The Amaranth Or, religious poems; consisting of fables, visions, emblems, etc. Adorned with copper-plates from the best masters [by Walter Harte] |
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 | The Amaranth |  |
THE AMARANTHINE CROWN DESCRIBED, BY MILTON.
A crown inwove with Amarant, and gold;Immortal Amarant! A flow'r which once
In paradise fast by the tree of life
Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence
To Heav'n remov'd, where first it grew, there grows;
And flow'rs aloft, shading the fount of life.
Par. Lost, L. III, v. 352.
CHRIST's PARABLE OF THE SOWER.
INTRODUCTION.
Or Homer's fingers touch'd the speaking string;
Long e'er the supplemental arts had found
Th'embroid'ry of auxiliary sound;
The heav'n-born Muse the paths of nature chose:
Emblems and Fables her whole mind disclose,
Victorious o'er the soul with energy of prose!
All trials, yet its purity secures;
Invert, dis-joint it, change its very name,
The essence of the thoughts remains the same.
Something there is, which endless charms affords;
And stamps the majesty of truth on words.
Unskill'd in numbers taught the stream to flow,
With conscious pride disdain'd the aids of art,
And pour'd a full conviction on the heart:
His cedar, fig-tree, and the bry'r convey
The highest notions in the humblest way .
The suppliant's meekness and the poet's fire:
Till waken'd nature bade the tears to flow,
And David's muse assum'd the voice of woe .
Mix'd ease with strength, and truth with emblem join'd:
Omniscience, vested with full pow'r to chuse,
O'erlooks the strong, nor does the weak refuse :
And builds the noblest, on the plainest plan:
Divine simplicity the work befriends,
And humble causes reach sublimest ends.
Warm not my genius, but my heart inspire!
On my cleans'd lips permit the coals to dwell
Which from thy altar on Isaiah fell !
Cancel the world's applause; and give thy grace
To me, the meanest of the tuneful race.
Teach me the words of JESUS to impart
With energy of pow'r, but free from art.
THY emanations light and heat dispense;
To sucklings speech, to children eloquence!—
Like Habakkuk , I copy, not indite;
Tim'rous like him, I tremble whilst I write!
When inspiration rush'd upon his tongue .
The pow'rs of sacred poesy were giv'n
By Him, that bears the signature of Heav'n .
It is the uniform doctrine of Scripture, “That flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver himself.” Amos C. ii, V. 14.
PARABLE.
The frozen bosom of the torpid ground,
When breezes from the western world repair
To wake the flow'rs and vivify the air,
Th'industrious peasant left his early bed,
And o'er the fields his seeds for harvest spread.
With equal hand, and at a distance due,
(Impartially to ev'ry furrow true)
The life-supporting grain he justly threw .
Of weeds a forest, or a grove of corn .
But, where he dealt the gift on grateful soils,
Harvests of industry o'er-paid his toils.
And some the winds to flinty head-lands blew:
Sudden they mounted, pre-mature of birth,
But pin'd and sicken'd, unsupply'd with earth:
Whilst burning suns their vital juice exhal'd,
And, as the roots decay'd, the foliage fail'd.
Tough churlish clays, and loose unthrifty sands;
The step-dame soil refus'd a nurse's care:
The plants were sickly, juiceless, pale, and bare.
Condemn'd in scanty penury to dwell,
And half-deny'd the matrix of a cell;
While other seeds, less fortunate than they,
Slept—starv'd and naked on the hard high-way,
From frosts defenceless, and to birds a prey.
Here daws with riotous excesses feed,
And choughs, the cormorants of grain, succeed;
Next wily pigeons take their silent stand,
And sparrows last, the gleaners of the land.
Dispens'd upon a rich, but weedy soil:
Fat unctuous juices gorg'd the rank-fed root;
And plethories of sap produc'd no fruit.
Hence, where the life-supplying grain was spread,
The rav'nous dock uprears its miscreant-head;
Insatiate thistles, tyrants of the plains;
And lurid hemlock, ting'd with pois'nous stains.
Exhaust earth's virtue, and perplex the land .
Was sown on pre-dilected land with care:
[A cultur'd spot, accustom'd to receive
All previous aids that industry can give;]
The well-turn'd soil with auburn brightness shone,
Mellow'd with nitrous air and genial sun:
An harmony of mold, by nature mixt!
Not light as air, nor as a cement fix'd:
Just firm enough t'embrace the thriving root,
Yet give free expanse to the fibrous shoot;
Dilating, when disturb'd by lab'ring hands,
And smelling sweet, when show'rs refresh the lands.
Scarce could the reapers' arms the sheaves contain,
And the full garners swell'd with golden grain;
[Unlike the harvests of degen'rate days,]
One omer sown, one hundred-fold repays:
Nor ought we more to ask, nor more possess!
The harvest overcomes the reapers' toil:
So feeble is the hind, so strong the soil .
He that hath ears to hear, may feel the rest.
“Bless God, who hath given thee the two Denarii, namely, the Law and the Gospel, in recompense for thy submission and labour.” Chrysost. Hom. in Luc. C. 10.
They that fear the Lord are a sure seed, and they that love him an honourable plant: They that regard not the law, are a dishonourable seed: they that transgress the commandments, are a deceivable seed. Ecclus. C. x, V. 19.
Brasby lands, in an husbandry-sense, signify lands that are dry, shallow, gravelly, and pebbly. Such sort of grounds the old Romans called glareous:
—Jejuna quidem clivosi glarea ruris.Virg. Georg. II.
INTERPRETATION.
All know, but few perform, the will of Heav'n;
They hear the sound, but miss the sense convey'd,
And lose the substance, whilst they view the shade.
Which is not vitally with Heav'n conjoin'd,
Transient as figures, gliding o'er a glass:
Each but a momentary visit makes,
And each supplies the place, the last forsakes.—
Satan for ever fond to be employ'd,
[And changing minds ev'n ask to be destroy'd ,]
Marks well th'infirm of faith; and soon supplies
Phantoms of truth, and substances of lyes:
Killing the dying, he a conquest gains;
And, from a little, steals the poor remains.
Reason, man's guardian, by neglect, or sleep
Loses that castle, he was meant to keep.
Denote the worldly-wise, who think in haste:
Constant to nothing, and in nothing long;
To-day they hear the word of God with joy,
To-morrow they the word of God destroy;
Indiff'rent, to assert, or to deny:
With zeal they flatter, and with zeal decry.
Such is the Fool of Wit! who strives with pains
To lose that paradise the peasant gains.—
Whenever adverse fortune choaks the way,
When danger threats, or clouds o'er-cast the day,
This plant of casualty, unfix'd at root,
Shakes with the blast, and casts his unripe fruit;
But, when the storms of poverty arise,
And persecution ev'ry virtue tries,
Mindless of God, and trusting to himself ,
He strands Heav'n's freightage on a dang'rous shelf.
He sinks, the abject victim of despair!
Sown on rich earth, but choak'd with thorns and weeds.
Religion strikes them, but they shun the thought;
Behold the profit, and yet profit nought.
Heav'n's high rewards they silently contemn,
And think the present world suffices them.
Mean-while ambition leads the soul astray,
Far from its natal walk, th'ethereal way;
Int'rest assassins friendship ev'ry hour,
Truth warps to custom, conscience bends to pow'r,
Till all the cultivating hand receives
Is empty blossom, and death-blasted leaves.
Idiots in judgment; baffled o'er and o'er;
Still the same bait, still circumvented more;
Self-victims of the cunning they adore!
Man still their foe, and Heav'n itself no friend!
Who humbly tread the evangelic way.
The road to heav'n is uniform and plain:
All other paths are serpentine and vain.
The true disciple takes the word reveal'd,
Nor rushes on the sanctuary conceal'd,
Whilst empty reas'ners emptiest arts employ;
Nothing they build, and all things they destroy!
The Provident of Heav'n unlocks his store,
To cloathe the naked, and to feed the poor:
To each man gen'rous, and to each man just,
Conscious of a depositary trust.
Patient of censure, yet condemning none:
Placid to all, accountable to One.
Ev'n in prosperity he fears no loss,
Expects a change, and starts not at the Cross.
All suff'rings God's own med'cines he accounts :
Studious of good, and penitent for ill,
Still short of grace, yet persevering still;
As just and true as erring nature can,
[For imperfection sets its stamp on man.]
Heav'n marks the saint, her mansions to adorn,
And, having purg'd the chaff, accepts the corn.
“To sin against knowledge is a greater offence than an ignorant trespass; in proportion as a fault, which is capable of no excuse, is more heinous than a fault which admits of a tolerable defence.” J. Mart. Resp. ad Orthod.
“Ignorance will not excuse sin, when it is a sin in itself.” Anon. Vet.
He that is idle tempts Satan to set him to work.” Chrysost. Hom.
Pious Jeremy Taylor once said to a Lady, “Madam, if you do not employ your children, the Devil will.” The Son of Sirach gives also the following advice: “Send thy Son to labour, that he be not idle; for idleness teacheth much evil.” C. xxxiii, V. 27.
“We are all careful about small matters, and negligent in the greatest; of which this is the reason, we know not where true felicity is.” St. Hieron.
The Preacher writes beautifully upon this subject. Ecclus. C. ii.
“My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for trial. Set thy heart aright, and constantly endure, and make not haste in in time of trouble,” i.e. be not impatient to get over thy trouble. “Cleave unto him, and depart not away, that thou mayest be increased at thy last end. Whatsoever is brought upon thee take chearfully, and be patient when thou art changed to a low estate. For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity. —Look at the generations of old, and see, did ever any trust in the Lord and was confounded? Or did any abide in his fear and was forsaken? Or whom did he ever despise, that called upon him? For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy; He forgiveth sins, and saveth in time of affliction.—Wo be to the sinner that goeth two ways,” i.e. that hath recourse to man as well as God. “Wo unto him that is faint-hearted; for he believeth not, therefore shall he not be defended. Wo unto you that have lost patience: What will ye do when the Lord shall visit you?—They that fear the Lord will say, We will fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men: For as his majesty is, so is his mercy.”
In like manner St. Chrysostom informs us, “That, in proportion as God adds to our tribulation, He adds likewise to our retribution.”
THE ASCETIC,
OR, THOMAS A KEMPIS: A VISION.
Aspicis; illo alii rursus jactantur in alto.
At tua securos portus, blandamque quietem
Intravit, non quassa ratis.
Stat. Sylv. L. II.
I
Deep in a vale, where cloud-born RhyneThro' meads his Alpine waters roll'd,
Where pansies mixt with daisies shine,
And asphodels instarr'd with gold;
Two forests, skirting round the feet
Of everlasting mountains, meet,
Half-parted by an op'ning glade;
Around Hercynian oaks are seen.—
Larches , and cypress ever-green,
Unite their hospitable shade.
II
Impearl'd with dew, the rosy MornStood tip-toe on the mountain's brow;
Gleams following gleams the heav'ns adorn,
And gild the theatre below:
And from her misty eye-balls shakes
The balmy dews of soft repose:
The pious lark with grateful lays
Ascends the skies, and chants the praise
Which man to his Creator owes
III
When lo! a venerable Sire appears,With sprightly foot-steps hast'ning o'er the plain;
His tresses bore the marks of fourscore years,
Yet free from sickness he, and void of pain:
His eyes with half their youthful clearness shone .
Still on his cheeks health's tincture gently glow'd,
His peaceful blood in equal tenour flow'd;
At length, beneath a beechen shade reclin'd,
He thus pour'd forth to Heav'n the transports of his mind.
“Before we engage in worldly business, or any common amusements of life, let us be careful to consecrate the first-fruits of the day, and the very beginning of our holy thoughts unto the service of God.” St. Basil. .
Thomas à Kempis had no manifest infirmities of old-age, and retained his eye-sight perfect to the last.
All that I have ever been able to learn in Germany, upon good authority, concerning him, is as follows: He was born at Kempis, or Kempen, a small walled town in the dutchy of Cleves, and diocese of Cologn. His family-name was Hamerlein, which signifies in the German language a little Hammer. We find also that his parents were named John and Gertrude Hamerlein. He lived chiefly in the monastery of Mount St. Agnes; where his effigy, together with a prospect of the monastery, was engraven on a plate of copper that lies over his body. The said monastery is now called Bergh-Clooster, or, as we might say in English, Hill-Cloyster. Many strangers in their travels visit it. Kempis was certainly one of the best and greatest men since the primitive ages His Book of the Imitation of Christ has seen near forty Editions in the original Latin, and above sixty Translations have been made from it into modern languages.
Our author died August the 8th, 1471, aged 92 years.
In the engraving on copper above-mentioned, and lying over his grave, is represented a person respectfully presenting to him a label, on which is written a verse to this effect:
“Oh! where is Peace? for Thou its paths hast tred.”—To which Kempis returns another strip of paper, inscribed as follows:
“In poverty, retirement, and with God.”He was a canon regular of Augustins, and sub-prior of Mount St. Agnes' monastery. He composed his treatise On the Imitation of Christ in the sixty-first year of his age, as appears from a note of his own writing in the library of his convent.
I
“Come unto me” [Messiah cries]“All that are laden and oppress'd:”
“To Thee I come” [my heart replies]
“O Patron of eternal rest!”
“In purest day-light shall rejoice,
“Incapable to err, or fall.”
With thee I walk, my gracious God;
Long I've thy painful foot-steps trod,
Redeemer, Saviour, Friend of all !
II
Heav'n in my youth bestow'd each goodOf choicer sort: In fertile lands
A decent patrimony stood,
Sufficient for my just demands.
My form was pleasing; health refin'd
My blood; A deep-discerning mind
Of un-affected eloquence,
Plain nature, un-scholastic sense—;
And once or twice the Muses smil'd!
III
Blest with each boon that simpler minds desire,Till Heav'n grows weary of their nauseous pray'rs,
I made the nobler option to retire ,
And gave the world to worldlings and their heirs;
The warrior's laurels, and the statesman's fame,
The vain man's hopes for titles and employ,
The pomp of station, and the rich man's name,
I left for fools to seek, and knaves t'enjoy ;
And all the God conceal'd irradiated my heart.
“Solitude is the best school wherein to learn the way to Heaven.” St. Jerom.
“Worldly honours are a trying snare to men of an exalted station; of course their chief care must be, to put themselves out of the reach of envy by humility.” Nepotian.
“The pleasures of this world are only the momentary comforts of the miserable, and not the rewards of the happy.” St. August.
I
Happy the man who turns to Heav'n,When on the landscape's verge of green
Old-age appears, to whom 'tis giv'n
To creep in sight, but fly, unseen!
Stealer of marches, subtile foe,
Sinon of stratagem and woe!
Thy fatal blows ah! who can ward?
Around thee lurks a motley train
Of wants, and fears, and chronic pain,
The hungry Croats of thy guard.
II
[Thus on the flow'r-enamel'd lawn,Unconscious of the least surprize,
In thoughtless gambols sports the fawn
Whilst veil'd in grass the tygress lies.
Her very lungs surcease to blow:
At length she darts on hunger's wings;—
Sure of her distance and success,
Where Newton could but only guess,
She never misses, when she springs .]
III
More truly wise the man, whose early youthIs offer'd a free off'ring to the Lord,
A self-addicted votary to truth,
Servant thro' choice, disciple by accord!
Heav'n always did th'unblemish'd turtle chuse,
Where health conjoin'd with spirit most abounds:
Heav'n seeks the young, nor does the old refuse,
But youth acquits the debt, which age compounds!
The spend-thrift pays his all, and takes the bankrupt's place.
This Parenthesis was inserted by way of imitating the famous Parenthesis in Horace's Ode, which begins
Qualem ministrum fulminis alitem, &c.“Even from the flower till the grape was ripe, hath my heart delighted in Wisdom.” Ecolus. C. li, V. 15.
I
Thus spoke the venerable Sage,Who ne'er imbib'd Mæonian lore,
Who drew no aids from Maro's page,
And yet to nobler flights could soar.
Taught by the Solyméan maid;
With native elegance array'd
He gave his easy thoughts to flow;
The charms which anxious art deny'd
Truth and simplicity supply'd,
Melodious in religious woe.
II
Poet in sentiment! He feelsThe flame; nor seeks from verse's aid!
To real beauty proves a shade.
When nature's out-lines dubious are,
Verse decks them with a slight cymarr ;
True charms by art in vain are drest.
Not icy prose could damp his fire:
Intense the flame and mounting high'r,
Brightly victorious when opprest!
III
By this time morn in all its glory shone;The sun's chaste kiss absorb'd the virgin-dew:
Th'impatient peasant wish'd his labour done,
The cattle to th'umbrageous streams withdrew:
Beneath a cool impenetrable shade,
Quiet, He mus'd. So Jonas safely sate
To see the tow'rs of Ninus bow to fate .
Th'Ascetic then drew forth a parchment-scroll,
And thus pour'd out to Heav'n th'effusions of his soul.
THE MEDITATION OF THOMAS A KEMPIS.
1.
The art of living well is wise men's praise.
If death, not length of life, engag'd our view,
Life would be happier, and death happier too .
The King, the insect dies; and so must We.
What's necessary;—none should evil call.
Check thy fond love of life, and human pride;
Shall man repine at death, when Christ has dy'd?
This and the following passages marked with a note of reference are extracted almost verbatim from Kempis's Book of the Imitation of Christ. Lib. I, C. 1, 2. See also Lib. I, C. 19. 23.
2.
He that can calmly view the mask of death,Will never tremble at the face beneath:
Probationer of Heav'n, be starts no more
To see the last sands ebb, than those before .
“Death, when compared to life, seems to be a remedy and not a punishment.” St. Macar.
On the same point another Primitive Christian hath observed, “That the Supreme Being made life short; since, as the troubles of it cannot be removed from us, we may the sooner be removed from them.” St. Bernard.
3.
In vain we argue, boast, elude, descant;—No man is honest that's afraid of want.
No blood of confessors that bosom warms ,
Which starts at hunger, as the worst of harms.
“Dost thou fear poverty? Christ calls the poor man blessed.— —Art thou afraid of labour? Pains are productive of a crown. —Art thou hungry? A true confidence in God fears no famine: —for the Supreme Governour of the world beholds thy warfare; and prepares for thee a crown of glory and everlasting rest.”— Hieron. in Epist.
4.
Check'd but not stop'd; retarded but not tir'd;
Straiten'd by foes, yet sure of a retreat,
In Heav'n's protection rests securely great :
Hears ev'ry sharp alarm without dismay;
Midst dangers dauntless, and midst terrors gay;
Indignant of obstruction glows his flame,
And, struggling, mounts to Heav'n, from whence it came:
Oppress'd it thrives; its own destroyers tires,
And with unceasing fortitude aspires.
When man desponds, [of human hope bereft,]
Patience and Christian heroism are left.
Let Patience be thy first and last concern;
The hardest task a Christian has to learn !
Advances, on the side it now goes back.
Was never storm'd; by art 'tis undermin'd .
Senec. “Human fear depresses, the fear of God exhilarates.”
Cassian.
“True christian piety was never made a real captive; it may be killed, but cannot be conquered.” St. Jerom.
5.
All seek for knowledge. Knowledge is no moreThan this; To know ourselves, and God adore.
Wouldst thou with profit seek, and learn with gain?—
Unknown thyself, in solitude remain.
Virtue retires, but in retirement blooms,
Full of good works, and dying in perfumes .
In thy own heart the living waters rise
Good conscience is the wisdom of the wise!
Is the firm trust that God is on his side!
Like Aaron's rod, the Faithful and the Just,
Torn from their tree, shall blossom in the dust.
“The retired christian, in seeking after an happy life, actually enjoys one; and possesses that already which he only fancies he is pursuing.” St. Eucher.
“Drink waters out of thine own cisterns. Prov. C. v, V. 15. See also Rev. C. xxii, V. 1. “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal.” See John C. vii, V. 38.
“The only means of obtaining true security is to commit all our interests to God, who constantly knows and is ever willing to bestow good things on them that ask him as they ought.”
Cassian.“Security is no-where but in the love and service of God. It is neither in Heaven, nor Paradise, much less in the present world. In Heaven the Angels fell from the divine presence: In Paradise Adam lost his abode of pleasure: In the world Judas fell from the school of our Saviour.” St. Bernard.
6.
Who gives Himself, his Spirit, and his Son.
“With quails miraculous, and heav'nly bread.
“Is thirst oppressive?—Lift thy eyes, and see
“Cat'racts of water fall from rocks for thee.
“Art thou in darkness?—Uncreated light
“Is all thy own, and guides thy erring sight.
“The vestments of Eternity are thine.
“Art thou a widow?—God's thy consort true.
“Art thou an orphan?—He's thy father too.”
7.
The men of Science aim themselves to show ,And know just what imports them not to know .
[Once having miss'd the truth, they farther stray:
As men ride fastest who have lost their way;]
Whilst the poor peasant that with daily care
Improves his lands and offers Heav'n his pray'r,
With conscious boldness may produce his face
Where proud philosophers shall want a place.
Philosophy in anxious doubts expires:
Religion trims her lamp, as life retires.
Maintains its sterling pureness to the last.
Conscience will ev'ry pious act attest :
A silent panegyrist, but the best!
“It is good to know much and live well: but, if we cannot attain both, it is better to desire piety than learning: for knowledge makes no man truly happy, nor doth happiness consist in intellectual acquisitions. The only valuable thing is a religious life.” Sti. Greg. Magn. Moral.
And again: “That only is the best knowledge which makes us better.”
As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. Prov. xxvii, V. 19. “Thou canst avoid, sooner or later, whatever molesteth Thee, except Thy own conscience.” Augustin. in Psalm xxx.
8.
All chastisements for private use are giv'n;The REVELATIONS PERSONAL of Heav'n:
But man in misery mistakes his road,
Sighs for lost joys and never turns to God.
Heav'n more that meets her child with sorrows try'd;
Her dove brings olive, e'er the waves subside. .
Heav'n makes old gifts the precedents for new.
“God causeth (afflictions) to come, either for correction, or for his land, or for mercy.” Job C. xxxvii, V. 13.
“It is the work and providence of God's secret counsel, that the days of the Elect should be troubled in their pilgrimage. This present life is the way to our eternal abode: God therefore in his secret wisdom afflicts our travel with continual trouble, lest the delights of our journey might take away the desire of our journey's end.” Sti. Greg. Mag.
“No servant of Christ is without affliction. If you expect to be free from persecution, you have not yet so much as begun to be a Christian.” St. August.
9.
Afflictions have their use of ev'ry kind;At once they humble, and exalt the mind:
The ferment of the soul by just degrees
Refines the true clear spirit from the lees.
Boast as we will, and argue as we can,
None ever knew the virtues of a man,
Except affliction sifts the flour from bran:
Say, is it much indignities to bear,
When God for thee thy nature deign'd to wear?
If slander vilifies the good man's name,
It hurts not; but prevents a future shame.
The censure and reproaches of mankind
Are the true christian Mentors of the mind.
No other way vain-glory is restrain'd.
Nor worse, nor better we, if praise or blame
Lift or depress—The man is still the same.
The happy, if they're wise, must all things fear;
Nor need th'unhappy, if they're good, despair.
10.
Hard is the task 'gainst nature's strength to strive:Perfection is the lot of none alive;
Or grant frail man could tread th'unerring road,
How could we suffer for the sake of God?
Affliction's ordeal, sharp, but brightly shines;
Sep'rates the gold , and ev'ry vice calcines.
In adverse fortune, when the storm runs high,
And sickness graves death's image on the eye,
Ask God to send thee patience or relief.
The infant Moses 'scap'd his watry grave
Heav'n half-o'erwhelms the man it means to save!
“For Gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.” Ecclus. C. ii, V. 5.
11.
Th'Ambitious and the Covetous desireMore than their worth deserves, or wants require:
Not merely for the profit things may yield,
But ah, their neighbour's pittance maims their field:
Thus, gain'd by force, or fraudulent design,
The grapes of Naboth yield them blood for wine .
“He that gathereth by defrauding his own soul, gathereth for others, that shall spend his goods riotously. A covetous man's eye is not satisfied with his portion, and the iniquity of the wicked drieth up his soul.” Ecclus. C. xiv.
“Ahab's excuse to Naboth, when he said give me thy vineyard that I may make it a garden of herbs, represents in a lively manner the pretences that avaricious and ambitious men use, when they want to make new acquisitions. They lye to their consciences; asking a seeming trifle, and meaning to obtain something very valuable.” St. Ambrrose.”
“Woe unto them that covet fields, and take them away by violence.” Micah C. ii, V. 2.
“They enlarge their desire as hell, and are as death, and cannot be satisfied: Woe unto them that encrease that which is not theirs.” Hab. C. ii, V. 5, 6.
12.
Nothing but truth can claim a lasting date;Time is truth's surest judge, and judges late:
And, for thy guide, be HE alone believ'd,
Who never can deceive, nor is deceiv'd !
Thus safe thro' waves the sons of Isr'el trod;
Their better magnet was the lamp of God:
And thus Heav'n's star earth's humble shepherds led
To their Messiah in his humbler bed.
13.
Flatt'ry and fame at death the Vain forsake,And other knaves and fools their honours take .
“There is no work that shews more art and industry than the texture of a spider's web. The delicate threads are so nicely disposed, and so curiously interwoven one with another, that you would think it produced by the labour of a celestial Being; yet nothing in the event is more fragil and insubstantial. A breath of wind tears it to pieces, and carries it away. Just so are worldly acquisitions made by men in exalted stations, and reputedly wise and cunning.” Origen.
14.
Teize not thy mind; nor run a restless roundIn search of science better lost than found.
Still teach thy soul a sober course to try,
And shun the track of singularity!
15.
Presumptuous flights and sceptical debatesForetell [Cassandra-like] the fall of states.
So Greece and Rome soon moulder'd to decay,
When Epicurus' system gain'd the day.
But those who make prophaneness stand for wit,
Desp'rate apply the pigeons to their feet:
Bankrupts of sense, and impudently bad;
Their judgement ruin'd, and their fancy mad!
Like Daniel's Goat in th'insolence of youth,
Stars they displace, and over-turn the truth.
16.
He, who adopts religions, wrong or right,Is not a convert, but an hypocrite:
Him, seeming what he is not, man esteems;
God hates him, for he is not what he seems.
The bull-rush thus a specious out-side wears,
Smooth as the shining rind the poplar bears:
And all is insubstantial sponge within.
When not a whisper breathes upon the trees,
Unmov'd it stands, but bends with ev'ry breeze.
It boasts th'ablution of a silver flood,
But feeds on mire, and roots itself in mud.
17.
Self-love is foolish, criminal, and vain ;Therefore, O man, such partial views restrain:
And often take this counsel for a rule,
To please one's self is but to please one fool .
“He that loveth himself most, hath of all men the happiness of finding the fewest rivals.” Anon. Vet.
18.
We lose: Possessing only what we gave
But, if vain-glory prompts the tongue to boast,
In vain we strive to give, the gift is lost.
Misers have wealth, but taste it not;—and die.
There's still a rent, which wily Satan tears :
A man may mend it, at returning light,
But the Arch-Fiend un-darns the work at night.
Useless, O Miser, are thy labours found;
And all thy vintage leaks on thirsty ground .
Chimeric nonsense! Riches un-employ'd
In doing good, are riches un-enjoy'd.
The slave who sets his soul on worthless pelf,
Is a mere DIOCLESIAN to himself;
A wretched martyr in a wretched cause;
Alive, un-honour'd; dead, without applause!
A Paula's name is better known in Heav'n.
“There is that scattereth and yet encreaseth; and there is that witholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.” Prov. C. xi, V. 24.
“The riches which thou treasurest up, are lost; those which thou charitably bestowest, are truly thine.” St. August.
Paula was a Roman lady descended from the Gracchi and Scipios. Her husband was of the Julian race. After his decease, she gave most of her possessions to the poor, and retired from Rome to a solitude at Bethlehem. That incomparable virgin Eustochium was her daughter. Both their Histories are drawn at large by St. Jerom, and addressed to Euslochium. Paula has written some excellent verses on religious subjects.
She built a temple at Emmäus in honour of our Blessed Saviour. Her tomb is at Bethlehem. The inscription for her and her daughter was written by St. Jerom. Sandy's Trav. fol. 135, 139, &c.
19.
Of yonder Rhyne, which our Mount-Agnes laves.
Th'impatient waters no continuance make;
Adopt new owners, and their old forsake.
Refund the draughts which nature cannot bear;
(Whilst bile and gall corroding in their breast
Demand a passage, and admit no rest:)
Just so rapacious misers swell their store;
To di'monds di'monds add, and oar to oar;
And clay-cold qualms, discharge the load again.
Death bursts the casket, and the farce is o'er;
(Curst is that wealth, which never eas'd the Poor!)
Whilst fools and spend-thrifts sweep it from the floor.
The gold of Ophyr dazzles their weak eyes,
Turquoises next their weaker minds surprize,
Rich, deeply azur'd, like Italian skies.
Then are the fiery rubies to be seen,
And em'ralds tinctur'd with the rain-bow's green:
Translucent beryl , flame-ey'd chrysolite ,
And sardŏnix refresher of the sight;
And opaz , vein'd with riv'lets, mildly shines.
Whirl'd down th'impetuous torrent, call'd an heir.
Part of this Paragraph, printed in Italics, is copied from Job C. xx, V. 14, 15, 18. Compare also Job C. xxvii, V. 19, 20, 21.
Gold of Ophir. See 1 Kings C. ix, V. 28. 1 Chron. xxix, V. 4. 2 Chron. viii, V. 18. Psalm xlv, V. 9. Isaiah xiii. V. 12.
Turquoises. “The true oriental turquoise comes out of the old rock in the mountains of Piriskua, about eighty miles from the town of Moscheda.” Hist. of Gust. Adolph. Vol. II, p. 342.
19.
Religion's harbour, like th'Etrurian bay ,Secure from storms is land-lock'd ev'ry way.
Safe, midst the wreck of worlds, the vessel rides,
Nor minds the absent rage of winds and tides:
Whilst from his prow the pilot, looking down,
Surveys at once God's image and his own ;
Heav'n's favour smoothes th'expanse, and calmness sleeps
On the clear mirror of the silent deeps.
“One way to know God is perfectly to know one's self.” Hugo de anima.
“Why dost thou wonder, O man, at the height of the stars, or depth of the sea? Examine rather thine own soul, and wonder there.” Isidor.
20.
Nor earth and Heav'n the self-same mind employ.
Two diff'rent ways th'unsocial objects draw:
Flesh strives with Spirit, Nature combats Law:
Reason and Revelation live at strife,
Tho' meant for mutual aid, like man and wife. .
One eye is sacrific'd, that one may see.
Canals, for pleasure made, with pleasure stray;
But drain at length the middle stream away.
“It is not only difficult but impossible to enjoy Heaven here and hereafter; or, in other words, to live in pleasure and dissipation, and at the same time attain spiritual happiness. No man hath passed from one Paradise to another: No man hath been the mirror of felicity in both worlds, nor shone with equal glory in earth and in heaven.” Hieron.
21.
Life's joys and pomp at distance should appear,Possession brings the vulgar dawbing near.
Who can rejoice to tread a devious road,
Led by false views, and serpentine from God?
Copy his deeds, and imitate his mind
No man can worldly happiness ensure;
Heav'n's consolation all men may procure.
22.
Resistance, not compliance, wins the day.
Here av'rice, there ambitious schemes prevail;
Who can quench flames when double winds assail?
Boast as we will, our christian glories lie
In humble suff'ring, not proud apathy.
Submission an eternal crown procures;
Heav'n's hero conquers most, who most endures.—
[What time the prophet slept by Chebar's stream]
Walks forward still, in one unvarying line :
Nor wealth, nor pow'r, attract his wand'ring sight;
He swerves not to the left hand, nor the right.
Humbly he eats, and finds the proffer'd scroll
Sweet to the taste, inspiring to the soul .
So when Saul's weary'd Son his fasting broke
With honey dropping from Philistian oak,
Returning strength and sprightliness arise,
Glow on his cheeks, and sparkle in his eyes .
Man's heart, well-pleas'd, may think itself devout:
But, when ill days, and nights of pain, succeed,
Let him bear well, and he's devout indeed.
23.
Those who revenge a deed that injures them,Copy the very sin, which they condemn .
They snatch God's own prerogative from God!
Michael in bitterness of strife consign'd
The final verdict to th'unerring mind .—
From turbulence of anger wisely keep;
The hind who soweth winds, shall whirlwinds reap .
“To return one injury for another is to revenge like man: Whereas to revenge like God is to love our enemies. It is a great happiness not to be able to hurt one's neighbour, nor to have the power and parts to do mischief. The ingenuity of [what we call] men of the world, consists in knowing how to injure others, and revenge ourselves when injured. Whereas, on the contrary, not to return evil for evil is the true honour and vital principle of the Gospel.” Leon.
Hosea C. viii, V. 7. Hind is the head-servant in husbandry-matters. Chaucer, Dryden, and in the west of England at present.
24.
The Worldling, TEMPTER of himself, pursuesIdols of his own making; ideot's views;
(Unhappy wretch! wrapt up in thin disguise!
Where All that is not impious, is unwise!)
On eggs of basilisks, and scorpion-spawn :
And, after all the care he can impart,
His foster'd miscreants sting him to the heart;
Swift thro' each vein the mystic poisons roul,
Fatal alike to body and to soul !
25.
Perfect would be our nature and our joyIf man could ev'ry year one vice destroy .
Withdraw thee from the sins that most assail,
And labour where thy virtues least prevail.
“Instead of standing still, going backward, or deviating, always add, always proceed: Not to advance, in some sense is to retire. It is better to creep in the right way than fly in the wrong way.” St. August. in Serm.
26.
False joys elate, and griefs as false controulThe little pismire with an human soul :
Oh, were he like th'un-reas'ning ant, who strives
For solid good, and but by instinct lives.
27.
To wail and not amend a life mispentMeans to confess, but means not to repent:
Tongue-penitents, like him who too much owes,
Run more in debt, and live but to impose.
28.
Deem not th'unhappy, vicious; nor devoteTo sarcasm and contempt the thread-bare coat.
Oft have we seen rich fields of genuine corn
Edg'd round with brambles, and begirt with thorn.
The pow'rs of Zeuxis' pencil are the same,
Enclos'd in gilded, or in sable frame.
29.
The down that smoothes the great man's anxious bed,Was gather'd from a quiet poor man's shed:
Content and peace are found in mean estate,
And Jacob's dreams on Jacob's pillow wait .
Nurtur'd his herds with leaves, and humbly fed .
30.
Good turns of friends we scribble on the sand,But injuries engrav'd on marble stand .
31.
With pray'rs thy ev'ning close, thy morn begin;But Heav'n's true Sabbath is to rest from sin.
32.
An Hermit once cry'd out in private pray'r,“Oh, if I knew that I should persevere!”
An angel's voice reply'd, in placid tone,
“What would'st thou do, if the great truth were known?
“Do now , what thou intendest then to do,
“And everlasting safety shall ensue.” —
To chuse, implies delay; whilst Time devours
The sickly blossoms of preceding hours.
As bones, well set, grow stronger than before.
“A Christian hath no to-morrow; that is to say, a Christian should put off no duty till to-morrow.” Tertull.
33.
When Heav'n excites thee to a better way,Catch the soft summons, and the call obey.
Thus Mary left her solitude and tears,
When Martha whisper'd, Lo thy Christ appears!
34.
The virtues of the world, which most men move,Are lay'rs from pride, or graftings on self-love :
Whatever for itself is not esteem'd,
Proves a false choice, and is not as it seem'd .
“There is a sort of seeming Good, which, if a rational mind loves, it sinneth; inasmuch as it is an object beneath the consideration of such a mind.” St. August. de Ver. Relig.
“Whatever is not loved on account of its own intrinsic worth, is not properly loved.” Idem in Soliloq. L. I, C. 13.
“In this life there is no virtue but in loving that which is truly amiable. To chuse this, is prudence; to be averted from it by no terrifying circumstances, is fortitude. To be influenced by no sort of temptation, is temperance; and to be affected by no ambitious views, is considering the thing with impartial justice as we ought to do.” Idem de Ver. Felicitat. L. II.
35.
The track to Heav'n is intricate and steep;Narrow to tread, and difficult to keep:
On either hand sharp precipices lie,
And our steps faulter with the swerving eye;
That passage clear'd, a level road remains,
Thro' quiet valleys and refreshing plains.
36.
Most would buy Heav'n without a price or loss;They like the PARADISE, but shun the CROSS.
Many participate of Christ's repast;
Few chuse his abstinence, or learn to fast.
Few relish Christianity; and most
(In private) wish their Lord would leave their coast :
Thousands may counterfeit th'apparent part;
And thousands may be Gergesenes at heart .
Few have the faith to suffer for his sake.
His tasteful bread by many mouths is sought;
Few chuse to drink his Passion's bitter draught.
“It is common for man to ask every blessing that God can bestow, but he rarely desires to possess God Himself.” Aug. in Pselm lxxvi.
CONTENTMENT, INDUSTRY, AND ACQUIESCENCE under the Divine Will:
An ODE: Written in the Alpine Parts of Carniola, 1749.
I
Why dwells my un-offended eyeOn yon' blank desart's trackless waste;
All dreary earth, or chearless sky,
Like ocean wild, and bleak, and vast?
There Lysidor's enamour'd reed
Ne'er taught the plains Eudosia's praise:
There herds were rarely known to feed,
Or birds to sing, or flocks to graze.
Yet does my soul complacence find;
All, all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind !
II
The high-arch'd church is lost in sky,The base with thorns and bry'rs is bound;
The yawning fragments nod from high,
With close-encircling ivy crown'd:
Heart-thrilling echo multiplies
Voice after voice, creation new!
Beasts, birds obscene, unite their cries:
Graves ope, and spectres freeze the view.
Yet nought dismays; and thence we find
'Tis all from Thee,
Supremely gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
III
Earth's womb, half dead to Ceres' skill,Can scarce the cake of off'ring give;
The peasant's wain, and bid him live.
The starving beldame gleans in vain,
In vain the hungry chough succeeds:
They curse the unprolific plain,
The scurf-grown moss, and tawdry weeds.
Yet still sufficiency we find;
All, all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!
IV
December's Boreas issues forth,In sullen gloom and horror drest,
Charg'd with the nitre of the north,
Abhorr'd by man, by bird, and beast.
All nature's lovely tint embrown'd
Sickens beneath the putrid blast:
Like parchment into embers cast .
Yet health, and strength, and ease we find:
All, all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
V
Tremble, and yonder Alp behold ,Where half-dead nature gasps below,
Victim of ever-lasting cold,
Entomb'd alive in endless snow.
Against the southern Phoebus plays;
In vain th'innoxious glimm'rings fall,
The frost out-lives, out-shines the rays.
Yet consolation still I find;
And all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!
VI
Bless me! how doubly sharp it blows,From Zemblan and Tartarian coasts!
In sullen silence fall the snows,
The only lustre nature boasts;
The nitrous pow'r with ten-fold force
Half petrifies earth's barren womb,
High-arch'd cascades suspend their force,
Men freeze alive, and in the tomb.
All, all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
VII
Then, in exchange, a month or moreThe Sun with fierce solsticial gleams
Darting o'er vales his raging pow'r,
Like ray-collecting mirrours, beams.
Torrents and cataracts are dry,
Men seek the scanty shades in vain:
The solar darts like lightning fly,
Transpierce the skull, and scorch the brain .
Yet still no restless heats we find;
And all from Thee,
Corrector of the mind!
VIII
For nature rarely form'd a soilWhere diligence subsistence wants:
Exert but care, nor spare the toil,
And all beyond, th'Almighty grants.
Each earth at length to culture yields,
Each earth its own manure contains:
Thus the Corycian nurst his fields ,
Heav'n gave th'encrease, and he the pains.
Th'Industrious peace and plenty find;
All due to Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
IX
Scipio sought virtue in his prime,And, having early gain'd the prize,
Stole from th'ungrateful world in time,
Contented to be low and wise!
He serv'd the state with zeal and force,
And then with dignity retir'd;
Dismounting from th'unruly horse,
To rule himself, as sense requir'd.
Without a sigh, he pow'r resign'd.—
All, all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!
X
When Dioclesian sought repose,Cloy'd and fatigu'd with nauseous pow'r,
For fools t'admire, and rogues devour:
Rich in his poverty, he bought
Retirement's innocence and health,
With his own hands the monarch wrought,
And chang'd a throne for Ceres' wealth.
Toil sooth'd his cares, his blood refin'd.—
And all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
XI
He , who had rul'd the world, exchang'dHis sceptre for the peasant's spade,
Postponing [as thro' groves he rang'd]
Court-splendour to the rural shade.
Child of his hand, th'engrafted thorn
More than the victor-laurel pleas'd:
The brow, from civic garlands eas'd.
Fortune, however poor, was kind.—
All, all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!
XII
Thus Charles, with justice styl'd the GreatFor valour, piety, and laws;
Resign'd two empires to retreat,
And from a throne to shades withdraws;
In vain, [to soothe a monarch's pride]
His yoke the willing Persian bore:
And fierce Northumbrians stain'd with gore.
One Gallic farm his cares confin'd;
And all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
XIII
Observant of th'Almighty-will,Prescient in faith, and pleas'd with toil,
Abram Chaldea left, to till
The moss-grown Haran's flinty soil :
Hydras of thorns absorb'd his gain,
The common-wealth of weeds rebell'd,
But labour tam'd th'ungrateful plain,
And famine was by art repell'd;
All, all from Thee,
Supremely Gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!
Quippe in corde DEUS ------.
Stat. Theb. IV, v. 489.
Virg.
Much to the same purpose is a passage in the Son of Sirach:— “When the cold north-wind bloweth, and the water is congealed into ice, He poureth the hoar-frost upon the earth. It abideth upon every gathering together of water, and cloatheth the water with a breastplate. It devoureth the mountain, and burneth the wilderness, and consumeth the grass as fire.” C. xliii, V. 19, 21.
A glaciére, or ice-mountain.
Cuncta gelu, canáque æternùm grandine tecta,Atque ævi glaciem cohibent: riget ardua montis
Æthenii facies, surgentique obvia Phœbo
Duratas nescit flammis mollire pruinas.
Sil. Ital.
“The Sun parcheth the country, and who can abide the burning heat thereof? A man blowing a furnace is in works of heat, but the Sun burneth the mountains three times more; breathing out fiery vapours and sending forth bright beams it dimmeth the eyes.” Ecclus. Ch. xliii, v 3, 4.
Heart's-ease, viola tricolor; called also by our old Poets Love in idleness; Pansy [from the French pensée, or the Italian pensieri:] Three faces under a hood, Herb Trinity, Look up and kiss me, Kiss me at the gate, &c.
THE VISION OF DEATH.
Et nec-opinanti Mors ad caput adstitit, ante
Quam satur, ac plenus possis discedere rerum.
Lucret.
Stat. Theb. IX, v. 280.
INTRODUCTION.
Weak to perform, but fortunate in choice.
With strength and softness, energy and ease;
Various of numbers, new in ev'ry strain,
Diffus'd, yet terse, poetical, tho' plain:
Diversify'd 'midst unison of chime;
Freer than air, yet manacled with rhyme?
Thou mak'st each quarry which thou seek'st thy prize,
The reigning eagle of Parnassian skies;
Now soaring 'midst the tracts of light and air,
And now the monarch of the woods and lair .—
Two kingdoms thy united realm compose,
The land of poetry, and land of prose.
Each orphan-muse thy absence inly mourns;
Makes short excursions, and as quick returns:
No more they triumph in their fancy'd bays,
But crown'd with wood-bine dedicate their lays.
No sameness of a prattling stream is thine,
Which, with one unison of murmur, flows;
Opiate of in-attention and repose!
[So Huron-leeches, when their patient lies
In fev'rish restlessness with un-clos'd eyes,
Apply with gentle strokes their osier-rod,
And tap by tap invite the sleepy God .]
No—'Tis thy pow'r, [thine only,] tho' in rhyme,
To vary ev'ry pause, and ev'ry chime;
Infinite déscant ! sweetly wild and true,
Still shifting, still improving, and still new!—
In quest of classic-plants, and where they grow,
We trace thee, like a lev'ret in the snow.
The pow'rs of poetry are latest lost:
Gave room to make thy laurels show the more .
Had a vast income, and profusely spent:
Some have his lands, but none his treasur'd store,
Lands un-manur'd by us, and mortgag'd o'er and o'er!
“About his wreaths the vulgar muses strive,
“And with a touch their wither'd bays revive !”
They kiss his tomb, and are enthusiasts made;
So Statius slept, inspir'd by Virgil's shade .
To Spencer much, to Milton much is due;
But in Great Dryden we preserve the Two.
Or catch that airy fugitive, call'd wit?
Whole groups of pigmies, who are verse-men nam'd:
Each has a little soul he calls his own,
And each enunciates with a human tone:
Alike in shape; unlike in strength and size;—
One lives for ages, one just breathes and dies.
Forgive, lamented shade, these duteous lays.
Lee had thy fire, and Congreve had thy wit;
And copyists, here and there, some likeness hit;
But none possess'd thy graces, and thy ease;
In Thee alone 'twas NATURAL to please!
But bus'ness calls the Muse another way.
Layer, lair, and lay, The surface of arable or grass-lands. Chaucer; Folkingham, 1610; Dryden. Laire also signifies the place where beasts sleep in the fields, and where they leave the mark of their bodies on young corn, grass, &c.
The verses of Robert Waring, [a friend of Dr. Donne's] on a poet in the beginning of the last century, may be applied to Dryden:
“Younger with years, with studies fresher grown,“Still in the bud, still blooming, yet full-blown.”
Pulso, Maroneique sedens in margine templi
Sumo animum, & magni tumulis accanto magistri.
Sylv. Lib. IV.
Where Guadalquíver serpentines with ease,
[The richest tract the Andalusians know,
Fertile in herbage, grateful to the plow,]
A lovely villa stood; [suppose it mine;]
Rich without cost, and without labour fine;
Indulgent nature all her beauties brought,
And art withdrew, un-ask'd for, and un-sought.
For lo, th'Iberians by tradition found
That the whole district once was classic ground;
Here Columella first improv'd the plains,
And show'd Ascréan arts to simple swains:
Taught by the Georgic-muse the lyre he strung,
And sung, what dying Virgil left un-sung .
Hither I fled, philosopher, and youth:
Th'encumb'ring fasces of ambitious Spain,
[As once rash Phaeton usurp'd a day,
Mis-led the seasons, and mistook his way,]
I chose to wander in the silent wood,
Or breathe my aspirations to the flood,
Studying the humble science to be good.
From the brute beasts humanity I learn'd,
And in the pansy's life God's providence discern'd.
The sun had reach'd the Twins in bright career;
Nature, awaken'd from six months repose,
Sprung from her verdant couch;—and active rose
Like health refresh'd with wine; she smil'd, array'd
With all the charms of sun-shine, stream, and glade,
New drest and blooming as a bridal maid.
A peevish irksomeness which teiz'd my breast;
Whisper'd no peace to calm this nervous war;
And Philomel, the Siren of the plain,
Sung soporific unisons in vain.
I sought my bed, in hopes relief to find;
But restlessness was mistress of my mind.
My wayward limbs were turn'd, and turn'd in vain,—
Yet free from grief was I, and void of pain.
In me, as yet, ambition had no part;
Pride had not sowr'd, nor wealth debas'd my heart.
I knew nor public cares, nor private strife;—
And love, the blessing, or the curse of life,
Had only hover'd round me like a dream,
Play'd on the surface, not disturb'd the stream.
[Impossible to tell, or to conceal,]
When nothing makes them sick but too much wealth,
Or wild o'er-boiling of ungovern'd health;
Freedom their pain, and plenty their disease.
By night, by day, from pole to pole they run:
Or from the setting seek the rising sun;
No poor deserting soldier makes such haste,
No doves pursu'd by falcons fly so fast;
And when Automedon at length attains
The place he sought for with such cost and pains,
Swift to embrace, and eager to pursue,
He finds he has no earthly thing to do;
Then yawns for sleep, the opium of the mind,
The last dull refuge indolence can find .
Languish for Ramah's cisterns, and her streams:
Loathe their own choice, and wish the boon away .
“Why is thy gift to me alone deny'd?
“Mildest of beings, friend to ev'ry clime,
“Where lies my error, what has been my crime?
“Beasts, birds, and cattle feel thy balmy rod;
“The drowsy mountains wave, and seem to nod:
“The torrents cease to chide, the seas to roar,
“And the hush'd waves recline upon the shoar.”
Perhaps the wretch, whose God is wealth and care,
Rejects the precious object of my pray'r:
Th'ambitious statesman strives not to partake
Thy blessings, but desires to dream awake:
“The lover rudely thrusts thee from his arms,
“And like Ixion clasps imagin'd charms.
“Thence come to me.—Let others ask for more;
“I ask the slightest influence of thy pow'r:
“Oh only touch my eye-lids with thy wings !”
From my tir'd bed, walk'd forth in meer despite.
What impulse mov'd my steps I dare not say;
Perhaps some guardian-angel mark'd the way.
By this time Phospher had his lamp withdrawn,
And rising Phoebus glow'd on ev'ry lawn.
The air was gentle, [for the month was May,]
And ev'ry scene look'd innocent and gay.
Some lead the notes, and some assist the choir.
Leads them to heaths and bry'rs, and crags and rocks.
Th'impatient mower with an aspect blythe
Surveys the sain-foyn-fields , and whets his scythe.
Ynoisa, Sanchia, Beatrix, prepare
To turn th'Alfalsa-swarths with anxious care.
[No more for Moorish sarabrands they call,
Their castanets hang idle on the wall:]
Alfalsa, whose luxuriant herbage feeds
The lab'ring oxe, mild sheep, and fiery steeds:
Which ev'ry summer, ev'ry thirtieth morn,
I six times re-produc'd, and six times shorn.
The Cembran pine-trees form an awful shade,
And their rich balm perfumes the neighb'ring glade;
Had chang'd their fruit to filamotte from green:]
The Punic granate op'd its rose-like flow'rs;
The orange breath'd its aromatic pow'rs.
A painted seat, beneath a larch-tree's shade.
I sate, and try'd to dose, but slumber fled;
I then essay'd a book, and thus I read :
“To thee, or me, or any of us all;
“What dost thou mean, ungrateful wretch! thou vain
“Thou mortal thing, thus idly to complain?
“If all the bounteous blessings I could give
“Thou hadst enjoy'd; If thou hadst known to live,
“[And pleasure not leak'd thro' thee like a sieve;]
“Cramm'd to the throat with life, and rise and take thy rest?
“But, if my blessings thou hast thrown away,
“If indigested joys pass'd thro' and would not stay,
“Why dost thou wish for more to squander still?
“If life be grown a load, a real ill,
“And I would all thy cares and labours end,
“Lay down thy burthen, fool! and know thy friend.
“To please thee, I have empty'd all my store,
“I can invent and can supply no more:
“But run the round again, the round I ran before.
“Suppose thou art not broken yet with years,
“Yet still the self-same scene of things appears,
“And would be ever, could'st thou ever live;
“For life is still but life, there's nothing new to give.
“What can we plead against so just a bill?
“We stand convicted, and our cause goes ill.
“Should beg of nature to prolong his date,
“She speaks aloud to him, with more disdain;
“Be still, thou martyr-fool, thou covetous of pain.
“But if an old decrepid sot lament;
“What thou! she cries, who hast out-liv'd content?
“Dost thou complain, who hast enjoy'd my store?—
“But this is still th'effect of wishing more!
“Unsatisfy'd with all that nature brings,
“Loathing the present, liking absent things.
“From hence it comes, thy vain desires at strife
“Within themselves, have tantaliz'd thy life;
“And ghastly death appear'd before thy sight
“E'er thou hast gorg'd thy soul and senses with delight.
“Now leave those joys, unsuiting to thy age,
“To a fresh comer, and resign the stage.
“Consider, Ancus, great and good, is dead:
“And thou, dost thou bewail mortality ?”
[No matter who the author was, nor whence,]
I stopp'd, and into contemplation fell;
Amaz'd an impious Wit should think so well;
Who often [to his own and reader's cost]
To show the atheist, half the poet lost.
[Knowing too much, makes many a muse unfit;
'Tis not the bloom, but plethory of wit.—]
At length a drowsiness arrested thought,
And sleep [as is her custom] came unsought.
Methought I wander'd in a Fairy vale:
Replete with people of each sex and age;
Good, bad, great, small, the foolish, and the sage:
Stars, mitres, rags, the sceptre, and the spade.
Whom by no single attribute I knew;
For all that painters feign, and bards devize,
Is meer mock-imag'ry, and artful lyes.
Boldly she look'd, like one of high degree;
Yet never seem'd to cast a glance on me;
At which I inly joy'd; for, truth to say,
I felt an unknown awe, and some dismay.
She pass'd me: Her side-face was smooth and fair;
[Much as fine women, turn'd of forty, are:]
When, turning short, and un-perceiv'd by me,
She grasp'd my throat, and spoke with stern authority:
“Him, whom I seek, art thou! Thy race is run:
“My journey's ended, and thy bus'ness done.
“Surrender up to me thy captive-breath,
“My pow'r is nature's pow'r, my name is DEATH!”
[Searching for flow'rs or fruits] th'envenom'd asp?
Or have you ever felt th'impetuous shock,
When the swift vessel splits upon a rock?
Or mark'd a face with horror over-spread,
When the third apoplex invades the head?
Then form some image of my ghastly fright;
Fear stopp'd my voice, and terror dimm'd my sight:
My heart flew from its place in consternation,
And Nature felt a short annihilation:
Then—with a plunge—I sobb'd;—and with faint eyes
Look'd upwards, to the Ruler of the skies .
Princess—I cry'd,—Thy pris'ner is undone.—
Despair and misery succeed to fear:—
Oh had I known thy presence was so near!
[Then turn'd her face, and show'd the hideous side:]
Fool! 'tis too late to wish, too late to pray:
Thou hadst the means, but not the will to pay;
Each day of human life is warning-day.
The present point of time is all thou hast,
The future doubtful, and the former past!
Yet, as I read contrition in thy eyes,
And thy breast heaves with terror and surprize,
[I, who as yet was never known to show
False pity to premeditated woe]
Will graciously explain great nature's laws,
And hear thy sophisms in so plain a cause.
There is a reason, [which to time I leave]
Why I give thee alone this short reprieve .
Banish thy fears, urge all thy wit can find,
Suppose me what I am, suppose thy self mankind!
Where a small winding path half-printed lay:
Then, turning short, an avenue we 'spy'd,
Long, smoothly pav'd, magnificently wide.
Dark cypresses the skirting sides adorn'd,
And gloomy eugh-trees, which for ever mourn'd:
Whilst, on the margin of the beaten road,
Its pallid bloom sick-smelling hen-bane show'd;
Next emblematic rose-mary appear'd,
And lurid hemlock its stain'd stalks up-rear'd,
[God's signature to man in evil hour!—]
Nor were the night-shades wanting, nor the pow'r
Of thorn'd Stramonium, nor the sickly flow'r
Of cloying mandrakes; the deceitful root
Of the monk's fraudful cowl , and Plinian fruit .
Pierc'd thro' with wounds, and seam'd with many a scar:
Add pale nymphæa with her clay-cold breath;
And poppies, which suborn the sleep of death.
Surpriz'd me much, and warn'd me of my fate.
Its length at first approach enormous seem'd;
Full half a thousand stadia as I deem'd:
But then the road was smooth and fair to see;
[With such insensible declivity]
That what men thought a tedious course to run,
Was finish'd oft the hour it first begun.
I saw a spectre in the portal wait:
An ill-shap'd monster, hideous to be seen;
She seem'd, methought, the mother of the queen .
The adamantine doors expanded wide:
When Death commands they close, when Death commands divide.
Then quick we enter'd a magnific hall,
Where groups of trophies over-spread the wall.
In sable scrawls I Nero's name perus'd,
And Herod's, with a sanguine stain suffus'd;
While Numa's name adorn'd a radiant place,
And that of Titus deck'd a milk-white space.
Thy shame, remorse, and disappointment tell;
Why dost thou tremble still, and whence thy dread?
Why shake thy lips, and why thy colour fled?
Hast thou ne'er seen me? Know'st thou not me, seen?
“I own my homage, and confess thy pow'r.
“Alone, that sov'reignty on earth is thine,
“Which justly proves its claim to right divine:
“Thine is the old hereditary sway,
“Which mortals ought, and mortals must obey.
“But, Empress, thou hast not the form I deem'd:
“Velasquez painted lies, and Camoëns dream'd:
“I thought to meet, [as late as Heav'n might grant!]
“A skeleton, ferocious, tall, and gaunt;
“Whose loose teeth in their naked sockets shook,
“And grinn'd terrific, a Sardonian look .
“Resistless, to transpierce the human heart,
“And that thy likeness of a head sustain'd
“A regal crown : But all was false, or feign'd.”
“Without one symbol to alarm the heart:
“Not ev'n upon thy flowing vest is shown
“An emblematic dart, or charnel-bone;
“I rather see it, glorious to behold,
“With rubies edg'd, and purfled o'er with gold:
“Gay annual flow'rs adorn each vacant space,
“Of short-liv'd beauty, and uncertain grace.—
“Artificer of fraud and deep disguise!
“Prompt to perform, ingenious to surprize:
“In ev'ry light [as far as man can see
“By thy consent] supreme Hypocrisy!
“Instead of a scalp'd skull, and empty eyes,
“Bones without flesh, and [as we all suppose]
“Vacuity of lips, and cheeks, and nose,
“[So dextrous is thy sorcery and care!]
“I see a woman tolerably fair.
“Camelion-like, a thousand garbs you wear,
“Nor bear the black and solemn thrice a year;
“Drest in gay robes, whose shifting colours show
“The varying glories of the show'ry bow,
“Glowing with waves of gold; sea-tinctur'd green,
“Rich azure, and the bloomy gridéline .
“Plan our disgraces, and contrive our fall;
“With mirth you treat, and bait that mirth with wit:
“False hopes, the loves and graces of your train,
“[Pimps to the great, th'ambitious, and the vain,]
“Summon your guests, and in attendance wait;
“While You, like eastern queens, conceal'd in state,
“O'erlook the whole; th'audacious jest refine,
“Smile on the feast , and sparkle in the wine.
“Arachne thus in ambush'd covert lies;
“Wits, atheists, jobbers, statesmen, are the flies.
“Doom'd to be lost, they dream of no deceit,
“And, fond of ruin, over-look the cheat;
“Pride stands for joy, and riches for delight:—
“Weak men love weakness, in their own despite;
“And, finding in their native funds no ease,
Assume the garb of fools and hope to please.—
“'Twere worth our while to give them fool-bane all:
“Since by degrees each mis-conceiving elf
“Is ruin'd, not by nature, but himself.
“One Half half-mimics health; half-means desire;
“And, tho' true youth and nature have no part,
“Yet paint enlivens it, and wiles, and art;
“Colours laid on with a true harlot-grace;
“They only show themselves, and hide the face.
“The other Half is hideous to behold,
“Ugly as grandame-apes, and full as old.
“There time has spent the fury of his course,
“And plough'd and harrow'd with repeated force:
“One blinking eye with scalding rheum suffus'd,
“A leg contracted, and an arm disus'd;
“An half-liv'd emblem, fit for man to see;
“An hemiplegia of deformity!
“This emblematic side is rarely shown;
“Man would start back if wedded to the crone.
“Side-long it is your custom to advance,
“Show the fair Half, and hide the foul, askance;
“And, like a vet'ran tempter, cast an eye
“Of glancing blandishment in passing by.
“Man rarely sees the moral of your face:
“And [what's the dang'rous frenzy of the whim]
“Concludes, you've no immediate call for him.
“Adjoin to this, your necromantic pow'r,
“Contracting half an age to half an hour.
“Just so the cyphers from the unit fled,
“When Malicorn the demon's contract read .
“The unit in the fore-most column stood,
“And the two cyphers were obscur'd with blood .
“To Circe and Urganda arts unknown:
“When men look on you, and your steps survey,
“You seem to glide a slant another way:
“But the first moment they withdraw their eye
“Swift you take wing, and like a vulture fly,
“Which snuffs the distant quarry in the wind,
“And marks the carcass she is sure to find.—
“The next deception is more wond'rous still;
“O grand artificer of fraud and ill!
“When the sick man up-lifts the sash t'inhale
“Th'enlivening breezes of the western gale,
“To snatch one glympse of ease from flow'ry fields,
“And [fancying] taste the joy which nature yields;
“He sees a phantom, and concludes it you.
“A gleam of courage then relieves his breast,
“Be calm my soul, he cries, and take thy rest :
“When at that moment, dreadful to relate,
“[For all but he that ought observe his fate,]
“The wife, the son, the friend perceive thee stand
“Behind his curtains with up-lifted hand,
“Thee, real Thee! to drive the deadly dart,
“And at one sudden stroke transpierce the heart!”
As trite as Priam's tale, and twice as old,
Reply'd the Queen: Painters and bards, 'tis true,
Have neither sung me right, nor justly drew:
I am not the gaunt spectre they devize
With chap-fall'n mouth, and with extinguish'd eyes.—
Whether enlighten'd with an heav'nly ray,
Or whether thou hast better guess'd than they,
Thy knowledge is superior, or thy guess.
I own the feign'd retreat, th'oblique advance,
The flight I take unseen, th'illusive glance,
The blandishments of artificial grace,
The sound, the palsy'd limbs, and double face.
All I contend for, [there the question lies,]
Is this; Let men but look thro' wisdom's eyes,
And death ne'er takes them by a false surprize.
Create thee out of perishable earth?
Where hot, and cold, the rough, and lenient fight,
The hard, and soft, the heavy, and the light:
Whilst ev'ry atom fretted to decay
The heterogeneous lump of jarring clay?—
Was not just death entail'd on thee and all,
[Such the decree of Heav'n] in Adam's Fall?
Hence the weak branches, hence the sickly fruit.
The annual flouret lifts its tender head,
In summer blooming, and at winter dead;
Nay, if by chance a lasting plant be found,
Whose roots pierce deep th'inhospitable ground;
Whose verdant leaves, [life's common autumn past]
Bid fair t'out-live the bitter wintry blast,
And green old-age predicts a vernal shoot;—
I lend my hand to pluck both branch and root.—
Man is no more perennial than a flow'r;
Some may live years, some months, and some an hour.
When th'embryon-speck of entity began,
Was not the plastic atom at a strife,
'Twixt death ambiguous and a twilight life,
Like the moon's orb; whilst nations in affright
Hope for new day, but fear eternal night?
And doubtful life just gleam'd a glimm'ring ray,
When nature bade the vital tide to roul,
I cloath'd with crust of flesh that gem the soul;
My mortal dart th'immortal stream defil'd,
And the sire's frailties flow'd into the child.
The very milk his pious mother gave
Turn'd poison, and but nurs'd him for the grave .
In ev'ry atom that his frame compos'd
I weak to strong, unsound to sound oppos'd.
Cruel, and proud of a deputed reign,
I ting'd the limpid stream with gloomy pain;
Discolour'd sickness of each dismal hue.
Thus from the source which first life's waters gave,
Till their last final home, the ocean-grave,
Infection blends itself in ev'ry wave:
Marasmus, atrophy, the gout, and stone;
Fruits of our parents' folly and our own!
Man's sprightliest days are intermitting pain.
Changing for worse, and never warn'd by ill,
Still the same bait, the same deception still!
Youth has new times for change, and may command;
Age ventures all upon a losing hand.
The liberty you boast of is a cheat:
Licentiousness lurks under the deceit:
Plenty of means you have, and pow'r to chuse;
Yet still you take the bad, the good refuse.
Born to o'erturn, and breathing to destroy.
These injure not themselves, the reas'ning elf
Injures alike both others and himself.
Sour'd in his liveliest hours, infirm when strong,
Unsure at safest, and but short when long.
Made that nice estimate of TIME you ought?
TIME, like the precious di'mond, should be weigh'd;
Caracts, not pounds, must in the scale be laid.
Know'st thou the value of a year, a day,
An hour, a moment, idly thrown away?
Then had thy life been blessedly employ'd,
And all thy minutes sensibly enjoy'd!
What are they now, and whither are they flown?
Th'immortal pain subsists, the mortal pleasure's gone!
Can'st thou recall them?—Impotent and vain!
Or have they promis'd to return again?
Which lately cut thro' air its viewless track;
Or bid the cataract ascend its source,
Which pour'd from Alpine heights its furious course;
Ah no—Time's vanish'd! and you only find
A cold, un-satisfying scent behind!
Thrice-happy Titus, virtuous in thy prime!
In whom the noon-day—or the setting sun
Ne'er saw a work of goodness left un-done.—
Old-age compounds, or [more provoking yet]
Sends a small gift, when Heav'n expects the debt.
Bring not the leavings of thy faint desires
To Him who gives the best, and best requires;
Man mocks his Maker, and derides his law:
Satan has the full ears, and God the straw.
With gold un-sated and with pow'r un-cloy'd;
With slaves surrounded, and by flatt'rers prais'd:
See him against his nature vainly strive,
The busiest, pertest, proudest thing alive!
[As if beyond the patriarchal date
Exceptive mercy had prolong'd his fate.]
When lo, behind the variegated cloud,
Enwrapt in mists, and muffled in a shrowd,
The dissolution of old-age comes on,
Gouts, palsies, asthmas, jaundice, and the stone:
An hungry, merciless, insatiate band,
Eager as Croats for Death's last command!
Which still repeat their mercenary strain,
Lead us, to add the living to the slain.
His grief, his shame, and self-conviction tell;
Weak were my joys, he cries, and short their stay:
Pride mark'd the race, and folly pick'd the way.
Where's my lost hope, and where the vanish'd hour?
Curst be that greatness which blind fortune lent;
Curst be that wealth which sprung not from content!
Still, still my conscious memory prevails;
And understanding paints where mem'ry fails!
[As safely with the strictest truth I may;]
Why dost thou, ideot, senselessly complain,
[Fond of more life, and covetous of pain,]
That I, a tyrant, seize thee by surprize?—
Flames, as she spoke, shot flashing from her eyes,
Dotard! I gave thee warning ev'ry hour;
Announc'd my presence, and proclaim'd my pow'r.
One only bus'ness in the world was thine,
Born but to die! T'exact the payment mine.
If, atheist-like, you blame the just decree,
Attack thy Maker, but exculpate me!
Life is a chain of links which lead to death.
Sleep—wake—run—creep—alike to death you move;
Death's in thy meat, thy wine, thy sleep, thy love.
Know'st thou not me, my warnings, and alarms?
Thou, who so oft hast slumber'd in my arms!
For ever seeing, can'st thou nought descry?
Dead ev'ry night, and yet untaught to die?
Thy self a breathing, speaking monument?
No death is sudden to a wretch like thee,
The emblem of his own mortality!
Above, beneath, within thee, and without,
All things fore-show the stroke, and clear the doubt.
The very apoplex, thy swiftest foe,
Forewarns his coming; and approaches slow;
Sudden confusions interrupt thy brain;
Swift thro' thy temples shoots the previous pain;
Death always speaks, if man would strive to hear.
Leave sophistry to wits; be truly wise;
For, as the cedar falls, it ever lies !
Start not at what we call our latest breath;
The morning of man's real life is death .
Fear smote my heart, and conscience stung my soul;
Remorse, vexation, shame, and anger strive.—
I wak'd:—and [to my joy] I wak'd alive.
Never was human transport more sincere;—
And the best men may find instruction here.
Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans.
Oscitat extemplò tetigit cum limina villæ,
Aut abit in somnum gravis, atque oblivia quærit.
Lucret. L. III, v 1076.
All the verses in this Paragraph marked with inverted commas are imitated from a famous passage in Statius, never yet translated into our language. The original perhaps is as fine a morsel of poetry as antiquity can boast of.
Quóve errore miser, donis ut solus egerem
Somne tuis? Tacet omne pecus, volucresque, feræque;
Et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos.
Nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus. Occidit horror
Æquoris, & terris maria acclinata quiescunt.
At nunc heus aliquis longa sub nocte puellæ
Brachia nexa tenens, ultro te Somne repellit.
Inde veni. Nec te totas infundere pennas
Luminibus compello meis, [hoc turba precatur
Lætior;] extremo me tange cacumine virgæ,
Sufficit; aut leviter suspenso poplite transi.
Alfalsa [from the old Arabian word alfalsafat] Lucerne-Grass. At present the Spaniards call it also Ervayè.
A sort of ever-green laryx: Pinus Cembra. This beautiful tree grows wild on the Spanish Appennines, and is raised by culture in less mountainous places. What name the Natives give it I have forgotten; but the French in the Briançois call it meleze, and the Italians in the bishoprick of Trente, in Fiume, &c. give it the name of cirmoli, not lariché.
St. John's Wort. See Gondibert, L. I, Canto 6. This plant is called by us the herb of war, not merely because its juice is of a bloody colour, but because it is one of the principal vulnerary herbs used in making the famous arquebusade-water.—And again, as its leaves are full of little punctures and holes, it is named by Latin writers Porosa, and Perfoliata: The French call it Mille-Pertuis, and the Italians, Perforata.
According to the antients the Herba Sardoä, or apium risûs, [by some supposed to be the water crow-foot] brought on, after being eaten, such horrid convulsions, that the party died grinning, thro' the extremity of agony.
Dryden's Flower and Leaf. “Bright crimson and pure white, sweetly mixed in waves and melting one into the other, make the colour which our ancient poets called gridéline.”
Malicorn was an astrologer advanced in years, but, being ambitious of making a great figure in this world, made over his soul to Satan, upon condition that he enjoyed earthly grandeur for 100 years more. The contract was written, signed and sealed in due form, when lo, at the expiration of one year the evil spirit entered Malicorn's chamber, preceded by thunder and lightning, and demanded him as his forfeit. The astrologer was exceedingly terrified, and, after making many remonstrances, insisted on seeing the original contract; but the cyphers in number 100 were written with evanescent ink, and the figure I only remained legible. The moral of this fiction is incomparable. See Act V, Sc. 5.
“Consider, O man, what thou wert before thy birth, what thou art from thy birth to thy death, and what thou shalt be after death. Thou wast made of an impure substance, and cloathed and nourished in thy mother's blood.” St. August.
MORAL.
Who puts off Death, to the last moments driv'n,Is near the Grave, but very far from Heav'n .
He who repents, and gains the wish'd reprieve,
Was fit to die, and is more fit to live.
Chuse a good convoy in an hostile course;
Right foresight never makes a danger worse.
THE COURTIER AND PRINCE:
A FABLE.
Proba , Her self a Muse, commands to sing:
Divest thy self of thy pretended bays,
And crown'd with short-liv'd flow'rs present thy lays:
From female archives stol'n, a Tale disclose,
Verse-tortur'd into rhymes from honest prose.
Short fables may with double grace be told;
So smallest glasses sweetest essence hold.
Of no small use to rising men at court:
[Who seek promotion in the worldly road,
And make their titles and their wealth their God;]
A tale to prose-men known , by verse-men fam'd .
Rose like a meteor, and eclyps'd the court;
By chance or cunning ev'ry storm out-braves:
Top-most he rode, midst shoals of fools and knaves,
Triumphant, like an eygre , o'er the waves:
Casually lucky, fortunately great,
Ten times his planet overcame his fate.
Riches flow'd in; and accidents were kind;
Health join'd her opium to delude the mind ;
Whilst pride was gratify'd in ev'ry view,
And pow'r had scarce an object to pursue;
Till nature's self could do no more to please.—
Vain-glorious mortal, to profusion blest!
And almost by prosperity distrest!
Whilst poets, the worst pandars of the age,
Hymn'd his no-virtues in each flatt'ring page:
True parasitic plants , which only grow
Upon their patron-trees, like miscelto:
So pella-mountain on the flax appears,
And thyme, th'epíthĭmy , (her bastard) rears;
Just so th'agáric from the larix springs,
And fav'rites fatten on perspiring kings.—
That better things their proper place may hold.
As her own offspring, was Amariel nam'd.
At his first horoscope the goddess smil'd,
And wrapp'd in her own mantle her own child;
Then, as a Wit upon th'occasion said,
[Not less a Wit, we hope, for being dead,]
“Gave him her blessing, put him in a way,
“Set up the farce, and laugh'd at her own play.’
Espous'd him early, but caress'd him old;
Duteous and faithful as an Indian wife,
She made appearance to be true for life:
And kept her love alive, and like to last,
Beyond the date her Pompey was disgrac'd.
But nothing certain [as the Wise man found]
Is to be deem'd on sublunary ground.
To serve a Prince who ne'er his friends forgot:
Humain, discreet, compassionate, and brave;
Not milder when he lov'd, than when forgave.
Gen'rous of promise, punctual in the deed;
Grac'd with more candour than most monarchs need.
A milkiness of blood his heart possess'd;
With grief he punish'd, and with transport bless'd .
Great souls with mild compassion most abound.
The golden dye with soft complacence takes
Each speaking lineament th'engraver makes,
And wears a faithful image for mankind,
True to the features, truer to the mind:
Whilst stubborn iron [like a barren soil
To lab'ring hinds] eludes the artist's toil;
Corrodes itself, or hardens into rust.
Is universal charity and love:
Patient of wrongs, and enemy to strife;
Basis of virtue, and the staff of life!
Whilst av'rice, private censure, public rage,
Are th'old man's hobby-horse, and crutch of age.
Party conducts us to the meanest ends;
Party made Herod and a Pilate friends .
Who first immortaliz'd man-killing fools;
Blockheads in council, bloody in command:
Warriors—not of the head, but of the hand;
True brethren of the iron-pated Suede :
They fight like Ajax, and like Ajax read.
Only an ELEPHANT is truly so.
[Thus writes a Wit , well-known a cent'ry past;
Forgotten now; yet still his fame shall last.]
Kings have their follies; Statesmen have their arts;
Wealth spoils the Great; Beauty ensnares our hearts;
And Wits are doubly dup'd by having parts.
Some have ten times the parts they ought to use;
“A great Wit's greatest WORK is to REFUSE !”
Never, O Bards, the warning voice despise;—
To ADD is dang'rous, to RETRENCH is wise.
Poets, instead of saying what they could,
Must only say the very thing they should.
This mighty ΕΥΡΗΚΑ reserv'd for Few,
Virgil and Boileau, Pope and Dryden knew.
There is no wand'rer like the poet's horse:
[Sick of his track, and punish'd for his pains,]
To mimic galloping on green-swarth plains.
So, in the daily work she labours at,
The swallow toils, and rises with a gnat.—
T'enjoy the coolness of a summer-shade,
Wrapt up in virtuous schemes of means and ends,
To reconcile his foes, or bless his friends,
He spy'd a figure, which by shape he knew,
In a lone grotto half-conceal'd from view:
Thither the prudent wand'rer had retir'd,
As modesty and well-bred sense requir'd:
Studious of manners, fearful to intrude
On precious hours of royal solitude.
Invelop'd in the umbrage of a cell:
But, as my spirits ask a pause from thought,
Walk with thy Master, and with him inhale
The cooling freshness of the western gale.
This grove's my kingdom, and each tree my child:
[Forgive the vanity, which thus compares
My self to Cyrus, and his rural cares ;]
My ready pencil sketch'd the first design,
These eyes adjusted ev'ry space and line;
These hands have fixt th'inoculated shoots,
Train'd the loose branches, and reform'd the roots.
Happy the monarch of the town and field,
Where vice to laws, and weeds to culture yield!
Reluctant is the staple of the land:
Of rule impatient, and averse to toil.
In vain I cherish, and in vain replace;
Th'ungrateful branch flies back, and wounds my face.
Courtiers are like th'Hyéna, never tame;
No bounties fix them, and no arts reclaim:
Frontless they run the muck thro' thick and thin;
Not poorer, if they lose;—and they may win.
Patriots of their own int'rest, right or wrong:
Foes to the feeble, flatt'rers to the strong.
Stiff complaisance thro' their best homage spreads,
So turn-soles court the sun with 'wry-neck'd heads.
True as a dial, when their patrons shine;
But blank, if the said patrons pow'r resign.
Like good Sir Martin , when he lost his man,
They grieve—and get another as they can.
Where man the ruler is, and men employ'd,]
Of all my friends and servants, you alone
Have pleas'd me best, and most reliev'd the throne.
Whatever then my bounty can provide;
Whatever by my friendship be supply'd;
As far as faith can bind, or speech can say,
Ask, and I meet thy wishes half the way.
Such gratitude as dwells in courtier's breast:
Pleas'd to the height of transport he retir'd;
His fears were calm'd, and his ambition fir'd.
Unhappy man, in both his objects wrong;
The weak he trusted, and forgot the strong!
A fever did his limbs and spirits seize:
Advancing gently, no alarm it makes,
[Like murd'ring Indians gliding thro' the brakes:]
She storms, and nothing can her force repell.
Instant, a liquid fire enflames the blood,
Whilst spasms impede the self-refining flood:
Petechial spots th'approach of death proclaim,
Redd'ning like comets with vindictive flame;
Whilst wand'ring talk, and mopings wild, presage
Moon-struck illusion, and conclude in rage.
Inevitable death alarms the heart;
Nature stands by, and bids her aim the dart.
Had hardly words to speak, or tears to flow;
At length in broken sounds was heard to cry,
Grant me to see my Master, e'er I die.
The Master came. Ah, Prince, Amariel said,
Now keep thy promise, and extend thy aid;
Unfurl my tangled thread of human breath,
And call me back one year, before my death.
Stood like a statue mortiz'd to the wall:
At length, recov'ring from amazement, broke
An awful silence, and thus gravely spoke:
Amariel, sure thy pangs disturb thy brain:
The boon you ask is blasphemous and vain:
Am I a God, to alter death's decree?
That's the prerogative of Heav'n, not me!
Gain me a week, three days, or gain me one.
Sure thy disease to madness is ally'd:
Ask me for riches—freely I resign
A third or half, and bid thee make them thine.
Whate'er the world can human greatness call,
Pow'r, rank, grants, titles, I'll bestow them all.
Then die in peace, or with contentment live,
Nor ask a gift no mortal pow'r can give.
The sick man then propos'd a new desire:
“As death's dread tyranny has no controul,
“Can you ensure the safety of my soul?”
Anxious and doubtful for my future state,
I read the danger, but I read too late.
The Prince stood mute; compassion and amaze
Tore his divided heart ten thousand ways:
And, having rightly weigh'd the sick man's pray'r,
Thus he reply'd in sorrow and despair:
“Unalienable is the Grace of Heav'n.
“I tremble at the rash request you make,
“Which is not mine to grant, or your's to take.”
Turn'd from his Prince in mournful discontent,
And, lifting up to Heav'n his hands and eyes,
Thus in a flood of tears obtests the skies:
“Deceiv'd when living, and deceiv'd in death!
“Why did I waste my strength, my cares, my fame
“To serve a master—master but in name?
“An ethnic idol, for delusion made;
“Eyes without sight, protection without aid?
“Unable to bestow the good we want,
“And ready, what avails us not, to grant!
“Deceitful, impotent, unuseful Pow'r;
“Which can give di'monds, but not give an hour!
“At Rimmon's shrine no longer will I bow,
“But thus to th'All-pow'rfull King address my vow:
“Ruler of earth, and monarch of the skies;
“Thou, whom th'intents of virtuous actions please;
“Whose laws are freedom, and whose service ease :
“Willing to hear; omnipotent to save!
“Who ne'er forgot one meritorious deed,
“Nor left a servant in the hour of need.
“To mercy and to equity inclin'd;
“Who mind'st the heart, and tenour of the mind .
“Forgive my error, and my life restore;
“Thee will I serve alone, and Thee adore!
“Farewell earth's deities and idols all;
“Moloch and Mammon, Chiun , Dagon, Baal:
“Whose CHEMARIMS tread their fantastic rounds
“O'er AVEN's plains, and dance to Tyrian sounds.
“Life's lambent meteor glist'ring round her horns.
“And Sidon's stream run purple to the main.
“Shorn of its beams, and gleaming sickly light:
“Malignant orb! which tempts bewilder'd swains
“To gulphs, to quicksands, and waste trackless plains!
“By thee the false Achitophel was led;
“And Haman dy'd aloft, and made a cloud his bed.
“I'll seek no safety from a splinter'd reed;
“Which causes those to fall, who wish to stand;
“Or, if it aids the steps, gangrenes the hand .
“Sought-for an age, and squander'd in an hour!
“Full late we learn, in sickness, pains, and woe,
“What in high health 'twas possible to know.
“Groups of Gehazis choak the space between:
“Who live unthinking, and obdurate die,
“Nor heed their own or children's leprosy .
“Sin-born and blind! Who change, protest, and swear,
“With the same ease they draw the vital air.
“Proud of the wit, and heedless of the sin,
“They strip, and sell the christian to the skin .
“Charms irresistible the dupes behold
“In vineyards, farms, and all-compelling gold.
“Others [still weaker] set their truth to sale
“For a mere sound, and cut off Heav'n's entail:
“Whilst He, who never fails his imps, supplies
“Prompt treachoury, and fresh-created lies.—
“Time-servers are at ev'ry man's command
“For loaves and fish on Dalmanutha's strand .”
Gave anguish vent, and felt a moment's rest.
And Hezekiah gain'd the wish'd reprieve .
Once more his blood with equal pulses flow'd,
And health's contentment on his visage glow'd.
Places and honours he with joy resign'd;
[Peace-off'rings to procure a tranquil mind !]
Gave all his riches to the sick and poor,
And made one Patriarch-farm his only store.
To groves and brooks our new Elijah ran,
Far from the monster world, and traytor man.
Thus he surviv'd the tempest of the day,
And ev'ning-sunshine shot a glorious ray.
Diseases, sickness, disappointments, sorrow,
All lend us comfort, whilst they seem to borrow.
Ennobled by the virtues he acquir'd;
But the true transports of the Wise and Good
Are best by implication understood;
Except the Muse with Dryden's strength could soar:—
Me, humble prudence whispers to give o'er.
A safe retreat; plann'd and perform'd with care;
Stands for a vict'ry in poetic war.
So when the warbling lark has mounted high
With up-right flight, and gain'd upon the sky,
Grown giddy, she contracts her flick'ring wings:
Thrids her descending course in spiral rings,
Less'ning her voice; but to the ground she sings:
Resolving, on a more auspicious day,
Higher to mount, and chaunt a better lay .
One Pope is the slow child-birth of one age.
Others write verses, but they write unblest;
Some few good lines stand sponsors for the rest:
They miss wit's depth, and on the surface skim;
[He who seeks pearls, must dive, as well as swim.]
Bad bards, worse critics!—Thus we multiply
Poems and rules, but write no poetry.
Ev'n Pope, like Charlemagne, with all his fire
Made Paladins—but not an host entire .
Far as its pow'rs could go, thy genius went:
Good sense still kept thee in thy own extent .
Most wits, like misers, always covet more.
Leave me, lov'd Bard, instructor of my youth,
Leave me the sounds of verse, and voice of truth;
So when Elias dropp'd his mantle, ran
Elisha, and a prophet's life began .
Yield diff'rent produce, and at diff'rent times.
Italian plants, in nature's hot-bed plac'd,
Bear fruits in spring, and riot into waste.
French flow'rs less early, [and yet early,] blow:
Their pertness is a green-house from the snow.
Cold Northern wits demand a longer date;
Our genius, like our climate, ripens late.
The fancy's solstice is at forty o'er,
The tropic of our judgment sees three-score.
Thus summer codlings yield a poignant draught,
Which frisks the palate, but ne'er warms the thought:
Take all bad weathers, and thro' autumn last:
Mellow'd from wild austerity, at length
They taste like nectar, and adopt its strength.
A Roman young Lady of quality and a Christian convert. She afterwards married Adelphus, who was a Proconsul in the reign of Honorius and Theodosius junior. She composed an History of the Old and New Testament in verse. Her Epitaph on her husband is much admired. Both pieces were printed at Francfort in 1541.
Her name at length was Proba, Valeria, Falconia.
The tenth wave, when rivers are swollen by floods, or agitated by storms, is called in some parts of England an eygre. See Dryden's Threnod. August.
“Prosperous health and uninterrupted ease are often the occasion of some fatal misfortune. Thus a long peace makes men unguarded, and sometimes unmindful, in matters of war: It being observed, that the most signal overthrow is usually given us, when an unexpected enemy surprizeth us in the deep sleep of peace and security.” St. Gregor. the Great.
Parasitical plants, according to the language of botanists, will not grow in the common matrix of the earth, but their seeds, being dispersed by winds, take root in the excrementitious parts of a decayed tree, or arise as an excrescence from the exsudations of some tree or plant. Thus the dodder (cuscuta) formerly called pella-mountain, grows usually on flax; and therefore the Italian peasant calls it podagra di linio.
The Arabians and Italians [imitating the Greek word επιθυμιον] call this adscititious plant efitimo and epithimio; but very few of our English botanists make mention of it. As far as I have hitherto seen, only one of our herbalists has touched upon it, namely, Peter Treveris, who flourished about the reign of Henry VII. He calls it epíthĭmy. For my own part, not caring to invent new words in poetry, I have thought proper to retain the word which he (Treveris) has used, as it is well-sounding, and not inelegant.
The staple of the soil, in an husbandry-sense, is the upper earth, which lies within the reach of the plough and influence of the atmosphere.
Thus we call wool, with relation to England, a staple commodity.
Jam revocat, parvoque jubet decurrere gyro.
Columell. de Hortis, L. 10.
Laxaturq; chelys: vires instigat, alitq;
Tempestiva quies; major post otia virtus.
Sylv. L. 4.
An answer made by Boccace, when it was objected to him, that some of his novels had not the spirit of the rest.
Amongst Mr. Pope's great intellectual abilities, good sense was his most distinguishing character: For he knew precisely, and as it were by a sort of intuition, what he had power to do, and what he could not do.
He often used to say, that for ten years together he firmly resisted the importunity of friends and flatterers, when they solicited him to undertake a Translation of Virgil after Dryden. Nor did he ever mistake the extent of his talents, but in the following trivial instance; and that was, when he writ his Ode to Music on St. Cecilia's day, induced perhaps by a secret ambition of rivalling the Inimitable Dryden. In which case, if he hath not exceeded the original, [for there is always some advantage in writing first] he hath at least surpassed [and perhaps ever will surpass] those that come after him, and attempt to make the same experiment.
THE ENCHANTED REGION:
OR, MISTAKEN PLEASURES.
I
Empty, illusory Life,Pregnant with fraud, in mischiefs rife ;
Form'd t'ensnare us, and deceive us:
Nahum's Enchantress! which beguiles
With all her harlotry of wiles!—
First She loves, and then She leaves us!
II
Erring happiness beguilesThe wretch that strays o'er Circe's isles;
All things smile, and all annoy him;
The rose has thorns, the doves can bite;
Sleep an opium to destroy him.
III
Louring in the groves of deathEugh-trees breathe funereal breath,
Brambles and thorns perplex the shade:
Asphaltic waters creep and rest;
Birds, in gaudy plumage drest,
Scream un-meaning thro' the glade .
IV
Earth fallacious herbage yields,And deep in grass its influence shields;
Acrid juices, scent annoying;—
Corrósive crow-feet choak the plains,
And hemlock strip'd with lurid stains,
And luscious mandrakes, life-destroying.
V
Gaudy bella-donna blowing,Or with glossy berries glowing,
Lures th'Un-wise to tempt their doom:
Love's apple masks the fruit of death;
Sick ben-bane murders with her breath,
Actæa with an harlot's bloom.
VI
One plant alone is wrapt in shade;Few eyes its privacy invade;
Plant of joy, of life, and health!
More than the fabled lotos fam'd,
Which [tasted once] mankind reclaim'd
From parents, country, pow'r, and wealth .
VII
On yonder Alp I see it rise,Aspiring to congenial skies,
But cover'd half with ivy-walls;—
There, where Eusebio rais'd a shrine,
Snatch'd from the gulph by Pow'r Divine,
Where Reiga's tumbling torrent falls .
VIII
Compar'd with thee, how dimly showsPoor Anacreon's life-less rose?
What is Homer's plant to thee?—
In vain the Mantuan poet try'd
To paint Amellus' starry pride,
Emblem of wit's futility!
IX
Men saw, alas, and knew not thee,Mystic evangelic tree!
Thou hadst no charms for paynim-eyes;
Till, guided by the lamp of Heav'n,
To chaste Urania pow'r was giv'n
To see, t'admire, and moralize.
X
All-beauteous flow'r, whose centre glowsWith studs of gold; thence streaming flows
A rich expanse of varying hue,
Enfring'd with an empurpled-blue,
And streak'd with young Pomona's green .
XI
High o'er the pointal, deck'd with gold,[Emblem mysterious to behold,]
A radiant cross its form expands;—
Its opening arms appear t'embrace
The whole collective human race,
Refuge of all men in all lands!
XII
Grant me, kind Heav'n, in prosp'rous hourTo pluck this consecrated flow'r,
And wear it thankful on my breast;
Then shall my steps securely stray,
No joys seduce, no cares molest.
XIII
Like Tobit [when the hand, approv'dBy Heav'n, th'obstructing films remov'd ]
I now see objects as I ought:
Ambition's hideous; pleasure vain;
Av'rice is but a blockhead's gain,
Possessing all, bestowing nought.
XIV
Passions and frauds surround us all,Their empire is reciprocal:
Shun their blandishments and wiles;
Riches but serve to steel the heart;
Want has its meaness and its art;
Health betrays, and strength beguiles.
XV
In highest stations snares misguide;Midst solitude they nurture pride,
Breeding vanity in knowledge;
A poison in delicious meat,
Midst wines a fraud, midst mirth a cheat,
In courts, in cabinet, and college.
XVI
The toils are fixt, the sportsmen keen:Abroad unsafe, betray'd within,
Whither, O Mortal! art thou flying?
Thy resolutions oft are snares,
Thy doubts, petitions, gifts, and pray'rs;—
Alas, there may be snares in dying!
XVII
Deceiving none, by none ensnar'd,O Paraclete , be thou my guard,
Patron of ev'ry just endeavour!
The Cross of Christ is man's reward :
Christian joys are joys for ever!
“Art thou arrived to maturity of life? Look back and thou shalt see the frailty of thy youth, the folly of thy childhood, and the senseless dissipation of thy infancy!—Look forward and thou shalt behold the insincerity of the world and cares of life, the diseases of thy body and the troubles of thy mind.” Anon. Vet.
“In this world death is every-where, grief every-where, and desolation every-where. The world flieth us, and yet we follow it: It falleth, and we adhere to it, fall with it, and attempt to enjoy it falling.” St. Gregor. Hom.
It is remarked, that birds adorned with rich plumage, as peacocks, parrots, &c. have, generally speaking, un-musical voices.
This alludes to a well-known fact in the dutchy of Carniola, where the present Ode was written.
About the year 1675, a nobleman was riding at night upon a road which goes near the edge of the precipice here mentioned. Mistaking his way (and that for a few steps only) his horse stopped short, and refused to go on; upon which the rider, who in all probability was heated with liquor, (otherwise he ought to have known the precipice better, it being not far from his own castle) lost both his temper and prudence, and spurred the horse with great anger; upon which the poor beast took a desperate leap, intending, as was imagined, to have reached another angle of the precipice on the same side which the road lay. The horse fell directly into the torrent, two or three hundred feet beneath, and was hurried away with such rapidity that the body was never found. The nobleman was discovered next day in an opening of the rock, about half-way down, where a few bushes grew; and, as the saddle was found not far from him, it was supposed that the horse, by the violence of the effort he made, burst the saddle-girths. The rider lived many years after this wonderful escape, and, out of gratitude to God, erected a beautiful chapple on the edge of the precipice, dedicated (if I mistake not) to St. Anthony of Padua.
I made a drawing of the chapple, precipice, torrent, and nobleman's castle; of which a copy was taken afterwards by the celebrated draftsman Visentini, at Venice, in 1750: It makes the vignette, or ornamental copper-plate prefixed to this Poem.
“My heart is a vain and wandering heart, whenever it is led by its own determinations. It is busy to no purpose, and occupied to to no end, whenever it is not guided by divine influence: It seeketh rest and findeth none: It agreeth not with itself: It alters resolutions, changeth judgement, frames new thoughts, and suppresses old ones; pulls down every thing, and re-buildeth nothing; in short, it never continueth in the same state.” St. Bernard. Meditat.
“Seest thou the luminary of the greater world in the highest pitch of meridian glory; where it continueth not, but descends in the same proportion as it ascended? Look next and consider if the light of this lower world is more permanent? Continuance is the child of Eternity, and not of Time.” Ex. Vet. Ascet.
“All vices wax old by age: Covetousness (and Ambition) alone grow young.” Ex. Vet. Ascet.
“Why are earth and ashes proud? There is not a more wicked thing than a covetous man: for such an one setteth his own soul to sale, because, while he liveth, he casteth away his bowels;” i.e. is a stranger to compassion. Ecclus. Ch. x, v 9.
“All vices wax old by age: Covetousness (and Ambition) alone grow young.” Ex. Vet. Ascet.
“Why are earth and ashes proud? There is not a more wicked thing than a covetous man: for such an one setteth his own soul to sale, because, while he liveth, he casteth away his bowels;” i.e. is a stranger to compassion. Ecclus. Ch. x, v 9.
ΠΑΡΑΚΛΗΤΟΣ: The Comforter; The Holy Spirit. John Ch. xiv, v 16–26. Dryden first introduced the word Paraclete into the English language, in his translation of the Hymn Veni Creator Spiritus: As also in his Britannia Rediviva:
“The Paraclete in fiery pomp descend.
“But, when his wond'rous octave roll'd again”—
EULOGIUS:
OR, The CHARITABLE MASON. An HISTORICAL FABLE: Taken from the Greek of Paulus Syllogus, Lib. III.
Deservire bonis, semperq; OPTARE parati,
Spargimur in casus.
Stat. Sylvæ, L. II.
And better things than those which we desire.
Dryd. Palam. & Arc.
Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain. Agur's Prayer. Prov. Ch. xxx, v. 8, 9.
INTRODUCTION.
To classic taste and philosophic truth,
Once more, thy kind attention to engage,
And, dying, leave thee comfort for old-age;
This Hist'ry may eternal truths suggest:—
I've seen thee learned, and would leave thee blest!
One grain of piety avails us more
Than Prussia's laurels, or Potosi's store.
Dup'd by false hopes, and by our pray'rs undone!
We want, we wish; we change, we change agen;
Yet know not how to ask, nor what, nor when.
They know they have a road, but miss their way;
Th'existence of their home admits no doubt;
Th'uncertainty—is where to find it out .
Parents for children pray, which break their hearts.
Contractors, agio-men, for villas sigh;
To-day they purchase, and to-morrow die.
Six cubic feet of earth are all their lot ;
Mourn'd with hypocrisy, with ease forgot.
Their Christian-heirs the pagan-rites employ,
And give the fun'ral ILICET with joy.
Kneels down a wit, and rises up a fool.
Weak hands affect to hold the Statesman's scale;
As well the shrimp might emulate a whale.—
Clamb'ring, with stars averse, to Fortune's height
Ambitious Omri rose, and dropp'd down-right—
His paunch too heavy, and his head too light.
Like fall'n Salmoneus, he perceiv'd, at length,
The mean hypocrisy of boasted strength:
To deal like Dennis his vain thunder round,
And imitate inimitable sound.—
Both ways deceitful is the wine of pow'r,
When new, 'tis heady, and, when old, 'tis sow'r.
Ianthe pray'd for beauty; luckless maid!—
An idiot-mind th'angelic form betray'd.
Nature profusely deck'd the out-side pile,
But starv'd the poor inhabitant the while.
The Muses lent him theirs. He sweetly sung;
And—[but for Milton ] had more sweetly swung.
Learn hence, he cry'd, “my merry brethren all ,”
Tyburn's agáric stanches wit, and gall.
And break their necks, before they end the heat.
Libanius try'd the streams of eloquence,
But plummet-deep he sunk, un-buoy'd with sense.
Soncinas ask'd the “knack of plotting treason
“Against the crown and dignity of reason .”
By his own art th'artificer was try'd,
And lawyers beat him on the quibbling side.
“A tale,” says Prior, “ne'er should be too long.”
Ill-judging is the bard, who slacks his pace
And seeks for flow'rs, when he should run the race;
Or, wand'ring to enchanted castles, sleeps
On beds of down; or Cupid's vigils keeps;
Whilst the main action is by pleasures crost,
And the first purport of th'adventure lost.
Great Wits may scorn the dry poetic law;
Nor from the critic, but from nature, draw:
Each seeming trip, and each digressive start,
Displays their ease the more, and deep-plann'd art:
(All study'd blandishments t'allure the heart.)
Like Santueil's stream, gliding thro' flow'ry plains,
Th'effects are seen: The source unknown remains.
Philip Stanhope, Esq; late Member of Parliament for St. German's in Cornwall, and at present Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Dresden and the Circle of Lower Saxony, &c.
“Lyrnessi domus alta;—Solo Laurente sepulcrum.
Virg. Æneid. XII.
“A small space of ground after death contains both rich and poor. Nature produceth us all alike, and makes no distinction at death. Open the grave, view the dead bodies, move the ashes; you will find no difference between the patrician and the peasant, except thus far; that by the magnificence of the tomb of the former you may perceive he had much more to resign and lose than the latter.”
St. Ambrose.Milton interceded, and saved D'avenant, when he was a state-prisoner at Cowe's castle in the Isle of Wight, anno 1650: D'avenant; in return, preserved Milton at the Restoration.
Alluding to a passage in Dryden: “A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, bare hanging; but, to make a malefactor die sweetly, was only belonging to her husband.” Dedication to Juvenal.
Alluding to his famous inscription:
Quæ dat aquas saxo latet hospita Nympha sub imo;Sic tu, cum dederis dona, latere velis.
Santol. Poem.
When pious Justin fill'd the Eastern throne,
In a small dorp till then for nothing fam'd,
And by the neighb'ring swains Thebaïs nam'd,
Eulogius liv'd: an humble mason he;
In nothing rich, but virtuous poverty.
From noise and riot he devoutly kept,
Sigh'd with the sick, and with the mourner wept;
Half his earn'd pittance to poor neighbours went:
They had his alms, and he had his content.
Still from his little he could something spare
To feed the hungry, and to cloathe the bare.
He gave, whilst aught he had, and knew no bounds;
The poor man's drachma stood for rich men's pounds.
He learnt with patience, and with meekness taught;
His life was but the comment of his thought.
That men had more religion then than now.
Whether they nearer liv'd to the blest times
When man's Redeemer bled for human crimes;
Whether the Hermits of the Desart fraught
With living practice, by example taught;
Or whether, with transmissive virtues fir'd,
[Which Chrysostoms all-eloquent inspir'd,]
They caught the sacred flame—I spare to say.
Religion's Sun still shot an ev'ning-ray.
Whose skirts meand'ring Peneus washes still,
Our pious lab'rer pass'd his youthful days
In peace and charity, in pray'r and praise.
No theatres of oaks around him rise,
Whose roots earth's centre touch, whose heads the skies:
No stately larch-tree there expands a shade
O'er half a rood of Larisséan glade:
Which loit'ring whispers on the cloud-capp'd trees;
Such imag'ry of greatness ill became
A nameless dwelling, and an unknown name!
Instead of forest-monarchs, and their train,
The un-ambitious rose bedeck'd the plain:
Trifoliate cytisus restrain'd its boughs
For humble sheep to crop, and goats to browze.
On skirting heights thick stood the clust'ring vine,
And here and there the sweet-leav'd eglantine;
One lilac only, with a statelier grace,
Presum'd to claim the oak's and cedar's place,
And, looking round him with a monarch's care,
Spread his exalted boughs to wave in air.
And in a month a decent home-stall rose,
Something, between a cottage and a cell.—
Yet virtue here could sleep, and peace could dwell.
He chipp'd his pavement, and he squar'd his blocks:
And then, without the aid of neighbours' art,
Perform'd the carpenter's and glazier's part.
The site was neither granted him, nor giv'n;
'Twas nature's; and the ground-rent due to Heav'n.
Wife he had none: Nor had he love to spare;
An aged mother wanted all his care.
They thank'd their Maker for a pittance sent,
Supp'd on a turnip, slept upon content.
With white-wash deckt, and river-sand o'er-cast:
The first, [forgive my verse if too diffuse,]
Perform'd the kitchin's and the parlour's use:
The second, better bolted and immur'd,
From wolves his out-door family secur'd:
[For he had twice three kids, besides their dams;
A cow, a spaniel, and two fav'rite lambs:]
Held, for his mother's use, a feather'd bed:
Two moss-matrasses in the fourth were shown;
One for himself, for friends and pilgrims one.
Emblems of industry and virtuous gains !
Pilaster'd jas'mines 'twixt the windows grew,
With lavendar beneath, and sage and rue.
Pulse of all kinds diffus'd their od'rous pow'rs,
Where nature pencils butterflies on flow'rs:
Nor were the cole-worts wanting, nor the root
Which after-ages call Hybernian fruit.
There, at a wish, much chamomile was had;
[The conscience of man's stomach good or bad;]
Spoon-wort was there, scorbutics to supply;
And centaury to clear the jaundic'd eye;
To nymphs and swains the vision of their friends.
Else physical and kitchin-plants alone
His skill acknowledge, and his culture own.
Each herb he knew, that works or good or ill,
More learn'd than Mesva , half as learn'd as Hill;
For great the man, and useful, without doubt,
Who seasons pottage—or expells the gout;
Whose science keeps life in, and keeps death out!
He rear'd his frugal meat, but never bought:
A kid sometimes for festivals he slew:
The choicer part was his sick neighbour's due:
Two bacon-flitches made his Sunday's chear;
Some the Poor had, and some out-liv'd the year:
With humble milk, compos'd his usual fare.
[The poor man then was rich, and liv'd with glee;
Each barley-head un-taxt, and day-light free:]
All had a part in all the rest could spare,
The common water , and the common air .
The happiest, most contented man alive.
His conscience chear'd him with a life well-spent,
His prudence a superfluous something lent,
Which made the poor who took, and Poor who gave, content.
Alternate were his labours and his rest,
For ever blessing, and for ever blest.
Prevented wishing, and out-ran desire.
He sought, not to prolong poor lives, but save:
And That which others lend, he always gave.
Us'ry, a canker in fair Virtue's rose,
Corrodes, and blasts the blossom e'er it blows:
So fierce, O Lucre, and so keen thy edge:—
Thou tak'st the poor man's mill-stones for a pledge !
His brother-christian mark'd, and knew him well:
With zeal un-envying, and with transport fir'd,
Beheld him, prais'd him, lov'd him, and admir'd.
Convinc'd, that noiseless piety might dwell
In secular retreats, and flourish well;
And that Heav'n's King [so great a Master He]
Had servants ev'ry-where, of each degree.
“I've liv'd an anchorete in pray'rs and tears:
“Yon' spring, which bubbles from the mountain's side,
“Has all the luxury of thirst supply'd:
“The roots of thistles have my hunger fed,
“Two roods of cultur'd barley give me bread,
“A rock my pillow, and green moss my bed.
“The mid-night-clock attests my fervent pray'rs,
“The rising Sun my orisons declares,
“The live-long day my aspirations knows,
“And with the setting sun my vespers close!
“Thy truth, my hope: Thy Providence, my guard:
“Thy Grace, my strength: Thy Heav'n, my last reward!”
“But, self-devoted from the prime of youth
“To life sequester'd, and ascetic truth,
“And bent beneath the load of sev'nty years,
“I nothing from my industry can gain
“To ease the poor man's wants, or sick man's pain:
“My garden takes up half my daily care,
“And my field asks the minutes I can spare;
“While blest Eulogius from his pittance gives
“The better half, and in true practice lives.
“Heav'n is but cheaply serv'd with words and show,
“I want that glorious virtue—To BESTOW!
“True Christianity depends on fact:
“Religion is not theory, but act.
“Men, Seraphs, all, Eulogius' praise proclaim,
“Who lends both sight and feet to blind and lame.
“Who soothes th'asperity of hunger's sighs,
“And dissipates the tear from mournful eyes;
“Pilgrims or wand'ring angels entertains;
“Like pious Abraham on Mamre's plains.
“He feels their suff'rings, and their wants befriends;
“From one small source so many bounties spring,
“We lose the peasant, and suppose a king;
“A king of Heav'n's own stamp, not vulgar make;
“Blessed in giving, and averse to take!
“Not such my pow'r! Half-useless doom'd to live,
“Pray'rs and advice are all I have to give:
“But all, whate'er my means or strength deny,
“The virtues of Eulogius can supply.
“Each, in the compass of his pow'r, he serves;
“Nor ever from his gen'rous purpose swerves:
“Ev'n enemies to his protection run,
“Sure of his light, as of the rising sun.
“What pity is it that so great a soul,
“An heart so bountiful, should feel controul?
“And in the effort of exertion crampt;
“Beneficent to all men, just, and true:
“As nature bounteous, and impartial too.
“Thus sometimes have I seen an angel's mind
“In a weak body wretchedly confin'd:
“A mind, O Constantine, which from thy throne
“Can take no honours, and yet add her own!
“Make yonder man the fav'rite of thy care:
“Nourish the plant with thy celestial dew,
“Like manna let it fall, and still be new:
“Expand the blossoms of his gen'rous mind,
“Till the rich odour reaches half mankind.
“Give him Bizantium's wealth, which useless shines,
“Sicilian plenty, and the Indian mines;
“His garden's precincts with a golden wave;
“Then may his soul its free-born range enjoy,
“Give deed to will, and ev'ry pow'r employ:
“In him the Sick a second Luke shall find;
“Orphans and widows, to his care consign'd,
“Shall bless the father, and the husband kind:
“Just steward of the bounty he receiv'd,
“And dying poorer than the poor reliev'd!”
Bade him surcease to importune the sky:
Fate stopp'd his ears in an ill-omen'd day,
And the winds bore the warning sounds away;
Wild indistinction did their place supply;
Half-heard, half-lost, th'imperfect accents die.
Little fore-saw he that th'Almighty Pow'r,
Who feeds the Faithful at his chosen hour,
Nor means to please their sense, but do them good.
Great was the miracle, and fitter too,
When draughts from Cheriths's brook Elijah drew :
And wing'd purveyors his sharp hunger fed
With frugal scraps of flesh, and maslin-bread .
On quails the humble prophet's pride might swell,
And high-fed lux'ry prompt him to rebell.
Should reach, O virtuous Poverty! thy end,
To some forsaken clime and distant sky.
How oft are our petitions our undoing!
Made a rash vow, and thought the vow inspir'd:
In piety the First, his Daughter ran,
To hail with duteous voice the conqu'ring Man:
Well-meaning, but unconscious of her doom,
She sought a blessing, and she found a tomb !
Heard with concern the erring Hermit's pray'rs;
Heard dis-approving; but at length enclin'd
To give a living lesson to mankind;
That men thence-forward should submissive live;
And leave Omniscience the free pow'r to give.—
Alike are blessings from the hand of God!
How often is the soul ensnar'd by health?
How poor in virtue is the man of wealth?
Soon in an higher sphere Eulogius mov'd:
Each sluice of affluent fortune open'd soon,
And wealth flow'd in at morning, night, and noon.
[In hopes a free-stone quarry might be found,]
His mattock met resistance, and behold
A casket burst, with di'monds fill'd and gold.
He cramm'd his pockets with the precious store,
And ev'ry night review'd it o'er and o'er;
Till a gay conscious pride, unknown as yet,
Touch'd a vain heart, and taught it to forget:
And, what still more his stagg'ring virtue try'd,
His mother, tut'ress of that virtue, dy'd.
[Historians give her Teraminta's name,]
The parent of the needy and distress'd,
With large demesnes and well-sav'd treasure blest;
[For like th'Egyptian Prince she hoarded store
To feed at periodic dearths the poor;]
This matron, whiten'd with good works and age,
Approach'd the sabbath of her pilgrimage;
Her spirit to himself th'Almighty drew;—
Breath'd on th'alembic, and exhal'd the dew.
In souls prepar'd, the passage is a breath
From time t'eternity, from life to death .
But first, to make the Poor her future care,
She left the good Eulogius for her heir.
New thoughts, new hopes, new views his mind employ.
Pride push'd forth buds at ev'ry branching shoot,
And virtue shrunk almost beneath the root.
High-rais'd on fortune's hill, new Alps he spies,
O'ershoots the valley which beneath him lies,
Forgets the depths between, and travels with his eyes.
[For the man slidder'd upon fortune's ice:]
And, having found a corpse half-dead, half-warm,
Reviv'd it, and assum'd a courtier's form:
Swift to Thebaïs urg'd his airy flight;
And measur'd half the globe in half a night.
And accent soft, he soon admission gain'd:
Survey'd each out-work well, and mark'd apart
Each winding avenue that reach'd the heart;
Thrones deckt with gems, and realms of living gold .
Bad spirits oft intrude upon the Good;
Adonis' grot near Christ's presepio stood .
Strait chang'd approaches, and the ear assail'd;
This only chink accessible he finds;
For flatt'ry's oil pervades ev'n virtuous minds.
Virtue, like towns well-fortify'd by art,
Has [spite of fore-sight] one deficient part.
[For on his lips the dews of Hybla hung,]
Libanius-like , he play'd the sophist's part,
And by soft marches stole upon the heart:
And call'd forth manners, courage, eloquence:
Then touch'd with spritely dashes here and there,
[Correctly strong, yet seeming void of care,]
The master-topic, which may most men move,
The charms of beauty and the joys of love!
Eulogius faulter'd at the first alarms,
And soon the 'waken'd passions buzz'd to arms;
Nature the clam'rous bell of discord rung,
And vices from dark caverns swift up sprung.
So, when hell's monarch did his summons make,
The slumb'ring demons started from the lake.
[Not yet in act, but in the pow'r to be,]
Great merit lurking dormant in his mind:
He had been negligent—but Nature kind:
Till by degrees the vain, deluded elf,
Grew out of humour with his former self.
It had convenience, but it wanted taste.
His mien was aukward; graces he had none;
Provincial were his notions and his tone;
His manners emblems of his own rough stone.
He ap'd him without skill, and without end:
Larissa's gutturals convuls'd his throat;
He smooth'd his voice to the Bizántine note.
With courtly suppleness un-furl'd his face;
Or screw'd it to the bonne mine of grimace;
With dignity he sneez'd, and cough'd with grace.
The pious mason once, had time no more
To mark the wants and mis'ry of the poor!
Suspicious thoughts his pensive mind employ,
A sullen gratitude, and clouded joy.
In days of poverty his heart was light:
He sung his hymns at morning, noon, and night.
The spink chaunts sweetest in a hedge of thorns .
Tir'd of an house too little for his pride,
Tir'd of himself, and country-friends beside,
He sometimes thought to build a mansion, fit
For state, and people it with men of wit;
Knowing [by fame] small poets, small musicians,
Small painters, and still smaller politicians;
Nor was the fee of ten-score minæ wanting,
To purchase taste in building and in planting.
The fashionable judgement of his age:
When Crito once a panegyric show'd,
He beat him with a staff of his own ode.
I love soft home-made sing song, duty-free.
Write me the style that Lords and Ladies speak;
Or give me Pastorals in Doric Greek:
I read not for instruction, but for ease;
The opium of the pen is sure to please:
Where limpid streams are clear, and sun-shine bright;
Where woos and coos, and loves and doves unite:
Where simply-married epithets are seen,
With gentle Hyphen keeping peace between.
Whipt cream; unfortify'd with wine or sense!
Froth'd by the slattern-muse, indifference;
And deck'd [as after-ages more shall see]
With poor hedge-flow'rs, y-clept simplicity!
Pert, and yet dull; tawdry and mean withall;
Fools for the future will it nature call.
Such as fine men adopt, and fine men rue:
[Meer singularity the point in view.]
Julian, who ten times miss'd, and one time hit;
Who reason'd blindly, and more blindly writ.
Julian, who lov'd each sober mind to shock;—
Who laugh'd at God, and offer'd to a cock.
And hinted What,—nor He, nor Arius knew.
But most [as did his pregnant parts become]
He lov'd th'old pageantry of Pagan Rome.
Pompous Idolatry with him was fashion;
Nay, he once dream'd of Transubstantiation.—
I only tell the story of a swain.
Who nurs'd our spark in fashionable lore]
Lik'd well this way-ward vanity of mind,
But thought a country-stage a niche confin'd;
Too cold for lux'ry, nor to folly kind:
The soil less stubborn, and more rank the juice.
Whilst he the mischief of his soul disclos'd]
Forgive me, if that title I afford
To one, whom nature meant to be a lord;
How ill mean neighbourhood your genius suits?
To live like Adam midst an herd of brutes!
Leave the meer country to meer country-swains,
And dwell where life in all life's glory reigns.
[Where Bosphorus into the Euxine falls]
In a gay district, call'd th'Elysian vale ,
A furnish'd villa stands, propos'd for sale:
Thither, for summer-shade, the Great resort;
Each nymph a goddess, and each house a court:
Be master of the happier Lares there,
And taste life's grandeur in a rural air.
And sign'd with eager joy the purchase-deed.
Div'd in the Theban vales an home-spun swain;
And rose a tawdry fop in Asia's plain.
Dame nature gave him comeliness and health,
And Fortune [for a pass-port] gave him wealth.
The beaus extoll'd him, the coquets approv'd;
For a rich coxcomb is by instinct lov'd.
Felt her feet bird-lim'd to the earth with gold:
The youth had wealth, with no unpleasing face;
That, and the golden apples, won the race:
Had he been swifter than the swiftest wind,
And a poor wit,—He still had sigh'd behind.—
And knew his pupil was in able hands.
Sought other objects than the tatter'd Poor:
Part to humiliated Apicius went,
A part to gaming confessors was lent,
And part, O virtuous Thaïs, paid thy rent.
Poor folks have leisure-hours to fast and pray;
Our rich man's bus'ness lay another way:
No farther intercourse with Heav'n had he,
But left good works to men of low degree:
Warm as himself pronounc'd each ragged man,
And bade distress to prosper as it can:
Till, grown obdurate by meer dint of time,
He deem'd all poor men rogues, and want a crime .
Or else expung'd them with one wilful blot:
Nor knew he God nor man, nor faith nor friends,
But for by-purposes and worldly ends.
No single circumstance his mind dismay'd,
But his low extract, and once-humble trade;
These thoughts he strove to bury in expence,
Rich meats, rich wines, and vain magnificence:
Weak as the Roman Chief, who strove to hide
His father's cot, [and once his father's pride,]
By casing a low shed of rural mold
With marble-walls, and roof adorn'd with gold .
The very Ignis fatuus of the Town?
Our ready scholar in a single year
Could lie, forget, swear, flatter, and forswear .
'Midst wits a witling, and with knaves a knave.
Delights, for change, thro' private paths to stray;
And, wand'ring to the Hermit's distant cell,
Vouchsaf'd Eulogius' history to tell.
He started, scream'd, and sweat from ev'ry pore.
He dream'd that on his throne th'Almighty sate
In th'awful valley of Jehoshaphat ,
Where, underneath a spreading cedar's shade,
He 'spy'd his friend on beds of roses laid;
Round him a croud of threat'ning furies stands,
With instruments of vengeance in their hands.
[Stern, yet attemper'd with benignity,]
On the rash Hermit; who with impious pray'r
Had been the sponsor of another's care.
“Wretch, thou art lost in part, and in the whole!
“Is this the mortgage for thy brother's soul?”
Despairing Judas glar'd in all his look.
Trembling he fell before th'Almighty-throne;
Importunate as Abraham t'attone
For others' crimes: O Pow'r Supreme, said he,
Grant me, once more, th'ungrateful wretch to see:
Suspend thy doom till then: On Christian ground
No graceless monster, like my friend, is found.
And rent his sack-cloath garments in despair;
Walk'd to Constantinople, and enquir'd
Of all he met; at length the house desir'd
A Thracian slave the porter's place maintain'd,
[Sworn foe to thread-bare suppliants,] and with pride
His master's presence, nay, his name, deny'd.
There walk'd at noon, and there he walk'd at night.
In vain.—At length, by Providence's care,
He found the door un-clos'd, nor servants near.
He enter'd, and thro' sev'ral rooms of state
Pass'd gently; in the last Eulogius sate.
Old man, good-morrow, the gay courtier cry'd;
God give you grace, my son, the sire reply'd;
And then, in terms as moving and as strong,
As clear; as ever fell from angel's tongue,
Besought, reprov'd, exhorted, and condemn'd:—
Eulogius knew him, and, tho' known, contemn'd.
His rage was kindled, and his patience gone.
I call thee [adds he] miscreant to thy face.
My pray'rs drew down Heav'n's bounty on thy head,
And in an evil hour my wishes sped.
Ingratitude's black curse thy steps attend,
Monster to God, and faithless to thy friend!
The Courtier call'd his slaves, who swiftly ran;
“Androtion, Geta, seize this aged fool,
“See him well-scourg'd, and send him back to school
“Teach the Old Chronicle, in future times
“To bear no mem'ry but of poor rogues' crimes.”
Back to Thebaïs full of discontent;
Saw his once-impious rashness more and more,
And, victim to convinc'd contrition, bore
With Christian thankfulness the marks he wore.
He thus invok'd the Ruler of the skies:
“My late request, All-gracious Pow'r, forgive!—
“And—that yon miscreant may repent, and live,
“Give him that poverty which suits him best,
“And leave disgrace and grief to work the rest.”
Some plants the sun-shine ask, and some the shade.
At night the nure-trees spread, but check their bloom
At morn, and lose their verdure and perfume.
The virtues of most men will only blow,
Like coy auriculas, in Alpine snow :
Transplant them to the equinoctial line,
Their vigour sickens, and their tints decline.—
Heav'n to its pre-dilected children grants
The middle space 'twixt opulence and wants.
Pursu'd his courtly track without dismay:
Remorse was hood-wink'd, conscience charm'd away.
Reason the felon of herself was made,
And Nature's substance hid by Nature's shade!
Congenial friends in Asiatic ground.
Th'advent'rous pilot in a single year
Learn'd his state-cock-boat dext'rously to steer;
Versatile, and sharp-piercing like a screw,
Made good th'old passage, and still forc'd a new:
For, just as int'rest whiffled on his mind,
He Anatolians left, or Thracians join'd;
Caught ev'ry breeze, and sail'd with ev'ry tyde;
But still was mindful of the lee-ward side:
Still mark'd the pinnacle of fortune's height,
And bark'd—to be made turn-spit of the state.
The most obsequious parasite alive:
Chamelion of the court, and country too;
Pays Cesar's tax, but gives the mob their due;
And makes it, in his conscience, the same thing
To crown a Tribune, or behead a King:
All things to all men;—and (himself to please)
Assimulates each colour which he sees.
If patriots pay him, willow-wreaths he bears,
And coats of filamotte complexion wears;
If statesmen pay him better, a fresh hue
Brightens his garb; more brilliant as more new;
Court-turquoise, and indelible of blue.
Thus weather-cocks by ev'ry wind are blown,
And int'rest oils a motion, not their own.
MADNESS in One is LIBERTY in All!
In virtuoso-ship, and crambo-rhyme:
In gaming, jobbing, fidling, painting, drinking,
And ev'ry art of using time, but thinking.
He gives the dinners of each up-start man,
As costly, and luxurious, as he can;
Then weds an heiress of suburbian mold,
Ugly as apes, but well-endow'd with gold;
There fortune gave him his full dose of strife,
A scolding woman, and a jealous wife!
Destroy'd his int'rest and good grace at court.
At this one stroke the man look'd dead in law:
His flatt'rers scamper, and his friends withdraw .
Have one way's entrance, but have sev'n ways flight .
Opines in the same language with his brother:
A third, with mystic shrug and winking eye,
Suspects him for a dervise and a spy.
“Pray, Sir, the crime?”—The monarch frown'd.—No more,
The fellow's guilty, and his bus'ness o'er .
Storms of affronts pour'd in as thick as hail.
Each scheme for safety mischievously sped,
And the drawn sword hung o'er him by a thread.
Few women can survive the loss of pride.
[Engag'd in no less work than civil war]
Perceiv'd th'approaching wreck; and, in a trice
Appearing, gave both comfort and advice.
“The Wise and Brave usurp on Fortune's care!
“The un-exhausted funds of human wit
“Oft miss one object, and another hit:
“The man of courts, who trusts to one poor hole,
“Is a low foolish fool , and has no soul:
“Disgraces my respected patronage,
“And, gaining Heav'n, becomes the jest of th'age !
“When the king's trump, time-servers serve the king;
“But, when he's out of luck, they shift their sail,
“And popularity's the fav'rite gale:
“Vain popularity! which fancy shrouds,
“Like Juno's shade, in party-colour'd clouds.
“Each man will go a mile to see you crown'd
“With civic wreaths, till earth and skies resound;
“And each man will go two to see you drown'd.
“Must learn to shoot swift Fortune as she flies:
“Capricious Phantom! never at a stay;
“Just seen, and lost; when nearest, far away!
“But, to be brief; [and mark my judgement well:]
“Your fortunes totter'd, when old Justin fell;
“Is kind, when friend; and un-appeas'd, when foe,
“Some sly court-vermin, wriggling in his ear,
“Has whisper'd, what predicts your ruin near:
“Then cast thy die of fortune all at once;
“Learn to be any thing but dupe or dunce.
“Fortune assists the brave. Plunge boldly in;
“T'attempt, and fail, is a poor sneaking sin.
“Hypatius [with pretensions not the worst]
“Affects the throne: Be thou to join the first:
“'Tis not a crime too worldly-wise to be;—
“Or [if it is] discharge the crime on me.”
Listen'd—unto th'artificer of fraud:
The doctrine came not from th'all-righteous Throne:
When Satan tells a LIE, 'tis all his own .
And to the Emulous of empire sped.
The motives and successes of the war,
The prowess of the knights, their martial deeds,
Their swords, their shields, their surcoats and their steeds;
Till Belisarius at a single blow
Suppress'd the faction and repell'd the foe.
By a quick death the traytors he reliev'd;
Condemn'd, if taken; famish'd, if repriev'd.
Whate'er he knew] in loathsome dungeon laid:
A pris'ner, first of war, and then of state:
Rebel and traytor ask a double fate!
But good Justinian, whose exalted mind
[In spite of what Pirasmus urg'd] enclin'd
To mercy, soon the forfeit-life forgave,
And freed it from the shackles of a slave.
Repent, and haste thee to Larissa's plain,
Or wander thro' the world, another Cain.
Thy lands and goods shall be the poor man's lot,
Or feed the orphans, you've so long forgot.
Proscrib'd Eulogius left th'unprosp'rous town:
For succour at a thousand doors he knock'd;
Each heart was harden'd, and each door was lock'd.
A pilgrim's staff he bore, of humble thorn;
Pervious to winds his coat, and sadly torn:
Shoes he had none: a beggar gave a pair,
Who saw feet poorer than his own, and bare.
He drank the stream, on dew-berries he fed,
And wildings harsh supply'd the place of bread;
Thus home-ward urg'd his solitary way;
[Four years had he been absent to a day.]
Half his old friends reproach'd him, and half fled:
No creature own'd him, but a dog he left.
Compunction touch'd his soul, and, wiser made
By bitter suff'rings, he resum'd his trade:
Thank'd Heav'n for want of pow'r and want of pelf,
That he had lost the world, and found himself.
Conscience and charity reviv'd their part,
And true humility enrich'd the heart,
While grace celestial with enliv'ning ray
Beam'd forth, to gild the ev'ning of his day.
His neighbours mark'd the change, and each man strove
By slow degrees t'applaud him, and to love.
So Peter, when his tim'rous guilt was o'er,
Emerg'd, and stood twice firmer than before .
Rejoic'd to hear the Prodigal return'd;
Made haste t'express his joy, and griefs assuage.
“Behold th'unhappy wretch that ruin'd thee;
“My ill-judg'd pray'rs [in luckless moments sped]
“Brought down the curse of riches on thy head.
“No language can express one single part
“Of what I felt, and what still racks my heart.
“Vainly I thought, that, to encrease thy store,
“Was to encrease Heav'n's manna for the poor.
“Man's virtue cannot go beyond its length;
“God's gifts are still proportion'd to our strength.
“The Scripture-widow gives her well-sav'd mite
“With affluent joy, nor fears to suffer by't:
“Whilst Dives' heaps [the barter of his soul]
“Lie bury'd in some base inglorious hole,
“Accurst by Heav'n, and dead to charity !
“The charitable Few are chiefly they
“Whom Fortune places in the middle way ;
“Just rich enough, with œconomic care,
“To save a pittance, and a pittance spare:
“Just poor enough to feel the poor man's moan,
“Or share those suff'rings which may prove their own!—
“Great riches, with insinuating art,
“Debase the man, and petrify the heart.
“Let the false friend, like Satan, be withstood,
“Who wishes us more wealth—to do more good!
“MOST in th'unnavigable stream are drown'd .”
Left his Eulogius to divine the rest.
“Heav'n's tryals have at length reclaim'd its child.
“Omniscience only can our wants fore-know,
“And All-Beneficence will best bestow.
“SOME FEW God's bounty on the Poor employ:
“THERE ARE—whom to promote, is to destroy!
“Rough, thorny, barren, is pale virtue's road;
“And poisons are true cures when giv'n by God.
“Spontaneous I resign, with full accord,
“The empty nothings wealth and pow'r afford;
“My Mind's my All, by Heav'n's free grace restor'd.
“Omniscient, or to give, or to refuse!
“Grant me, as I begun, to end my days
“In acts of humble charity and praise;
“In thy own paths my journey let me run,
“And, as in Heav'n, on Earth thy Will be done!”
The sun shone forth—The Hermit pleas'd withdraws—
And Nature wore an aspect of applause.
Dorp, a village, or more properly an hamlet. Dryden.
It is a German word, and adopted by our best writers in the beginning and middle of the last century.
Virg. Æn. vii.
But Ovid is still more explicite, Met. I.
“------ Campum“Communemq; prius, ceu lumina solis, & auræ.”
“No man shall take the nether or upper mill-stone to pledge; for he taketh a man's life to pledge.” Deut. Ch. xxiv, v 6.
Maslin-bread, i. e. miscellane, or miscellaneous bread, an antient English word, given to a plain sort of household bread. When people in a middling station used it, they generally mixed two gallons of oats and rye with six gallons of wheat. The poorer people mixed in equal quantities wheat, barley, oats, rye, buck-wheat, pulse, &c. But such is the luxury of the present age (even amongst the Poor) that not only the thing but the very name is forgotten; and a preference given to a whiter, but more unwholesome sort of bread, if alom enters into the composition; which, indeed, cannot be concealed.
One of the first cares of a prime-minister (who ought also to be considered as proveditor-general of a kingdom) is to see the people supplied with bread, of an wholesome nature, at as reasonable a price as possible.
Hence the Great Gustavus used to say, “That it required more talents to feed a large army in the field, upon easy terms, in times of war; than to conduct the fighting part.”
“The time in which we now live is borrowed from the space of our existence: What is past is dead and vanished; what remaineth is daily made less and less; insomuch that the whole time of our life is nothing but a passage to death.” St. August. de Civitat. Dei, X.
See Sandys's Travels into the Holy Land, Folio, P. 138.
Presepio is an Italian word, taken from the Latin, and signifies a stable or manger. It is now become a term of art, and denotes any picture, drawing, or print, where Christ is represented as born in a stable or lying in the manger.
Spink, the old poetical name for finches of every sort. See Country Farm, by Surflet and Markham, folio, printed in 1616.
Critics in the reign of Charles II. called themselves judgements. Hence Dryden says,
“He is, like you, a very wolf, or bear.”
“Why dost thou doat on the image of a King stamped on coin; and despisest the image of God that shines in human nature?” St. August.
Minutius Felix addresses himself very pathetically to great and opulent men devoid of charity and alms-giving:
“Aman,” says he, “asks bread of you.—Whilst your horses champ upon bridles whose bits are gilt with gold, the people die with hunger: —whereas one of your diamonds might save the lives of an hundred families.”
“Those who are accustomed to swear often may sometimes by chance happen to forswear; as he that indulges his tongue in talking frequently speaks that which he blushes for in silence.” St. Chrysost.
Again, St. Jerom adds, “Let thy tongue be a stranger to lying and swearing; on the contrary, let the love of truth be so strongly in thee, that thou countest whatever thou sayest to be sealed with an oath.”
This flower was first discovered under the snow, at the feet of some ice-mountains amongst the Alps.
Filamotte (Dryden) is that “clouded mixture of crimson, yellow, and umber-colours, which are seen in the beginning of winter on a falling leaf.” Filamotte, quasi feüeille morte. Thus Isabella-colour denotes a certain grave colour worn by the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, Arch-duchess of Austria, &c, 1623. For grideline, see the Vision of Death, page 99.
“A friend cannot be known in prosperity, and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.” Ecclus. Ch. xii.
“Huncce hominem. Sed quo cecidit sub crimine? Quisquam
“Delator? Quibus indiciis, quo teste probavit?
“Nil horum. Verbosa, et grandis epistola venit
“A Capreis. Bene habet, nil plus interrogo.”—
Juven. Sat. X, v 68.
To such sort of worldly connexions may be applied the golden saying of St. Chrysostom, “MEUM and TUUM are almost incompatible words.”
Orat. in Philagon.The Son of Sirach, in opposition to these false and dangerous notions, justly remarks: “Observe the opportunity, and beware of evil: Be not ashamed when it concerneth thy SOUL.” Ecclus. Ch. lv, v 20.
Isaiah's advice is very noble: “Fear not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings: For the moth shall eat them up as a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool; but my salvation shall be for ever.” Ch. li, v 7, 8.
“I, even I, am HE that comforteth you. Why shouldest thou be afraid of a man that shall die, and forgettest the LORD thy Maker, who stretched forth the heavens?” Ibid. v 12, 13.
See Luke Ch. xxii, v 55–62. “Peter stood more firmly, after he had lamented his fall, than before he fell.” St. Ambrose.
“God is not honoured with our expending that money which is bedewed with the tears of the oppressed.” St. Chrysost.
The truly charitable man, (who happens to be neither rich nor poor) is well painted by an antient Classic. I quote the verses, because I never saw them quoted:
“Non frontem vertére minæ; sed candida semper
“Gaudia, & in vultu curarum ignara voluptas.
“Non tibi sepositas infelix strangulat arca
“Divitias; avidéve animum dispendia torquent
“Fœnoris expositi census; sed docta fruendi
“Temperies,” &c.
Hugo, in his excellent treatise De Anima, makes the following remark upon greatness and ambition:
“The human heart is a small thing, and yet desireth great matters. It is barely sufficient for a kite's dinner, and yet the whole world sufficeth it not.”
MACARIUS:
215
OR, THE CONFESSOR.
An EPISTLE to the Rev. Dr. Robert Hort, Canon of Windsor.
Who sung, “That truth was truest poetry.”—
O Hort, to these my pious strains attend.
Thou knew'st the Man; and thy Good Sense is such,
I dare not say too little, or too much.—
Under his eye the self-same views combin'd
Our studies, and one horoscope conjoin'd.
He check'd th'impatient wand'rings of our youth,
And grafted on our fancy facts and truth.
Together we amus'd our youthful prime,
Days seem'd but hours, and time improv'd on time:
Mindless of cares, [and how they pass'd or came]
Our sports, our labours, and our rest the same .
For tears, and grief, and melancholy shade;
Wide o'er the church they spread an awful light,
Than day more serious, half-compos'd as night,
Britannia's Lombardy with silver waves;]
There sleeps Macarius, foe to pomp and pride;
Who liv'd contented, and contented dy'd.
Burn twice sev'n ages, and be un-consum'd?
And not one verse be sacred to a name
Endear'd by virtuous deeds and silent fame?
True Fame demands not panegyric aid;
The fun'ral torch burns brightest in the shade;
Too fast it blazes, fann'd by public air;—
Thus blossoms fall, before their tree can bear.
True Fame, like porc'lain earth, for years must lay
Bury'd, and mix'd with elemental clay .
For pious Hall a kind inspection lent:
He shew'd him what to seek and what to shun:—
Harcourt with him the thorny journey run,
Companion of his studies; and a friend
Sincere in youth, and stedfast to the end.
He travell'd thro' them wisely, and retir'd:
Giving to solitude and heav'nly care
Those moments which the worldling cannot spare.
Thus, half a century, his course he run
Of pray'r and praises, daily, like the sun:
Happy! Who Truth invariably pursues,
And well-earn'd fame by better fame renews !
Constantly us'd and truly understood.
The Sacred Scriptures were his chief delight ;
Talk of the day, and vision of the night:
Truth's second sources he with care survey'd,
And walk'd with Hermas in the rural shade .
Cyprian with awful gravity he sought;
And true simplicity Ignatius brought;
Lively Minucius did his hours beguile;
Lactantius charm'd with elegance of style:
But mostly Chrysostom engag'd his mind:
Great without labour, without art refin'd!
Now see his gentle elocution flows,
Soft as the flakes of heav'n-descending snows;
Pure in his diction, purer in his soul:
By few men equall'd, and surpass'd by none;
A Tully and Demosthenes in One !
To Roman classics, and Athenian too.
Plato with raptures did his soul inspire;
Plotinus fann'd the Academic fire.
Then came the Stagyrite;—whose excellence
Beams forth in clearness, brevity, and sense!
To Them, whom we despoil, and then despise:
With Hooker, Raleigh, Chillingworth, and Sands ;—
[For in those days “were Giants in our lands!”]
Thus, like the bee, he suck'd from ev'ry flow'r,
And hour surpass'd the predecessor-hour.
Latimer's father was his type of yore;
Little he had, but something for the poor:
With wholesome meat and hospitable bread.
Poor in himself, men poorer he reliev'd,
And gave the charities he had receiv'd.
Beams bright; nor is to winds nor rains expos'd:
A watch-tow'r to the wand'rers of mankind;
Forlorn, belated, and with passions blind ,
Who tread the foolish round their fathers trod,
And, 'midst life's errors, hit on death's by-road .
Patience and chearfulness to him were giv'n;
Patience! the choicest gift on this side Heav'n!
And then, like northern fruits, left off to bear;
Nought but a Vestal fire such heat contains;
Age seldom boasts so prodigal remains .
Some few beyond life's usual date are cast:
Prime clusters of the grape till winter last.
To these a sacred preference is giv'n:
Each shaft is polish'd, and th'Employer Heav'n .
His fury, when you mournfully complain'd .
And Kirk's Barbarians, hard as harden'd steel,
Forgot their Lybia, and vouchsaf'd to feel.
As honour prompted, or self-int'rest veer'd;
[Times! when the wisest of mankind might err,
And, lost in shadows, wrong or right, prefer;]
The Tempter, in a vapour's form , arose,
And o'er his eyes a dubious twilight throws,
To lead him, puzzling, o'er fallacious ground,
Suborn his passions, and his sense confound:
Pomp to foretaste, and mitres pre-descry;
[For mists at once enlarge and multiply:]
Our Hero paus'd—and, weighing either side,
Took poverty; and conscience for his guide:
For he, who thinks he suffers for his God,
Deserves a pardon, tho' he feels the rod.
Yet blam'd he none; [Himself in honour clear;]
That were a crime had cost his virtue dear!
Except with charity, and Heav'n alone.
In his own friends some frailties he allow'd;
These were too singular, and Those too proud.
Rare spirit! In the midst of party-flame,
To think well-meaning men are half the same!
An artful enemy, but seeming friend:
Conscious of having plann'd thy worldly fate ,
He could not love thee, and he durst not hate.
But then seraphic Ken was all thy own;
And He , who long declin'd Ken's vacant throne,
By worldlings laught at, and by fools decry'd:
Dodwell was thine, the humble and resign'd;
Nelson, with Christian elegance of mind;
And He , whose tranquil mildness from afar
Spoke him a distant, but a brilliant star.
These all forsook their homes—Nor sigh'd nor wept;—
Mammon they freely gave, but God they kept.
Ah, look on honours with Macarius' eyes,
Snares to the good, and dangers to the wise!
He wander'd o'er the Desart FORTY years.
The cloud and pillar [or by night or day]
Reviv'd his heart, and ascertain'd the way .
Escap'd the bramble and entangling thorn .
Heav'n purify'd for him th'embitter'd well ,
And Manna from aërial regions fell .
At length near peaceful Pisgah he retir'd,
And found that rest his pilgrimage requir'd:
Where, as from toils he silently withdrew,
Half Palestina open'd on his view;
Go, pious hermit, groves and mountains cry'd;
Enter, thou faithful Servant, Heav'n reply'd.
And smiling sleeps upon the mother's breast,
Tranquil, and with a patriarch's hopes, he gave
His soul to Heav'n, his body to the grave;
That 'twas a soft extinction, and not death.
Happy! who thus, by unperceiv'd decay,
Absént themselves from life, and steal away .
Lamented Shade!—'Tis all thy Son can give.
Better to own the debt we cannot pay,
Than with false gold thy fun'ral rites defray.
Vainly my Muse is anxious to procure
Gifts unavailing, empty sepulture ;
As vainly she expands her flutt'ring wings:
She is no Swan, nor, as she dies, she sings.
He, that would brighten antient di'monds, must
Clear and re-polish them with di'mond-dust:
Is lost;—For Pope and Dryden are no more!
[Whom envy sinks not, nor encomium raise;]
Forgive this grateful tribute of my lays.
Milton alone could Eden lost re-gain;
And only Thou portray Messiah's reign.
O Early lost! with ev'ry grace adorn'd!
By me [so Heav'ns ordain it] always mourn'd.
By Thee the good Macarius was approv'd:
Whom Fenton honour'd, and Philotheüs lov'd .
Thou, and thy Friends, preserv'd my Muse and me.
By proxy, from a gen'rous Kindred spread,
Thy Craggs's bounty fell upon my head :
And thy own Chesterfield protects my age.
These eight lines are imitated from a famous passage in Persius, Sat. V, too well known to be reprinted. It begins—
“Geminos horoscope”—&c.It is reported that the Chinese beat and mix thoroughly together the composition that makes porcelain, and then bury it in a deep bed of clay for an hundred years. See Dr. Donne's Letters. See also the Discovery of Hidden Treasure, 4to, London 1656, p. 89; (a very scarce and curious Work, by the famous Gabriel Plattes.)
Mr. John Hall, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1667, and Rector of St. Aldate's in the same university. Created D.D. in 1669; elected Margaret Professor in 1676; and consecrated Bishop of Bristol the 12th of June, 1691. All which preferments he enjoyed together.
Mr. Simon Harcourt, afterwards Lord Chancellor Harcourt, offered him a Bishoprick from Queen Anne many years after the Revolution; but the favour was declined with grateful Acknowledgements.
“Surely vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God; and could not, out of the good things that are seen, know him. That is, neither, by considering the works did they acknowledge the work-master” Wisd. of Sol. Ch. xiii, v 1.
He employed ten or twelve hours a day in study, without any interruption, [but that of casual sickness] for fifty years successively. His principal business was in referring every difficult part of Scripture to those particular passages in the Fathers, and eminent modern Divines, who had explained them expressly or occasionally.
Alluding to a Work entituled the Shepherd of Hermas. Hermas was contemporary with some of the Apostles.
In order to judge a little of these two assertions, be pleased only to read St. Chrysostom's Homily on the Ten Talents, or His Commentary on St. Matthew; and his Orations to the People of Antioch ΠΕΡΙ ΑΝΔΡΙΑΝΤΩΝ.
See also Ferrarius De Concione Veterum, and the Eloquence Crétienne of M. Gisbert: The last of which Works was a favourite Book with the late Lord Somers, and wrought a great effect on his future way of thinking.
This anecdote was imparted to me by the late Mr. Elijah Fenton, as matter of fact on his own knowledge.
Edwyn Sandys, Archbishop of York, was one of the first eminent Reformers, not only of our holy religion, [which almost every person knows] but of our language [which circumstance few persons are apprized of.] His sermons [the time when he preached them being duly considered] may be looked upon as a master-piece of eloquence and fine writing. They were chiefly preached between the years 1550 and 1576.
His son George [and here let me be understood to refer chiefly to his Paraphrase on Job] knew the true harmony of the English Heroic Couplet long before Denbam and Waller took up the pen; and preserved that harmony more uniformly. Variety perhaps was wanting; which Dryden afterwards supplied, but not till he came to the forty-fifth year of his age; namely, till the time he published Aurengzebe.
Bishop Hugh Latimer [whom I quote only by memory, not having the original at hand] says, in one of his Sermons preached at St. Paul's Cross, about the year ------, “that tho' his father possessed no more than 40 acres of free land, or thereabouts, yet he had always something to give to the poor, and now and then entertained his friends;—that he portioned out three daughters, at 5 l. a-piece, and bred up a son at the university; ‘otherwise, adds he, “I should not have had the honour of appearing in this pulpit before the King's majesty.”
Note, The original Edition says 4 acres, which must be an error of the Press, instead of 40 acres. Old Latimer lived in good repute about the year 1470, in which year his son Hugh was born.
Despectare procul.
Ovid. Met. Sed nil dulcius est, bene quàm munita tenere
Edita doctrinâ Sapientûm templa serena,
Despicere unde queas alios, passimq; videre
Errare, atq; viam palantes quærere vitæ.
Lucret. L. II, v 6.
When Judge Jeffr---s came to Taunton-assizes, in the year 1685, to execute his commission upon the unfortunate people concerned in Monmouth's rebellion, the Person here spoken of, being Minister of St. Mary Magdalen's Church at Taunton, waited on him in private, and remonstrated much against his severities. The Judge listened to him calmly, and with some attention; and, tho' he had never seen him before, advanced him in a few months to a Prebendal Stall in the Cathedral church of Bristol.
Bishop Ken used to say, that King William and Queen Mary would gladly have permitted the Non-juring Bishops and Clergy [who had just before signalized themselves in a steady opposition to Popery] to have enjoyed their preferments till death, upon their parole of honour given, that they would never disturb the government; which favour would have been thankfully accepted of, and complyed with, by the aforesaid Bishops, &c.; but somebody here alluded to [at least as Macarius thought] traversed their Majesties gracious intentions. In proof of this, Bishop Ken performed the funeral service over Mr. Kettlewell in the year 1695, and prayed for King William and Queen Mary.
Dr. George Hooper. N. B. It must here also be remembered, that Dr. Beveridge refused to succeed Bishop Ken in 1691, and then the offer was made to R. Kidder, D. D.
Macarius (who was born the 28th of October, 1650) was dispossessed of his preferments in 1691, and remained deprived till the time of his death, which happened in February 1735; and (which is remarkable enough) the Bishops Kidder, Hooper, and Wynne all contrived that Macarius should receive the little profits from his prebend of Wells as long as he lived. A circumstance to their honour, as well as his.
BOETIUS:
OR, The UPRIGHT STATESMAN. A supposed EPISTLE From BOETIUS to his Wife RUSTICIANA.
Spemque metumque domat, vitio sublimior omni;
Exemptus fatis; indignantemque repellit
Fortunam; dubio quem non in turbine rerum
Deprêndit suprema dies, sed abire paratum,
Ac plenum vitâ.
Stat. Sylv. L. I.
INTRODUCTION.
Improves from censure, and distrusts applause.
Firm in his hope, he yields not to despair ;
The cube reverst is still erect and square .
The coolest head, and yet the warmest heart:
Blest in thy nuptials, blest in thy retreat,
Privately good, and amiably great;
Accept with candor these spontaneous lays,
And grant me pardon, for I ask not praise.—
In proof the Muse true oracles recites,
Hear what Boetius to his Consort writes.
In all be like him, but unhappiness!
Thus He aspir'd on meditation's wings,
And to the best of Consorts thus he sings:
“The fortitude of a just man consists in contemning the flatteries of prosperity, and overcoming the fears of poverty.”. Sti. Gregor. Moral. L. VIII.
Most in my eyes, and ever in my mind;
Exil'd from all the joys the world can give,
And—[for my greater grief!] allow'd to live:
[By Him , I train'd to glory, basely left;]
Of all things, but my innocence, bereft:
Patrician, consul, statesman but in name;
Of honour plunder'd, and proscrib'd in fame:
[Betray'd by men my patronage had fed,
And curst by lips to which I gave their bread;]
To thee I breathe my elegies of woe;
For thee, and chiefly thee, my sorrows flow:
Alike partaker of my joys or grief!
To mix thy antidote with my despair!
Rusticiana lives to smoothe my death,
And waft with sighs to Heav'n my parting breath.
Hence hope and fortitude inspire my breast:
Be her's the earthly part, and Thine the rest!
Still I am happy, human and divine;
Th'assistant angel she, th'assistance Thine.
Which [loth to part] dwells whisp'ring on the trees:
Chaste as the lamb th'indulgent pastor leads
To living streams thro' Sharon's flow'ry meads;
Mild as the voice of comfort to despair;
Fair as the spring, and yet more true than fair ;
Brighter than rills, that glitter as they run,
And mark thee spotless;—air thy purity
Denotes, thy clearness fire, and earth thy constancy .
Weep not to read these melancholy strains;
Change courts for cells, and coronets for chains.—
No greatness can be lost, where God remains!
And deathless honours of the Manlian name;
Th'unsoil'd succession of renown'd descent,
Equal to Time's historical extent ?
One of my ancestors receiv'd his doom
There, where he sav'd the liberties of Rome!
The Gaulish champion, and his country save?
Did not a third, [and harder was his fate]
Make his own child a victim for the state?
And did not I my wealth and life consume,
To bless at once Theodoric and Rome?—
But all is cancell'd and forgotten since;
Past merits were reproaches to my prince!
Thy birth from Symmachus avails not thee:
Thy meekness, prudence, beauty, innocence,
Thy knowledge, and thy virtues, gave offence.
When excellence is eminent, like thine,
Our eyes are dazzled with too bright a shrine;
Death must the medium give, that makes it mildly shine.
Who founds his confidence on Princes smiles?
Convenient is the regal term for just.
The plant, my cultivating hands had made
A spreading tree, oppress'd me with its shade;
Ambition push'd forth many a vig'rous shoot,
And rancid jealousy manur'd the root:
Ingratitude a willing heart mis-led,
And sycophants the growing mischief fed,
Till th'Arian-Sophist crept thro' all restraint;
The Tempter ply'd him, and there split the saint.
Th'assassin-hand which Odoácer slew,
Once more, distain'd with blood, appear'd to view:
Not foe by foe in hostile fields opprest,
But friend with friend, th'inviter and the guest .
To sow religion's seeds in courtly soils!
O'ercharg'd with specious herbage, bore no fruit,
Gorg'd to satiety with unctuous juice
From a fat earth, and form'd for bulk, not use;
Till all the cultivating hand receives
Is steril plenty of luxuriant leaves .—
Or, where we sow'd the grain of life, succeeds
A copious harvest of pernicious weeds.
Where corn once stood, th'insatiate thistle stands,
And deleterious hemlock choaks the lands.
I dare present my last appeal to Heav'n.
Religion and clear honesty, combin'd,
Made up the short full system of my mind.
Nicely I mark'd the quicksands of the state,
The crown's encroachments, and the people's hate:
And taught his subjects willingly t'obey:
Thus ev'ry thing conspir'd to one great end,
The nation was my child, the king my friend.
Both still I serv'd with uniform intent,
The good of both with equal fervour meant;
And, wheresoe'er th'infraction first arose,
Still judg'd th'aggressors man's and nature's foes.
Those, whose good sense and virtues poize the state:
So mariners, when storms the ocean sweep,
Commit their guardian-ballast to the deep.
Tricilla whisp'ring in the tyrant's ear ,
Assert the glories which are all thy own;
And lop the branch that over-shades the throne;
When he and malice know, I taught no more
Than ev'ry righteous statesman taught before.
Was to reign monarch of the people's hearts:
[Swift to encourage, eager to redress,
The steward of a nation's happiness;]
Taught him, each gift he gave, by truth to scan;
T'adapt the man to place, not place to man;
To guard the public wealth with anxious care,
Studious of peace, but still prepar'd for war:
Taught him, that princes of celestial kind,
Like Numa, cultivate the field and mind :
Warn'd him 'gainst pow'r, which suffers no controul;
But mostly that, which persecutes the soul:
That none are true to man who're false to God ;
And that our lives, except by freedom blest,
Are a dull passive slavery at best.”
Hence righteous kings of softer clay are made;
Not for their subjects mis'ry, but their aid .
True liberty, by pious monarchs giv'n,
Is emblematic manna rain'd from heav'n:
Without it, ev'ry appetite is pall'd,
The body fetter'd, and the mind enthrall'd .
The nightingale's recess in poplar-shades,
To Nero's house of gold, and Nero's fare;
Th'aërial chorister, no longer free,
Wails and detests man's civil cruelty:
Still dumb th'imprison'd sylvan bard remains;
[Your human bards make music with their chains;]
And when from his exalted cage he sees
The hills, the dales, the lawns, the streams, the trees,
He looks on courtly food with loathing eyes,
And sighs for liberty, and worms, and flies .
Shall shade the hateful remnant of the tale.
Vindictive plaints and acrimonious strains;
Make the solemnity of grief appear
Magnificently dumb, without a tear!
Brave as our sex, and as thy own resign'd;
Unconquer'd, like thy beauty, be thy mind!—
Wretch that I was, how dar'd I to complain?
Heav'n's chastisements are never dealt in vain!
In something, or my pride or frailty err'd,
And my just doom was certain, tho' deferr'd.
The mists of twilight-sunshine, and esteem,
Made me not greater grow, but greater seem.
When I the paths of human grandeur trod,
Might not my alien-heart diverge from God?
Might I not raise my kins-folk and my friends
From private reasons, and for private ends;
Far from the solar walk, and court's high-way ?
Might I not swell too much on earthly pow'r,
Man's ideot-play-thing, gewgaw of an hour?
Or might not false compliance, flatt'ry, art,
Un-hinge my truth, un-christianize my heart?
The consul's station, or the statesman's place;
The confidence I gain'd, the trusts I bore?—
See, my heart sickens to review them more!
Boast as we will, dissemble as we can,
A pious peasant is the greater man.
To part the Great from pageantry of life!
To wean the bearded infant from his toys,
Vain hopes, vain honours, and still vainer joys!
With nauseous incense choak'd, and hireling-wit;
Hymn'd by a chorus of self-serving tools,
The Nisroch of his knaves, and calf of fools!—
I'll dwell no longer on this angry theme ;—
But sketch the moral picture of a dream .
Like a sick child, I moan'd myself to rest:
When lo, a figure of celestial mien,
[Known indistinctly once, and faintly seen]
Approach'd me; fair and graceful as a queen.
Now, [strange to tell!] she seem'd of human size,
And now, her form august half reach'd the skies .
“Is this Boetius? Or Boetius' shade?
“What sudden stroke of unexpected woe
“Congeals thy tears, and wants the pow'r to flow?
“Incapable of comfort or relief,
“See a dumb image petrify'd with grief!
“Th'impetuous storm arose not by degrees,
“But bursts like hurricanes on Adria's seas .”
Her tender hand; “My son, my son,” she cry'd,
“Med'cines, and not complaints, thy pangs must ease;
“False greatness, and false pride, are thy disease.”
Then with her other hand she touch'd my eyes ,
Soft, as when Zephyr's breath o'er roses flies:
Instant my Sense return'd, restor'd and whole,
To re-possess its empire of the soul.
Sleep on each hill, and sadden ev'ry dale;
Sudden, up-springing from the north, invades
A purging wind, which first disturbs the shades;
Thins the black phalanx; till with fury driv'n
Swift disappears the flying wreck of heav'n:
To its own native blue the sky refines,
And the sun's orb with double radiance shines .
Recover'd reason lab'ring in my eyes,
And, kindly smiling, said, or seem'd to say;
“At length, my Son, the intellectual ray
“Just gleams the hopeful promise of a day.
“With milk diluted, and innoxious bread:
“Permit me then in gentlest strains to give
“Rules to die happy, and contented live;
“And, when thy stomach can strong food digest,
“My prudence shall administer the rest .
“I never leave my children on the road,
“But lead each pilgrim to his blest abode .
“Coy Fortune's absence stings thee to the heart:
“A willing mistress to the young and bold,
“But scornful of the tim'rous and the old:
“Meer lust of change compell'd her to cashire
“Her best-lov'd Pompey in his fiftieth year.
“The frowns of a capricious jilt you mourn,
“Who's thine, or mine, and ev'ry man's by turn:
“Were Fortune constant, she's no more the same,
“But, chang'd in species, takes another name.
“And all the sorceress thy heart beguil'd;
“When ev'ry joy that full possession gave
“Rose to the highest relish man can crave;
“Wast thou then happy to thy soul's desire?—
“Something to seek, and something to require,
“Still, still perplex'd thee, unforeseen before.—
“Thy draughts were mighty, but thy dropsy more .
“'Tis granted, Fortune's vanish'd—and what then?
“Thou'rt still as truly rich as all good men:
“Thy mind's thy own; [if that be calm and ev'n!]—
“Thy faith in Providence, thy funds in Heav'n.
“The Indian only took her jingling bells,
“Her rags of silk, and trumpery of shells:
“Virtue's a plunder of a cumb'rous make
“She cannot, and she does not chuse to take .—
“And, if she leaves thee, speed her on the way;
“For where's the diff'rence, mighty Reas'ner, say,
“When man by death of all things is bereft,
“If he leaves Fortune, or by Fortune's left ?
“Fortune to Galba's door the diadem brought;
“The door was clos'd, and other sons she sought:
“Fortune's a woman, over-fond or blind;
“A step-dame now, and now a mother kind.
“One jarring mass of counter-working strife!
“Vain hopes, which only idiot-minds employ;
“And fancy builds, for fancy to destroy!
“All must be wretched who expect too much;
“Life's chymic-gold proves recreant to the touch.
“Disarms the tyrant, and looks down on kings:
“Makes his own chain that drags him to the grave .”
Inclining, look'd me stedfast in the face.
“Thy pomp, thy wealth, thy villas, left behind,
“Ah, quit these nothings to the hungry tribe;
“States cannot banish thee; they may proscribe.
“The good man's country is in ev'ry clime,
“His God in ev'ry place, at ev'ry time;
“In civiliz'd, or in barbarian lands,
“Wherever virtue breathes, an altar stands !
“Thy prison shocks thee with unusual dread:
“Dark solitude thy wav'ring mind appalls,
“Damp floors, and low-hung roofs, and naked walls.
“Yet here the mind of Socrates could soar;
“And, being less than man, he rose to more.
“Wish not to see new hosts of clients wait
“In rows submissive thro' vast rooms of state;
“Nor, on the litter of coarse rushes spread,
“Lament the absence of thy downy bed:
“Nor grieve thou, that thy plunder'd books afford
“No consolation to their exil'd lord:
“Read thy own heart ; its motions nicely scan;
“There's a sufficient library for man .
“The Book of Providence all truths contains:
“For ever useful, and for ever clear,
“To all men open, and to all men near:
“By tyrants un-suppress'd, untouch'd by fire;
“Old as mankind, and with mankind t'expire .
“And the chaste pride of a once-spotless name:
“But mark, my son, the truths I shall impart,
“And grave them on the tablets of thy heart:
“The first keen stroke th'Unfortunate shall find;
“Is losing the opinion of mankind :
“Slander and accusation take their rise
“From thy declining fortunes, not thy vice.
“Or a rich upstart-villain dis-esteem'd?—
“From chilly shades the gnats of fortune run
“To buz in heat, and twinkle in the sun;
“Till Heav'n [at Heav'n's appointed season kind,]
“Sweeps off th'Egyptian plague with such a wind,
“That not one blood-sucker is left behind.
“Be true to God, and thou art still the same.
“Man cannot give thee virtues thou hast not,
“Nor steal the virtues thou hast truly got.
“Critics un-write whate'er the author writ:
“To a new fate this second life must yield,
“And death will twice be master of the field .
“To see the villain cloath'd, and good man bare;
“To see impiety with pomp enthron'd;—
“[Virtue unsought for, honesty un-own'd:]
“Heav'n's dispensations no man can explore;
“In this, to fathom God, is to be more!
“Meer man but guesses the divine decree;
“The most the Stagyrite himself could see,
“Was the faint glimm'ring of contingency.
“Yet deem not rich men happy, nor the poor
“Unprosp'rous; wait th'event, and judge no more.
“True safety to Heav'n's children must belong:
“With God the rich are weak, the poor are strong.
“Th'irrevocable sanction stands prepar'd;
“Vice has its curse, and virtue its reward .
“Nor shews us the great gulph for Heav'n's high-way.
“We barter honour, and our faith beside:
“Mindless of future bliss, and heav'nly fame,
“We strip and sell the Christian to the name.
“Ambition, like the sea by tempests tost,
“Still makes new conquests for old conquests lost:
“Court-favours lie above the common road
“By modesty and humble virtue trod;
“Like trees on precipices, they display
“Fair fruit, which none can reach but birds of prey.
“They weary earth, and importune the sky;
“Gain riches, and yet 'scape not poverty:
“The once-mean soul preserves its earthly part,
“The beggar's flatt'ry, and the beggar's heart.
“Lov'st thou an object better than thyself?
“You answer, No.—If that, my Son, be true,
“Then give to God the thanks to God are due.
“No man is crown'd the fav'rite of the skies
“Till Heav'n his faith by sharp affliction tries:
“Nor chains, disgrace, nor tyrants can controul
“Th'ability to save th'immortal soul.
“How oft did Seneca deplore his fate,
“Debarr'd that recollection which you hate?
“How often did Papinian waste his breath
“T'implore, like your's, a pausing-time for death ?—
“And suffer with humility of mind:
“As thy prosperities pass'd swift away,
“Just so thy grief shall make a transient stay .
“Is the last hour of human misery.
“Extremes of grief or joy are rarely giv'n,
“And last as rarely, by the will of Heav'n.”
Inspiring confidence as she withdrew.
Here let me close my elegies of woe.
My present object, and my future care;
Be mindful of my children, and thy vows:—
And ['gainst thy judgement] O defend thy Spouse.
My children are my other self to thee:—
Heav'n you distrust if you lament for me.
From a dark prison to free air restor'd?
Admir'd by friends, and envy'd by my foes,
I die, when glory to the highest rose,
If I go further, I descend, or fall.
Hail death, thou lenient cordial of relief;
Preventive of my shame and of my grief!
Kind nature crops me in full virtue's bloom ,
Not left to shrink and wither for the tomb.
Shed not a tear, but vindicate thy pow'r,
Enrich'd like Egypt's soil without a show'r.
Fortune, which gave too much, did soon repine,
There was no Solstice in a course like mine.
With calmness I my bleeding death behold;
Suns set in crimson-streams to rise in gold.
[As more deserving] what it takes from me !—
The peace of conscience, and the peace divine,
Be ever, O thou best of women, thine!
These last convulsions of an husband's heart:
Give us Thy Self; and teach our minds to see
The Saviour and the Paraclete in Thee!
“Quis te felicissimum conjugis pudore non prædicavit?” Philosophiæ Verba ad Boetium. De Consolat. L. II. Pros. 3.
“Vivit Uxor ingenio modesta, pudicitiæ pudore præcellens, et, ut omnes ejus dotes breviter includam, Patri [Symmacho] similis. Vivit inquam, tibique tantum, vitæ hujus exosa, spiritum servat. Quoque uno felicitatem minui tuam vel Ipsa concesserim, tui desiderio lachrymis ac dolore tabescit.” Ejusd. Verba. Ibid. Pros. 4, Edit. Juntarum 1521.
This passage was written in imitation of Ovid's famous description of Galatea, Met. L. XIII. and improved by an hint taken from Dr. Donne's Poems, Page 96, 12mo.
“Quod si quid in nobilitate bonum, id solum esse arbitror, ut imposita nobilibus necessitudo videatur, nè à majorum virtute degenerent.” L. III, Pros. 6.
Odoácer and Theodoric had divided by agreement the kingdom of Italy between them. The latter invited the former to a banquet, and killed him with his own hand.
The precepts of government, comprized in the following lines, and recommended by Boetius, are extracted almost verbatim from Cassiodorus's Letters. Cassiodorus was secretary to Theodoric and Athalaric, kings of the Goths. He was a statesman of great genius, and an author of wonderful invention.
An ancient writer of the Church has justly marked out the difference betwixt a King and a Tyrant: “They have Both (says he) absolute power and abundance of people under their command; but exert their authority and power in a very different manner: For the former seeks only the good of those whom he governs, and hazards all, even his life, that they may live in peace and safety.” He then gives the contrast of their characters in more full detail. Synesius Bishop of Cyrene to the Emperor Arcadius.
The character of a just and pious prince is finely marked by Isaiah, Ch. xvi, v 5. “In mercy shall the throne be established; and he shall upon it in truth, in the tabernacle of David; judging and seeking judgement, and hasting righteousness.”
Much to this purpose is a passage in the Son of Sirach:—“As long as thou livest, and hast breath in thee, give not thyself over to to any. In all thy works keep to thyself the pre-eminence, and leave not a stain in thine honour.” ECCLUS. Ch. xxxiii.
“Ales, caveæ clauditur antro.
“Huic licet illita pocula melle
“Largasque dapes dulci studio
“Ludens hominum cura ministret;
“Si tamen alto saliens tecto
“Nemorum gratas viderit umbras,
“Sparsas pedibus proterit escas;
“Sylvas tantum mœsta requirit.”
Boet. de Consolat. L. III, Metr. 2.
“Vir totus ex sapientia, virtutibusque factus.”
Boet. de Consolat. L. II, Pros. 4. “Socer Symmachus, sanctus, atque actu ipso reverendus.”
Ibid. L. I, Pros. 4.
“In chusing men who are to discharge the highest offices, the safest conduct is to take the man who goes out of his way in order to decline it, and not the man who intrudes boldly for it.” St. Bernard.
“De sceleribus ac fraudibus delatorum recte tu quidem strictim attingendum putasti, quod ea melius uberiusque recognoscentis omnia vulgi celebrentur.” Philosophia loquitur, L. I, Pros. 5.
“Luminibusq; prior rediit vigor.
“Ut cum præcipiti glomerantur sidera Coro
“Nimbosisque polus stetit imbribus:
“Sol latet, ac nondum cœlo venientibus astris
“Desuper in terram nox funditur.
“Hanc, si Threïcio Boreas emissus ab antro
“Verberet, & clausum reserat diem;
“Emicat & subito vibratus lumine Phœbus,
“Mirantes oculos radiis serit.”
L. I, Metr. 3.
“Nec speres aliquid, nec extimescas,
“Exarmaveris impotentis iram.
“At quisquis trepidus pavet, vel optat,
“Nectit, qua valeat trahi, catenam.”
Boet. L. I.
L. I, Pros. 5, Boetius.—
—“Ubicunque virtus;“Heic, puto, templum est.”
Jac. Balde Odæ. “Heav'n, to men well-dispos'd, is ev'ry-where.”
Dr. Donne.
“There are two lessons, which God instills every day into the Faithful: The one is, to see their own faults: The other is, to comprehend the Divine Goodness.” Thom. à Kemp.
“At vero hic etiam nostris malis cumulus accedit, quod existimatio plurimorum non rerum merita, sed fortunæ spectat eventum: eaque tantum judicat esse provisa, quæ felicitas commendaverit. Quo fit, ut existimatio bona, prima omnium deserat infelices.” Boetius, Ibid.
“Si vis beatus esse, cogita hoc primum, contemnere et contemni; nondum es selix, si te turba non deriserit.” Antisthenis Dictum.
“Si ea quæ paulo ante conclusa sunt; inconvulsa sequantur, Ipso, de cujus nunc regno loquimur, Auctore cognosces, semper quidem potentes bonos esse, malos vero abjectos semper & imbecilles; nec sine pœna unquam esse vitia, nec sine præmio virtutes; bonis felicia, malis semper infortunata contingere.” Boetius L. IV, Prosa 1, De Consolat. Philosoph.
“Qui semina virtù, fama raccoglie.”
“Quod si idcirco te fortunatum esse non existimas, quoniam quæ tunc læta videbantur, abiérunt: non est quod te miserum putes, quoniam, quæ nunc creduntur mœsta, prœtereunt.” Idem, L. II, Pros. 3.
“O Utinam! quos dura mihi rapit Atropos annos!”
Stat. Sylv.
Religious Melancholy, AN EMBLEMATICAL ELEGY.
“What more could Edom and proud Ashur do?”
Scourge after scourge, and blows succeeding blows?—
Lord, has thy hand no mercy, and our woes
No intermission? Gracious Being, please
To calm our fears, and give the body ease!
The poor man, and the slave of ev'ry kind,
'Midst pains and toils may gleams of comfort find;
But who can bear the sickness of the mind?
The Pow'r of Melancholy mounts the throne,
And makes the realms of wisdom half her own :
Not David's lyre, with David's voice conjoin'd,
Can drive th'oppressive phantom from the mind ?
The vernal blossoms, or the summer's breeze.
No longer Echo makes the dales rejoice
With sportive sounds, and pictures of a voice :
Th'aërial choir, which sung so soft and clear,
Now grates harsh music to the froward ear:
The gently murm'ring rills offend from far,
And emulate the clangour of a war:
Books have no wit, the liveliest wits have none;
And hope, the last of ev'ry friend, is gone!
Nor rest nor joy to Virtue's self are giv'n,
Till the disease is rectify'd by Heav'n.
And yet this Iliad of intestine woes
[So frail is man] from seeming nothings rose:
Th'obstruction of a tube as fine as hair;
Or spasm within a labyrinth of threads,
More subtile far than those the spider spreads .
Averse from joys, and enemy of mirth?
Wat'ry Arcturus in a luckless place
South'd , and portended tears to all our race:
With Him the weeping Pleiades conjoin,
And Mazzaroth made up the mournful trine :
Orion added noise to dumb despair,
And rent with hurricanes the driving air;
And last Absinthion his dire influence shed
Full on the heart, and fuller on the head.
A short parenthesis 'twixt pain and pain;
But, sick'ning at the chearfulness of light,
The soul has languish'd for th'approach of night:
Again, immerst in shades, we seem to say,
O day-spring ! gleam thy promise of a day .
On this side death th'Unhappy sure are curst,
Who sigh for change, and think the present worst:
Who weep unpity'd, groan without relief;
“There is no end nor measure of their grief!”
The Happy have waste twelve-months to bestow;
But Those can spare all time, who live in woe!
Whose food is wormwood, and whose drink is gall .
Banish their grief, or ease their irksome load;
Ephraim, at length, was favour'd by his God .
Proud of his knowledge, glorying in his birth;
Profane corrector of th'Almighty's laws,
Full of th'effect, forgetful of the cause!
Why boast of reason, and yet reason ill?
Why talk of choice, yet follow erring will?
Why vaunt our liberty, and prove the slave
Of all ambition wants, or follies crave?
This is the lot of him, sur-nam'd the wise,
Who lives mistaken, and mistaken dies!
For pains and maladies are God's reprieve:
Is th'interpos'd parenthesis of Heav'n!
Too often we complain—But flesh is weak;
Silence would waste us, and the heart would break.
Behold yon' rose, the poor despondent cries,
[Pain on his brow, and anguish in his eyes]
What healthy verdure paints its juicy shoots,
What equal circulation feeds the roots:
At morning-dawn it feels the dew-ting'd ray,
But opens all its bosom to the day.
No art assists it, and no toil it takes ,
Slumbers at ev'ning, and with morning wakes .
Immense my wish; yet tether'd to a span!
The slave, that groans beneath the toilsome oar,
“Obtains the sabbath of a welcome shore:”
Sweetens the memory of foreign toil.
“Alas my sorrows are not half so blest;”
My labours know no end, my pains no rest!
What heterogeneous mixtures form the man?
Pleasure and anguish, ignorance and skill;
Nature and Spirit, slav'ry and free-will;
Weakness and strength; old-age and youthful prime;
Error and truth; eternity and time!—
What contradictions have for ever ran
Betwixt the nether brute and upper man ?
The worm their brother;— brother elder-born!
Alike they flourish, and alike they fade.
The lab'ring steer sleeps less disturb'd at night,
And eats and drinks with keener appetite,—
Restrain'd by nature just t'enjoy his fill;
Useful, and yet incapable of ill.
Say, man, what vain pre-eminence is thine?
Each sense impair'd by gluttony and wine :
Thou art the beast, except thy soaring mind
Aspires to pleasures of immortal kind:
Else, boasted knowledge, hapless is thy curse,
T'approve the better, and embrace the worse!
So Annas owns the miracle, and then
(Wilfully blinded) persecutes agen .
A claim upon the patronage of Heav'n:
With hopes to live and die without annoy.]
In the first agonies of heart-struck grief,
Heav'n to our Parents typify'd relief .
Th'Almighty lent an ear to Hannah's pray'r ,
And bless'd her with each blessing, in an heir:
Whilst Hezekiah , earnest in his cause,
Gain'd a suspension of great Nature's laws,
And permanence to TIME;—For lo! the sun
Retrac'd the journey he had lately run.—
Rais'd pity in the Saviour of mankind .
He ask'd for peace; Heav'n gave him its own rest;
Demons were dumb, and Legion dispossest.
Thy strength, O manhood; and, O youth, thy bloom !
Syro-Phenicia's maiden re-enjoy'd
That equal mind, which Satan once destroy'd .
And, when the heav'nly Ephphatha was spoke,
The deaf-born heard, the dumb-born silence broke.
Th'ethereal fluid mov'd, the speech return'd;
No spasms were dreaded, no despondence mourn'd.
Its maxims, wisdom, joys and glory too;
The mighty ΕΥΡΗΚΑ appears in view.
In doleful cell, by osier-bars secur'd,
Laments her fate; till, flitting swiftly by,
Th'aerial prize attracts her eager eye:
Her aspect kindles fierce with keen desire;
She prunes her tatter'd plumes in conscious pride,
And bounds from perch to perch, and side to side:
Impatient of her jail, and long detain'd,
She breaks the bounds her liberty restrain'd:
Then, having gain'd the point by Heav'n design'd,
Soars 'midst the clouds, and proves her high-born kind.
He earn'd his hard-bought bread with sweating brow.—
Give us the labour, but suppress the woe!
Merit we boast not: But Christ's sacred side
Has pour'd for all its sacramental tide.
No sin, no guile, no blemishes had He;
A self-made slave to set the captive free!
Just are Heav'n's ways, and righteous is its doom.
Are bitter med'cines, kindly meant to save.
Thus let the rhet'ric of our suff'rings move;
The voice of grief is oft the voice of love !
The bed of sickness, [after cares and strife]
Is weak man's cradle for a second life;
Death's but a moment; and, before we die,
We touch the threshold of eternity!
Th'afflicted prophet in despondence pray'd:
“Oh, take the burthen of my life away,
“Dead are my sires; nor better I than they:”
At length a seraph cry'd, “arise and eat;
“Behold thy bev'rage, and behold thy meat:
“Heav'n's one repast shall future strength supply
“For forty days, till Horeb meets thy eye .”
Arm'd with the heav'nly panoply of saints.
The hint of this Emblem is taken from our venerable and religious Poet F. Quarles, L. III, Embl. 4. Mr. Dryden used to say, that Quarles exceeded him in the facility of Rhyming.
Quarles's Book, and the Emblematical Prints therein contained, are chiefly taken from the Pia Desideria of Hugo Hermannus. The engravings were originally designed by that celebrated artist C. Van Sichem.
Agreeably to this, is a lovely piece of imagery in the holy Scriptures:
“The earth mourneth and languisheth; Lebanon is ashamed, and hewn down; Sharon is like a wilderness; Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits.” Isaiah Ch. xxxiii, v 9.
Job Ch. xxxviii, v 31, 32. According to Scripture-Astronomy these three were all watery Signs, and emblematical of grief. The fourth constellation, named Orion, threatened mankind with hurricanes and tempests. Sandys understood the passage in the same manner as I do. See his excellent Paraphrase on Job, Folio, page 49, London 1637. Mention is again made of the Seven Stars, (Pleiades) and of Orion, Amos Ch. v, v 8—and Job Ch. ix, v 9.
Job Ch. xxxviii, v 12. Luke Ch. I, v 78. Ανατολη εξ υψους This poetical word, day-spring, expressing the dawn of morning, has been never adopted by our poets, as far as we can recollect.
Deut. Ch. xxviii, v 66, 67. “And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have no assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! For the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes wherewith thou shalt see.” See also Job Ch. iii, v 8.
Ibid. Ch. xxxi, v 20. “Ephraim is my dear son;—for, since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.”
Job Ch. xvii, v 14.—There is a remarkable passage in the Psalms upon this occasion, where the worm takes place of the monarch: “O praise the Lord, ye mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; WORMS and feathered fowls; KINGS of the earth and all people; Princes and Judges of the world.” Psalm cxlviii, v 10, Septuagint Version.
“If we pamper the flesh too much, we nourish an enemy; if we defraud it of lawful sustenance, we destroy a good citizen.” St. Gregor. Homil.
Mark Ch. v, v 3–9. And also “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me (saith Christ:) He sent me to heal the broken-hearted,” &c. Luke Ch. iv, v 18. Compare likewise Isaiah Ch. lxi, v 1.
See Dryden's Relig. Laici; and Prior's Ode entituled, What is Man? ΕΥΡΗΚΑ signifies Finding out the great Point desired.
“There is sometimes a certain pleasure in weeping: It is a sort of consolation to an afflicted person to be thoroughly sensible of his affliction.” St. Ambrose.
MEDITATIONS ON CHRIST's Death and Passion.
An EMBLEM.
I
Haste not so fast, on worldly cares employ'd,Thy bleeding Saviour asks a short delay:
What trifling bliss is still to be enjoy'd,
What change of folly wings thee on thy way?
Look back a moment, pause a while , and stay.
For thee thy God assum'd the human frame;
For thee the Guiltless pains and anguish try'd;
Thy passions [sin excepted] His became:
Like thee he suffer'd, hunger'd, wept, and dy'd.
II
Nor wealth nor plenty did he ever taste,The moss his pillow oft, his couch the ground;
The poor man's bread completed his repast;
Home he had none, and quiet never found,
For fell reproach pursu'd, and aim'd the wound :
The wise men mock'd him, and the learned scorn'd;
Th'ambitious worldling other patrons try'd;
The pow'r that judg'd him, ev'ry foe suborn'd;
He wept un-pity'd, and un-honour'd dy'd.
III
For ever mournful, but for ever dear,O love stupendous! glorious degradation!
No soft extinction claims our sorrows here;
But anguish, shame, and agonizing passion!
The riches of the world, and worldly praise,
No monument of gratitude can prove;
Obedience only the great debt repays,
An imitative heart, and undivided love!
IV
To see the image of th'All-glorious Pow'rSuspend his immortality, and dwell
In mortal bondage, tortur'd ev'ry hour;
A self-made pris'ner in a dolesome cell,
Victim for sin, and conqueror of hell !
Lustration for offences not his own!
Th'Unspotted for th'impure resign'd his breath;
Then blame thy Saviour's love, but not his death.
V
From this one prospect draw thy sole relief,Here learn submission, passive duties learn;
Here drink the calm oblivion of thy grief:
Eschew each danger, ev'ry good discern,
And the true wages of thy virtue earn.
Reflect, O man, on such stupendous love,
Such sympathy divine, and tender care ;
Beseech the Paraclete thine heart to move,
And offer up to Heav'n this silent pray'r.
VI
Great God, thy judgements are with justice crown'd,To human crimes and errors gracious still;
Yet, tho' thy mercies more and more abound,
Right reason spares not fresh-existing ill,
Nor can thy goodness counter-work thy will.
Ah no! The gloom of sin so dreadful shows,
That horror, guilt, and death the conscience fill:
Eternal laws our happiness oppose;
Thy nature and our lives are everlasting foes!
VII
Severe thy truth, yet glorious is thy scheme;Complete the vengeance of thy just desire;
See from our eyes the gushing torrents stream,
Yet strike us, blast us with celestial fire;
Our doom, and thy decrees, alike conspire.
Where shall the flaming flashes of thy ire
Transpierce our bodies? Ev'ry nerve and pore
With Christ's immaculate blood is cover'd o'er and o'er.
“When we praise God we may speak much, and yet come short: Wherefore in sum, He is all. When you glorify Him, exalt Him as much as you can: For even yet He will far exceed. And when you exalt Him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary: For you can never go far enough.”
Ecclus. Ch. xliii, v. 27–30.“Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. The way wherein thou oughtest to walk; the truth which thou desirest to obtain; and the life of happiness which thou longest to enjoy.” St. August.
“If you labour for a time, you will afterwards enjoy an eternity of rest. Your sufferings are of a short duration, your joy will last for ever: And if your resolution wavers, and is going to desert you, turn your eyes towards Mount Calvary, and consider what Christ suffered for you, innocent as he was. This consideration will enable you to say in the event, that your sufferings lasted only for a moment.” Idem.
“Thro' Envy proceeded the fall of the world and death of Christ.” St. August.
“For he (Pilate) knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.” Mark Ch. xv, v. 10.
An antient Heathen also hath personified Envy, and painted her in a mischievous attitude:
“—Gnara malorum,“Invidia Infelix! animi vitalia vidit,
“Lædendiq; vias.”
“Nolo vivere sine vulnere, cum Te videam vulneratum.” Bonavent.
“To know God, without knowing our misery, creates pride: To know misery, without knowing Christ, causes despondence.” St. Augustin.
“They make a free-will offering to God, who in the midst of their sufferings preserve their gratitude and acknowledgements.” Cassian.
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