skies!
“Narrow's the way her children tread;
“No walk for pleasure smoothly spread,
“But rough, and difficult, and steep,
“Painful to climb, and hard to keep.

“Fruits immature those lands dispense,
“A food indelicate to sense,
“Of taste unpleasant; yet from those
“Pure health with chearful vigour flows,
“And strength unfeeling of decay,
“Throughout the long laborious way.

“Hence, as they scale that Heavenly road,
“Each limb is lightened of its load;
“From earth refining still they go,
“And leave the mortal weight below:
“Then spreads the strait, the doubtful clears,
“And smooth the rugged path appears;
“For custom turns fatigue to ease,
“And, taught by Virtue, pain can please.

“At length, the toilsome journey o'er,
“And near the bright celestial shore,
“A gulph, black, fearful, and profound,
“Appears, of either world the bound,
“Thro' darkness leading up to light:
“Sense backwards shrinks, and shuns the sight;
“For there the transitory train,
“Of time, and form, and care, and pain,
“And matter's gross incumbering mass,
“Man's late associates, cannot pass,
“But sinking, quit the immortal charge,
“And leave the wondering soul at large;
“Lightly she wings her obvious way,
“And mingles with eternal day.

“Thither, O thither, wing thy speed,
“Tho' Pleasure charm, or Pain impede!
“To such the All-bounteous Power has given,
“For present earth, a future Heaven;
“For trivial loss, unmeasured gain;
“And endless bliss, for transient pain.

“Then fear, ah! fear to turn thy sight,
“Where yonder flowery fields invite;
“Wide on the left the path-way bends,
“And with pernicious ease descends:

“There sweet to sense, and fair to show,
“New-planted Edens seem to blow,
“Trees that delicious poison bear,
“For death is vegetable there.

“Hence is the frame of health unbraced,
“Each sinew slackening at the taste;
“The soul to passion yields her throne,
“And sees with organs not her own;
“While, like the slumberer in the night,
“Pleased with the shadowy dream of light,
“Before her alienated eyes,
“The scenes of fairy land arise;
“The puppet world's amusing show,
“Dipt in the gayly colour'd bow,
“Scepters, and wreaths, and glittering things,
“The toys of infants, and of kings,
“That tempt, along the baneful plain,
“The idly wise, and lightly vain;
“Till verging on the gulphy shore,
“Sudden they sink, and rise no more.

“But list to what thy fates declare;
“Tho' thou art Woman, frail as fair,
“If once thy sliding foot should stray,
“Once quit yon Heaven-appointed way,

“For thee, lost Maid, for thee alone,
“Nor prayers shall plead, nor tears atone:
“Reproach, scorn, infamy, and hate,
“On thy returning steps shall wait;
“Thy form be loathed by every eye,
“And every foot thy presence fly.”

Thus arm'd with words of potent sound,
Like guardian-angels placed around,
A charm by Truth divinely cast,
Forward, our young Adventurer past:
Forth from her sacred eye-lids sent,
Like morn, fore-running radiance went;
While Honour, hand-maid late assigned,
Upheld her lucid train behind.

Awe-struck the much admiring-crowd
Before the Virgin Vision bow'd,
Gazed with an ever new delight,
And caught fresh virtue at the sight:
For not of earth's unequal frame
They deem the Heaven-compounded dame;
If matter, sure the most refined,
High wrought, and temper'd into mind!
Some darling daughter of the day,
And bodied by her native ray!

Where e'er she passes, thousands bend;
And thousands, where she moves, attend;
Her ways observant eyes confess,
Her steps pursuing praises bless;
While to the elevated Maid
Oblations, as to Heaven, are paid.

'Twas on an ever blithsome day,
The jovial birth of rosy May,
When genial warmth, no more supprest,
New melts the frost in every breast,
The cheek with secret flushing dyes,
And looks kind things from chastest eyes;
The sun with healthier visage glows,
Aside his clouded 'kerchief throws,
And dances up the etherial plain,
Where late he used to climb with pain;
While Nature, as from bonds set free,
Springs out, and gives a loose to glee.

And now, for momentary rest,
The Nymph her travell'd step represt;
Just turn'd to view the stage attain'd,
And gloried in the height she had gain'd.

Out-stretch'd before her wide survey,
The realms of sweet perdition lay,
And pity touch'd her soul with woe,
To see a world so lost below;
When straight the breeze began to breathe
Airs gently wafted from beneath,
That bore commission'd witchcraft thence,
And reach'd her sympathy of sense;
No sounds of discord, that disclose
A people sunk and lost in woes,
But as of present good possest,
The very triumph of the blest.
The Maid in rapt attention hung,
While thus approaching Sirens sung.

“Hither, Fairest, hither haste!
“Brightest Beauty, come and taste
“What the powers of bliss unfold,
“Joys too mighty to be told!
“Taste what extasies they give—
“Dying raptures taste and live.

“In thy lap, disdaining measure,
“Nature empties all her treasure;
“Soft desires that sweetly languish,
“Fierce delights that rise to anguish!

“Fairest, dost thou yet delay?
“Brightest Beauty, come away!

“List not, when the froward chide,
“Sons of pedantry and pride;
“Snarlers, to whose feeble sense
“April's sunshine is offence;
“Age and envy will advise,
“Even against the joy they prize.

“Come, in Pleasure's balmy bowl,
“Slake the thirstings of thy soul,
“Till thy raptured powers are fainting,
“With enjoyment past the painting:
“Fairest, dost thou yet delay?
“Brightest Beauty, come away!”

So sung the Sirens, as of yore,
Upon the false Ausonian shore;
And O! for that preventing chain,
That bound Ulysses on the main,
That so our Fair One might withstand
The covert ruin now at hand.

The song her charm'd attention drew,
When now the Tempters stood in view—

Curiosity, with prying eyes,
And hands of busy bold emprise;
Like Hermes, feather'd were her feet,
And, like fore-running Fancy, fleet:
By search untaught, by toil untired,
To novelty she still aspired;
Tasteless of every good possest,
And but in expectation blest.

With her, associate, Pleasure came,
Gay Pleasure, frolic-loving dame;
Her mien all swimming in delight,
Her beauties half revealed to sight;
Loose flowed her garments from the ground,
And caught the kissing winds around.
As erst Medusa's looks were known
To turn beholders into stone,
A dire reversion here they felt,
And in the eye of Pleasure melt.
Her glance with sweet persuasion charm'd,
Unnerv'd the strong, the steel'd disarm'd;
No safety even the flying find,
Who, venturous, look but once behind.

Thus was the much-admiring Maid,
While distant, more than half-betray'd.

With smiles, and adulation bland,
They join'd her side, and seiz'd her hand:
Their touch envenom'd sweets instill'd,
Her frame with new pulsations thrill'd;
While half consenting, half denying,
Reluctant now, and now complying,
Amidst a war of hopes and fears,
Of trembling wishes, smiling tears,
Still down, and down, the winning Pair
Compell'd the struggling yielding Fair.

As when some stately vessel, bound
To blest Arabia's distant ground,
Borne from her courses, haply lights
Where Barca's flowery clime invites,
Conceal'd around whose treacherous land,
Lurk the dire rock, and dangerous sand;
The pilot warns, with sail and oar
To shun the much suspected shore—
In vain; the tide, too subtly strong,
Still bears the wrestling bark along;
Till foundering, she resigns to fate,
And sinks o'erwhelm'd with all her freight.

So, baffling every bar to sin,
And Heaven's own Pilot placed within,

Along the devious smooth descent,
With powers increasing as they went,
The Dames, accustom'd to subdue,
As with a rapid current drew;
And o'er the fatal bounds convey'd
The lost the long reluctant Maid.

Here stop, ye Fair Ones, and beware,
Nor send your fond affections there:
Yet, yet, your Darling, now deplored,
May turn, to you, and Heaven, restored;
Till then, with weeping Honour wait,
The servant of her better fate,
With Honour left upon the shore,
Her friend and handmaid now no more;
Nor, with the guilty world, upbraid
The fortunes of a wretch betray'd,
But o'er her failing cast a veil,
Remembring you yourselves are frail.

And now, from all-enquiring light,
Fast fled the conscious shades of night;
The Damsel, from a short repose,
Confounded at her plight, arose.

As when, with slumberous weight opprest,
Some wealthy miser sinks to rest,
Where felons eye the glittering prey,
And steal his hoard of joys away;
He, borne where golden Indus streams,
Of pearl and quarry'd diamond dreams;
Like Midas, turns the glebe to oar,
And stands all wrapt amidst his store;
But wakens, naked, and despoil'd
Of that, for which his years had toil'd.
So fared the Nymph—her treasure flown,
And turn'd, like Niobe, to stone;
Within, without, obscure and void,
She felt all ravaged, all destroy'd:
And, “O thou curs'd, insidious coast!
“Are these the blessings thou can'st boast?
“These, Virtue! these the joys they find,
“Who leave thy heaven-topt hills behind?
“Shade me ye pines, ye caverns hide,
“Ye mountains cover me!” she cried.

Her trumpet Slander raised on high,
And told the tidings to the sky;
Contempt discharged a living dart,
A side-long viper to her heart;

Reproach breathed poisons o'er her face,
And soil'd and blasted every grace:
Officious Shame, her handmaid new,
Still turn'd the mirror to her view,
While those, in crimes the deepest dyed,
Approach'd to whiten at her side,
And every lewd insulting dame
Upon her folly rose to fame.

What should she do?—attempt once more
To gain the late-deserted shore?
So trusting, back the Mourner flew;
As fast the train of fiends pursue.

Again the farther shore's attain'd,
Again the land of Virtue gain'd;
But echo gathers in the wind,
And shows her instant foes behind.
Amazed, with headlong speed she tends,
Where late she left an host of friends;
Alas! those shrinking friends decline,
Nor longer own that form divine:
With fear they mark the following cry,
And from the lonely Trembler fly;
Or backward drive her on the coast,
Where peace was wreck'd, and honour lost.

From earth thus hoping aid in vain,
To Heaven not daring to complain,
No truce by hostile clamour given,
And from the face of friendship driven;
The Nymph sunk prostrate on the ground,
With all her weight of woes around.

Enthroned within a circling sky,
Upon a mount, o'er mountains high,
All radiant sate, as in a shrine,
Virtue, First Effluence Divine,
Far, far above the scenes of woe,
That shut this cloud-wrapt world below;
Superior Goddess, essence bright,
Beauty of Uncreated Light,
Whom should mortality survey,
As doom'd upon a certain day,
The breath of frailty must expire;
The world dissolve in living fire;
The gems of Heaven, and solar flame,
Be quench'd by her eternal beam;
And Nature, quickening in her eye,
To rise a new-born phœnix, die.

Hence, unreveal'd to mortal view,
A veil around her form she threw,

Which three sad sisters of the shade
Pain, Care, and Melancholy made.

Thro' this her all-enquiring eye,
Attentive from her station high,
Beheld, abandon'd to despair,
The ruins of her Favourite Fair;
And with a voice, whose awful sound
Appall'd the guilty world around,
Bid the tumultuous winds be still,
To numbers bow'd each listening hill,
Uncurl'd the surging of the main,
And smooth'd the thorny bed of pain;
The golden harp of Heaven she strung,
And thus the tuneful Goddess sung.

“Lovely Penitent, arise!
“Come, and claim thy kindred skies;
“Come, thy Sister Angels say,
“Thou hast wept thy stains away.

“Let experience now decide,
“'Twixt the good, and evil tried:
“In the smooth, enchanted ground,
“Say, unfold the treasures found?—

“Structures raised by morning dreams,
“Sands that trip the flitting streams,
“Down that anchors on the air,
“Clouds that paint their changes there!
“Seas that smoothly dimpling lie,
“While the storm impends on high,
“Showing, in an obvious glass,
“Joys that in possession pass;
“Transient, fickle, light, and gay,
“Flattering, only to betray!
“What, alas, can Life contain?
“Life, like all it's circles, vain!

“Will the stork, intending rest,
“On the billow build her nest?
“Will the bee demand his store
“From the bleak and bladeless shore?
“Man alone, intent to stray,
“Ever turns from Wisdom's way;
“Lays up wealth in foreign land,
“Sows the sea, and plows the sand.

“Soon this elemental mass,
“Soon the incumbering world shall pass,
“Form be wrapt in wasting fire,
“Time be spent, and life expire.

“Then, ye boasted works of men,
“Where is your asylum then?
“Sons of pleasure, sons of care,
“Tell me mortals, tell me where?
“Gone, like traces on the deep,
“Like a scepter grasp'd in sleep,
“Dews exhaled from morning glades,
“Melting snows, and gliding shades!

“Pass the world, and what's behind?—
“Virtue's gold, by fire refined;
“From an universe depraved,
“From the wreck of nature saved:
“Like the life-supporting grain,
“Fruit of patience, and of pain,
“On the swain's autumnal day,
“Winnowed from the chaff away.

“Little Trembler, fear no more!
“Thou hast plenteous crops in store,
“Seed by genial sorrows sown,
“More than all thy scorners own.

“What tho' hostile earth despise,
“Heaven beholds with gentler eyes;

“Heaven thy friendless steps shall guide,
“Chear thy hours, and guard thy side.
“When the fatal trump shall sound,
“When the immortals pour around,
“Heaven shall thy return attest,
“Hail'd by myriads of the blest.

“Little Native of the skies,
“Lovely Penitent, arise!
“Calm thy bosom, clear thy brow,
“Virtue is thy sister now.

“More delightful are my woes,
“Than the rapture pleasure knows;
“Richer far the weeds I bring,
“Than the robes that grace a king.

“On my wars of shortest date,
“Crowns of endless triumph wait;
“On my cares, a period blest;
“On my toils, Eternal Rest.

“Come, with Virtue at thy side,
“Come, be every bar defied,
“Till we gain our Native Shore:
“Sister, come, and turn no more!”