The miscellaneous essays and occasional writings of Francis Hopkinson, Esq

Vanish mirth, and vanish joy,
Airy pleasures quickly cloy;
Hence all ye bacchanalian rout,
And wine, and jest, and noisy shout;
And quips, and cranks, and gay grimace,
And wit, that wears a double face.
Hence ev'ry kind of jollity,
For you have no delights for me.
But welcome, welcome, melancholy,
Thou goddess sage, demure, and holy!
Exalt thy ever musing head,
And quit, oh! quit, thy sleepless bed!
With languid looks, and anxious eyes,
Divinest melancholy rise!

And thou, oh Smith! my more than friend,
To whom these artless lines I send:
Once more thy wonted candour bring,
And hear the muse thou taught'st to sing:
The muse that strives to win thy ear,
By themes thy soul delights to hear:
And loves, like thee, in sober mood,
To meditate on just and good:

Whilst melancholy sooths to rest
Each tumult rising in the breast.

Exalted themes! divinest maid!
Sweet melancholy, raise thy head!
With languid look, oh! quickly come,
And lead me to thy hermit home:
There let thy sorrow soothing reign,
Detain me long in pensive strain;
Exalt my thoughts, possess my soul,
Enlarge my views, and seize me whole.
Oh! give me thy delights to know,
The heart that bleeds for human woe:
The virtuous throb, the grief-swoln eye,
The falling tear, and deep-drawn sigh.

Exalted themes! divinest maid!
Sweet melancholy, raise thy head!
With languid look, oh! quickly come:
And lead me to thy hermit home.
Or be thou with me whilst I rove
Thro' yonder dark untrodden grove,
Where the moon is rarely seen
Glimm'ring thro' the dusky green;
Whilst an awful silence reigns
O'er valleys, hills, and distant plains:
Nothing but the night-bird's cry,
Echoing thro' the vaulted sky;
Nothing but the ceaseless rill
Murm'ring o'er its pebbles still:
Or the distant falling flood

Shakes the silence of the wood.
There I'll wander till there's found,
Stretch'd upon the leafy ground,
An oak, which many a summer's day
Hath crumbled in a slow decay;
There down upon its mossy bed
In listless length I'll lean my head;
While the small worm that gnaws its heart,
Shall music to my soul impart.

Or let me in some crazy boat,
Along the wat'ry surface float;
Leaning pensive o'er its side,
Let me view the rippling tide;
Whilst Cynthia's cold declining rays,
Who now but half her orb displays,
On the clear bosom of the deep,
In mild composure seems to sleep.

But hark! what voice so loud and shrill
From yonder dark romantic hill,
Strikes sudden on my startled ear,
And warbles forth in ditties clear?
'Tis her's —that bird well known to fame,
The fond repeater of her name—
Proceed, sweet bird, I love thy strain,
Encreasing still the solemn scene:
I'll sit attentive to thy note,
Till Cynthia's latest rays go out.

Then on the margin of a stream,
I'll lay me silent, think, and dream;
Where no pale glimpse of borrow'd light
Breaks through the drowsy noon of night:
And stars in vain with feeble ray,
Attempt to give a doubtful day:
While clouds far off low low'ring rise,
Possessing first the nether skies;
Thence lazy lab'ring to the poll,
Up the steep arch their vengeance roll,
Black as the purpose of a guilty soul.

Here retir'd from noise and folly,
Sober visag'd Melancholy!
On a rustling rushy bed,
With thee I'll lean the languid head;
And in the dimpled tide descry
The gath'ring horrors of the sky;
See the stars dancing as they go,
And view the other heav'n below:
Whilst from behind the bull-rush near,
The frog's hoarse-cadenc'd voice I hear;
Whose oft repeated hollow sound,
A pleasing sadness spreads around.
But hark! rude rustling thro' the trees,
A sudden unexpected breeze,
Swift bursting from the darksome wood,
Shakes the smooth surface of the flood;
Then slow I raise my downcast eye,
To gaze the drear presageful sky,

Where clouds high heap'd, and swimming low,
Hang heavy on night's awful brow.
Around a gloomy silence reigns,
Hush'd is each throat thro' hills and plains:
The stars but now that shone so bright,
Slide swift and vanish out of sight.
The rapid storm comes on apace,
The heav'ns wear one distracted face;
And ruder blasts unbounded rove
In fullen murmurs thro' the grove—
Down yonder dreadful depth of sky,
In ragged sheets the light'nings fly;
Peals following peals hiss through the air,
And burst in awful ruin near:
Descending quick the heavy floods
Dance on the stream, and rattle in the woods.

Whilst thus the elements engage,
And with encreasing fury rage;
Oh! let me find some stony shed,
Where I may safely lodge my head,
T' enjoy the horrors of the storm,
And to its God due rites perform.
Beneath yon rock, whose mossy side
With fearful bend o'erhangs the tide,
Grotesque and wild, a cave I spy,
And to its shelter quickly fly.
But as I climb the grass-grown steep,
Whose darksome height juts o'er the deep;
Sent from aloft, with startled ear,
A sudden voice of woe I hear—

“Rage on thou tempest of the sky,
“Your fiercest vengeance I defy:
“A ruder storm whirls in my breast,
“And death alone can give me rest;
“My sorrows in this stream shall sleep,
“And I”—then plunges in the deep.
Nature a-while yet fond of life
Maintains with death an equal strife;
The lover strives to gain the shore,
But sinks, alas! to rise no more.

Save me, ye powers, from scenes so sad,
Scenes not of melancholy bred;
But sprung from furious wild despair,
In Stygian cell begot of care.

But might I hear true love complain,
In a more mild and temp'rate strain;
Then let my frequent feet be seen
On yonder steep romantic green;—
Along whose yellow gravelly side,
Schuylkill sweeps his lucid tide:
Where waters fall with constant roar,
Re-bellowing down the rocky shore.
Where nightly at the turf-clad grave,
In concert with the bird of eve;
Beneath the glimpses of the moon,
The hermit mourns Amelia gone:

Till reason lifts his eye to heav'n,
And mild submitting thoughts are given.

Thus, melancholy, shalt thou please,
If thou wilt find me scenes like these:
Thus may'st thou e'er my mind employ,
And banish ev'ry lighter joy.

But when the summer scenes are lost,
Welcome winter! welcome frost!
Then I'll spend the long, long night,
By the lamp's pale and glimm'ring light:
Creeping nigher still and nigher
To the half extinguish'd fire,
Where midst the glowing coals I view
Lambent flames of livid blue:
Or listen to the crackling tread
Of heavy foot on snowy bed:
While howling blasts around me rage,
And wind, and snow, and hail, engage;
And through a crevice in the wall,
Boreas whistles shrill and small;
And the doors, by time grown weak,
On their iron hinges creak:
There I'll muse on stories old,
By a toothless matron told;
Of a tall, wan, and slender sp'rit,
Stalking in the dead of night;
Whose long trailing winding sheet
Flows luxuriant round his feet:
Gaping wounds all o'er him bleed,
To disclose some horrid deed:

With beck'ning hands he seems to say,
“Haste to my grave, come, come away!”

Thus should my fancy ever find
Some dreary scene to fill my mind;
And thus I'd sit with fixed eye,
To see the crumbling embers die,
Fearing to turn to either side,
Lest there the horned spectres glide:
Till morn, slow peeping from on high,
Should twinkle with unwelcome eye;
Then would I shun th' intruding ray,
And hide me from the garish day;
Darkling to bed would silent creep,
Hush'd by the howling winds to sleep.

He was the author's preceptor.

A night-bird, vulgarly called the Whipper-will.

Alluding to the affecting story of Theodore and Amelia, in the first number of the Hermit.—

Vide Amer. Mag. for October, 1757.

University of Virginia Library

IL PENSEROSO.