The Poetical Works of John Langhorne :: :: University of Virginia Library

When calling from their weary height
On western waves his beams to rest,
Still there she sought the parting sight,
And there she turn'd her golden breast.

But soon as night's invidious shade
Afar his lovely looks had borne,
With folded leaves and drooping head,
Full sore she griev'd, as one forlorn.

Such duty in a flower display'd
The holy sisters smil'd to see,
Forgave the pagan rites it paid,
And lov'd its fond idolatry.

But painful still, though meant for kind,
The praise that falls on Envy's ear!
O'er the dim window's arch entwin'd,
The canker'd Ivy chanc'd to hear.

And “See,” she cried, “that specious flower,
“Whose flattering bosom courts the sun,
“The pageant of a gilded hour,
“The convent's simple hearts hath won!

“Obsequious meanness! ever prone
“To watch the patron's turning eye;
“No will, no motion of its own!
“'Tis this they love, for this they sigh:

“Go, splendid sycophant! no more
“Display thy soft seductive arts!
“The flattering clime of courts explore,
“Nor spoil the convent's simple hearts.

“To me their praise more justly due,
“Of longer bloom, and happier grace!
“Whom changing months unalter'd view,
“And find them in my fond embrace.”

“How well,” the modest flower replied,
“Can Envy's wrested eye elude
“The obvious bounds that still divide
“Foul Flattery from fair Gratitude.

“My duteous praise each hour I pay,
“For few the hours that I must live;
“And give to him my little day,
“Whose grace another day may give.

“When low this golden form shall fall
“And spread with dust its parent plain;
“That dust shall hear his genial call,
“And rise, to glory rise again.

“To thee, my gracious power, to thee
“My love, my heart, my life are due!
“Thy goodness gave that life to be;
“Thy goodness shall that life renew.

“Ah me! one moment from thy sight
“That thus my truant-eye should stray!
“The god of glory sets in night!
“His faithless flower has lost a day.”

Sore griev'd the flower, and droop'd her head;
And sudden tears her breast bedew'd:
Consenting tears the sisters shed,
And, wrapt in holy wonder, view'd.

With joy, with pious pride elate,
“Behold,” the aged abbess cries,
“An emblem of that happier fate
“Which heaven to all but us denies.

“Our hearts no fears but duteous fears,
“No charm but duty's charm can move;
“We shed no tears but holy tears
“Of tender penitence and love.

“See there the envious world pourtray'd
“In that dark look, that creeping pace!
“No flower can bear the Ivy's shade;
“No tree support its cold embrace.

“The oak that rears it from the ground,
“And bears its tendrils to the skies,
“Feels at his heart the rankling wound,
“And in its poisonous arms he dies.”

Her moral thus the matron read,
Studious to teach her children dear,
And they by love, or duty led,
With pleasure heard, or seem'd to hear.

Yet one less duteous, not less fair,
(In convents still the tale is known)
The fable heard with silent care,
But found a moral of her own.

The flower that smil'd along the day,
And droop'd in tears at evening's fall;
Too well she found her life display,
Too well her fatal lot recall.

The treacherous Ivy's gloomy shade,
That murder'd what it most embrac'd,
Too well that cruel scene convey'd
Which all her fairer hopes effac'd.

Her heart with silent horror shook;
With sighs she sought her lonely cell:
To the dim light she cast one look;
And bade once more the world farewell.

FABLE II. THE EVENING PRIMROSE.

There are that love the shades of life,
And shun the splendid walks of fame;
There are that hold it rueful strife
To risk Ambition's losing game;

That far from Envy's lurid eye
The fairest fruits of Genius rear,
Content to see them bloom and die
In Friendship's small but kindly sphere.

Than vainer flowers tho' sweeter far,
The Evening Primrose shuns the day;
Blooms only to the western star,
And loves its solitary ray.

In Eden's vale an aged hind,
At the dim twilight's closing hour,
On his time-smoothed staff reclin'd,
With wonder view'd the opening flower.

“Ill-fated flower, at eve to blow,”
In pity's simple thought he cries,
“Thy bosom must not feel the glow
“Of splendid suns, or smiling skies.

“Nor thee, the vagrants of the field,
“The hamlet's little train behold;
“Their eyes to sweet oppression yield,
“When thine the falling shades unfold.

“Nor thee the hasty shepherd heeds,
“When love has fill'd his heart with cares,
“For flowers he rifles all the meads,
“For waking flowers—but thine forbears.

“Ah! waste no more that beauteous bloom
“On night's chill shade, that fragrant breath,
“Let smiling suns those gems illume!
“Fair flower, to live unseen is death.”

Soft as the voice of vernal gales
That o'er the bending meadow blow,
Or streams that steal thro' even vales,
And murmur that they move so slow:

Deep in her unfrequented bower,
Sweet Philomela pour'd her strain;
The bird of eve approv'd her flower,
And answer'd thus the anxious swain.

Live unseen!
By moonlight shades, in valleys green,
Lovely flower, we'll live unseen.
Of our pleasures deem not lightly,
Laughing day may look more sprightly,
But I love the modest mien,
Still I love the modest mien
Of gentle evening fair, and her star-train'd queen.

Didst thou, shepherd, never find,
Pleasure is of pensive kind?
Has thy cottage never known
That she loves to live alone?
Dost thou not at evening hour
Feel some soft and secret power,
Gliding o'er thy yielding mind,
Leave sweet serenity behind;
While all disarm'd, the cares of day
Steal thro' the falling gloom away?
Love to think thy lot was laid
In this undistinguish'd shade.
Far from the world's infectious view,
Thy little virtues safely blew.
Go, and in day's more dangerous hour,
Guard thy emblematic flower.

FABLE III. THE LAUREL AND THE REED.

The reed that once the shepherd blew
On old Cephisus' hallow'd side,
To Sylla's cruel bow apply'd,
Its inoffensive master slew.

Stay, bloody soldier, stay thy hand,
Nor take the shepherd's gentle breath:
Thy rage let innocence withstand;
Let music soothe the thirst of death.

He frown'd—He bade the arrow fly—
The arrow smote the tuneful swain;
No more its tone his lip shall try,
Nor wake its vocal soul again.

Cephisus, from his sedgy urn,
With woe beheld the sanguine deed;
He mourn'd, and, as they heard him mourn,
Assenting sigh'd each trembling reed.

“Fair offspring of my waves,” he cried;
“That bind my brows, my banks adorn,
“Pride of the plains, the rivers' pride,
“For music, peace, and beauty born!

“Ah! what, unheedful have we done?
“What dæmons here in death delight?
“What fiends that curse the social sun?
“What furies of infernal night?

“See, see my peaceful shepherds bleed!
“Each heart in harmony that vy'd,
“Smote by its own melodious reed,
“Lies cold, along my blushing side.

“Back to your urn, my waters, fly;
“Or find in earth some secret way;
“For horror dims yon conscious sky,
“And hell has issu'd into day.”

Thro' Delphi's holy depth of shade
The sympathetic sorrows ran;
While in his dim and mournful glade
The Genius of her groves began:

“In vain Cephisus sighs to save
“The swain that loves his watry mead,
“And weeps to see his reddening wave,
“And mourns for his perverted reed:

“In vain my violated groves
“Must I with equal grief bewail,
“While desolation sternly roves,
“And bids the sanguine hand assail.

“God of the genial stream, behold
“My laurel shades of leaves so bare!
“Those leaves no poet's brows enfold,
“Nor bind Apollo's golden hair.

“Like thy fair offspring, misapply'd,
“Far other purpose they supply;
“The murderer's burning cheek to hide,
“And on his frownful temples die.

“Yet deem not these of Pluto's race,
“Whom wounded Nature sues in vain;
“Pluto disclaims the dire disgrace,
“And cries, indignant, They are men.”

The reeds on the banks of the Cephisus, of which the shepherds made their pipes, Sylla's soldiers used for arrows.

FABLE IV. THE GARDEN ROSE AND THE WILD ROSE.

As Dee, whose current, free from stain,
Glides fair o'er Merioneth's plain,
By mountains forc'd his way to steer
Along the lake of Pimble Mere,
Darts swiftly thro' the stagnant mass,
His waters trembling as they pass,
And leads his lucid waves below,
Unmix'd, unsullied as they flow—
So clear thro' life's tumultuous tide,
So free could Thought and Fancy glide;
Could Hope as sprightly hold her course,
As first she left her native source,
Unsought in her romantic cell
The keeper of her dreams might dwell.

But ah! they will not, will not last—
When life's first fairy stage is past,
The glowing hand of Hope is cold;
And Fancy lives not to be old.

Darker, and darker all before;
We turn the former prospect o'er;
And find in Memory's faithful eye
Our little stock of pleasures lie.

Come, then; thy kind recesses ope!
Fair keeper of the dreams of Hope!
Come with thy visionary train;
And bring my morning scenes again!
To Enon's wild and silent shade,
Where oft my lonely youth was laid;
What time the woodland Genius came.
And touch'd me with his holy flame.—

Or, where the hermit, Bela, leads
Her waves thro' solitary meads;
And only feeds the desart-flower,
Where once she sooth'd my slumbering hour:
Or rous'd by Stainmore's wintry sky,
She wearies echo with her cry;
And oft, what storms her bosom tear,
Her deeply-wounded banks declare.—

Where Eden's fairer waters flow,
By Milton's bower, or Osty's brow,
Or Brockley's alder-shaded cave,
Or, winding round the Druid's grave,
Silently glide, with pious fear
To sound his holy slumbers near.—

To these fair scenes of Fancy's reign,
O Memory! bear me once again:
For, when life's varied scenes are past,
'Tis simple Nature charms at last.

'Twas thus of old a poet pray'd;
Th' indulgent power his pray'r approv'd,
And, ere the gather'd rose could fade,
Restor'd him to the scenes he lov'd.

A Rose, the poet's favourite flower,
From Flora's cultur'd walks he bore;
No fairer bloom'd in Esher's bower,
Nor Prior's charming Chloe wore.

No fairer flowers could Fancy twine
To hide Anacreon's snowy hair;
For there Almeria's bloom divine,
And Elliot's sweetest blush was there.

When she, the pride of courts, retires,
And leaves for shades, a nation's love,
With awe the village maid admires,
How Waldegrave looks, how Waldegrave moves.

So marvell'd much in Enon's shade
The flowers that all uncultur'd grew,
When there the splendid Rose display'd
Her swelling breast, and shining hue.

Yet one, that oft adorn'd the place
Where now her gaudy rival reign'd,
Of simpler bloom, but kindred race,
The pensive Eglantine complain'd.—

“Mistaken youth,” with sighs she said,
“From Nature and from me to stray!
“The bard, by splendid forms betray'd,
“No more shall frame the purer lay.

“Luxuriant, like the flaunting Rose,
“And gay the brilliant strains may be,
“But far, in beauty, far from those,
“That flow'd to Nature and to me.”

The poet felt, with fond surprise,
The truths the sylvan critic told;
And, “Though this courtly Rose,” he cries,
“Is gay, is beauteous to behold;

“Yet, lovely flower, I find in thee
“Wild sweetness which no words express,
“And charms in thy simplicity,
“That dwell not in the pride of dress.”

FABLE V. THE VIOLET AND THE PANSY.

Shepherd, if near thy artless breast
The god of fond desires repair;
Implore him for a gentle guest,
Implore him with unwearied prayer.

Should beauty's soul-enchanting smile,
Love-kindling looks, and features gay,
Should these thy wandering eye beguile,
And steal thy wareless heart away;

That heart shall soon with sorrow swell,
And soon the erring eye deplore,
If in the beauteous bosom dwell
No gentle virtue's genial store.

Far from his hive one summer-day,
A young and yet unpractis'd bee,
Borne on his tender wings away,
Went forth the flowery world to see.

The morn, the noon in play he pass'd,
But when the shades of evening came,
No parent brought the due repast,
And faintness seiz'd his little frame.

By nature urg'd, by instinct led,
The bosom of a flower he sought,
Where streams mourn'd round a mossy bed,
And violets all the bank enwrought.

Of kindred race, but brighter dies,
On that fair bank a Pansy grew,
That borrow'd from indulgent skies
A velvet shade and purple hue.

The tints that stream'd with glossy gold,
The velvet shade, the purple hue,
The stranger wonder'd to behold,
And to its beauteous bosom flew.

Not fonder haste the lover speeds,
At evening's fall, his fair to meet,
When o'er the hardly-bending meads
He springs on more than mortal feet.

Nor glows his eyes with brighter glee,
When stealing near her orient breast,
Than felt the fond enamour'd bee,
When first the golden bloom he prest.

Ah! pity much his youth untry'd,
His heart in beauty's magic spell!
So never passion thee betide,
But where the genial virtues dwell.

In vain he seeks those virtues there;
No soul-sustaining charms abound:
No boney'd sweetness to repair
The languid waste of life is found.

An aged bee, whose labours led
Thro' those fair springs, and meads of gold,
His feeble wing, his drooping head
Beheld, and pitied to behold.

“Fly, fond adventurer, fly the art
“That courts thine eye with fair attire;
“Who smiles to win the heedless heart,
“Will smile to see that heart expire.

“This modest flower of humbler hue,
“That boasts no depth of glowing dyes,
“Array'd in unbespangled blue,
“The simple clothing of the skies—

“This flower, with balmy sweetness blest,
“May yet thy languid life renew:”
He said, and to the Violet's breast
The little vagrant faintly flew.

FABLE VI. THE QUEEN OF THE MEADOW AND THE CROWN IMPERIAL.

From Bactria's vales, where beauty blows
Luxuriant in the genial ray;
Where flowers a bolder gem disclose,
And deeper drink the golden day.

From Bactria's vales to Britain's shore
What time the Crown Imperial came,
Full high the stately stranger bore
The honours of his birth and name.

In all the pomp of eastern state,
In all the eastern glory gay,
He bade, with native pride elate,
Each flower of humbler birth obey.

O, that the child unborn might hear,
Nor hold it strange in distant time,
That freedom e'en to flowers was dear,
To flowers that bloom'd in Britain's clime!

Thro' purple meads, and spicy gales,
Where Strymon's silver waters play,
While far from hence their goddess dwells,
She rules with delegated sway.

That sway the Crown Imperial sought,
With high demand and haughty mien:
But equal claim a rival brought,
A rival call'd the Meadow's Queen.

“In climes of orient glory born,
“Where beauty first and empire grew;
“Where first unfolds the golden morn,
“Where richer falls the fragrant dew:

“In light's ethereal beauty drest,
“Behold,” he cried, “the favour'd flower,
“Which Flora's high commands invest
“With ensigns of imperial power!

“Where prostrate vales, and blushing meads,
“And bending mountains own his sway,
“While Persia's lord his empire leads,
“And bids the trembling world obey;

“While blood bedews the straining bow,
“And conquest rends the scatter'd air,
“'Tis mine to bind the victor's brow,
“And reign in envy'd glory there.

“Then lowly bow, ye British flowers!
“Confess your monarch's mighty sway,
“And own the only glory yours,
“When fear flies trembling to obey.”

He said, and sudden o'er the plain,
From flower to flower a murmur ran,
With modest air, and milder strain,
When thus the Meadow's Queen began:

“If vain of birth, of glory vain,
“Or fond to bear a regal name,
“The pride of folly brings disdain,
“And bids me urge a tyrant's claim:

“If war my peaceful realms assail,
“And then, unmov'd by pity's call,
“I smile to see the bleeding vale,
“Or feel one joy in Nature's fall,

“Then may each justly vengeful flower
“Pursue ber Queen with gen'rous strife,
“Nor leave the hand of lawless power
“Such compass on the scale of life.

“One simple virtue all my pride!
“The wish that flies to mis'ry's aid;
“The balm that stops the crimson tide,
“And heals the wounds that war has made.”

Their free consent by zephyrs borne,
The flowers their Meadow's Queen obey;
And fairer blushes crown'd the morn,
And sweeter fragrance fill'd the day.

The Ionian Strymon.

The property of that flower.

FABLE VII. THE WALL-FLOWER.

“Why loves my flower, the sweetest flower
“That swells the golden breast of May,
“Thrown rudely o'er this ruin'd tower,
“To waste her solitary day?

“Why, when the mead, the spicy vale,
“The grove and genial garden call,
“Will she her fragrant soul exhale,
“Unheeded on the lonely wall?

“For never sure was beauty born
“To live in death's deserted shade!
“Come, lively flower, my banks adorn,
“My banks for life and beauty made.”

Thus Pity wak'd the tender thought,
And by her sweet persuasion led,
To seize the hermit-flower I sought,
And bear her from her stony bed.

I sought—but sudden on mine ear
A voice in hollow murmurs broke,
And smote my heart with holy fear—
The Genius of the Ruin spoke.

“From thee be far th' ungentle deed,
“The honours of the dead to spoil,
“Or take the sole remaining meed,
“The flower that crowns their former toil!

“Nor deem that flower the garden's foe,
“Or fond to grace this barren shade;
“'Tis Nature tells her to bestow
“Her honours on the lonely dead.

“For this, obedient zephyrs bear
“Her light seeds round yon turret's mold,
“And undispers'd by tempests there,
“They rise in vegetable gold.

“Nor shall thy wonder wake to see
“Such desart scenes distinction crave;
“Oft have they been, and oft shall be
“Truth's, Honour's, Valour's, Beauty's grave.

“Where longs to fall that rifted spire,
“As weary of th' insulting air;
“The poet's thought, the warrior's fire,
“The lover's sighs are sleeping there.

“When that too shakes the trembling ground,
“Borne down by some tempestuous sky,
“And many a slumbering cottage round
“Startles—how still their hearts will lie!

“Of them who, wrapt in earth so cold,
“No more the smiling day shall view,
“Should many a tender tale be told;
“For many a tender thought is due.

“Hast thou not seen some lover pale,
“When evening brought the pensive hour,
“Step slowly o'er the shadowy vale,
“And stop to pluck the frequent flower?

“Those flowers he surely meant to strew
“On lost affection's lowly cell;
“Tho' there, as fond remembrance grew,
“Forgotten, from his hand they fell.

“Has not for thee the fragrant thorn
“Been taught her first rose to resign?
“With vain but pious fondness borne
“To deck thy Nancy's honour'd shrine!

“'Tis Nature pleading in the breast,
“Fair memory of her works to find;
“And when to fate she yields the rest,
“She claims the monumental mind.

“Why, else, the o'ergrown paths of time
“Would thus the letter'd sage explore,
“With pain these crumbling ruins climb,
“And on the doubtful sculpture pore?

“Why seeks he with unwearied toil
“Thro' death's dim walks to urge his way,
“Reclaim his long-asserted spoil,
“And lead Oblivion into day?

“'Tis Nature prompts, by toil or fear
“Unmov'd, to range thro' death's domain:
“The tender parent loves to hear
“Her children's story told again.

“Treat not with scorn his thoughtful hours,
“If haply near these haunts he stray;
“Nor take the fair enlivening flowers
“That bloom to cheer his lonely way.”

FABLE VIII. THE TULIP AND THE MYRTLE.

'Twas on the border of a stream
A gaily-painted Tulip stood,
And, gilded by the morning beam,
Survey'd her beauties in the flood.

And sure, more lovely to behold,
Might nothing meet the wistful eye,
Than crimson fading into gold,
In streaks of fairest symmetry.

The beauteous flower, with pride elate,
Ah me! that pride with beauty dwells!
Vainly affects superior state,
And thus in empty fancy swells:

“O lustre of unrivall'd bloom!
“Fair painting of a hand divine!
“Superior far to mortal doom,
“The hues of heav'n alone are mine!

“Away, ye worthless, formless race!
“Ye weeds, that boast the name of flowers?
“No more my native bed disgrace,
“Unmeet for tribes so mean as yours!

“Shall the bright daughter of the sun
“Associate with the shrubs of earth?
“Ye slaves, your sovereign's presence shun!
“Respect her beauties and her birth.

“And thou, dull, sullen ever-green!
“Shalt thou my shining sphere invade?
“My noon-day beauties beam unseen,
“Obscur'd beneath thy dusky shade!”

“Deluded flower!” the Myrtle cries,
“Shall we thy moment's bloom adore?
“The meanest shrub that you despise,
“The meanest flower has merit more.

“That daisy, in its simple bloom,
“Shall last along the changing year;
“Blush on the snow of winter's gloom,
“And bid the smiling spring appear.

“The violet, that, those banks beneath,
“Hides from thy scorn its modest head,
“Shall fill the air with fragrant breath,
“When thou art in thy dusty bed.

“E'en I, who boast no golden shade,
“Am of no shining tints possess'd,
“When low thy lucid form is laid,
“Shall bloom on many a lovely breast.

“And he, whose kind and fost'ring care
“To thee, to me, our beings gave,
“Shall near his breast my flowrets wear,
“And walk regardless o'er thy grave.

“Deluded flower, the friendly screen
“That hides thee from the noon-tide ray,
“And mocks thy passion to be seen,
“Prolongs thy transitory day.

“But kindly deeds with scorn repaid,
“No more by virtue need be done:
“I now withdraw my dusky shade,
“And yield thee to thy darling sun.”

Fierce on the flower the scorching beam
With all its weight of glory fell;
The flower exulting caught the gleam,
And lent its leaves a bolder swell.

Expanded by the searching fire,
The curling leaves the breast disclos'd;
The mantling bloom was painted higher,
And every latent charm expos'd.

But when the sun was sliding low
And ev'ning came, with dews so cold;
The wanton beauty ceas'd to blow,
And sought her bending leaves to fold.

Those leaves, alas! no more would close;
Relax'd, exhausted, sick'ning, pale;
They left her to a parent's woes,
And fled before the rising gale.

FABLE IX. THE BEE-FLOWER.

Come, let us leave this painted plain;
This waste of flowers that palls the eye:
The walks of Nature's wilder reign
Shall please in plainer majesty.

Thro' those fair scenes, where yet she owes
Superior charms to Brockman's art,
Where, crown'd with elegant repose,
He cherishes the social heart—

Thro' those fair scenes we'll wander wild,
And on yon pastur'd mountains rest;
Come, brother dear! come, Nature's child!
With all her simple virtues blest.

The sun far-seen on distant towers,
And clouding groves and peopled seas,
And ruins pale of princely bowers
On Beachb'rough's airy heights shall please.

Nor lifeless there the lonely scene;
The little labourer of the hive,
From flower to flower, from green to green,
Murmurs, and makes the wild alive.

See, on that flowret's velvet breast
How close the busy vagrant lies!
His thin-wrought plume, his downy breast,
Th' ambrosial gold that swells his thighs!

Regardless, whilst we wander near,
Thrifty of time, his task he plies;
Or sees he no intruder near?
And rest in sleep his weary eyes?

Perhaps his fragrant load may bind
His limbs;—we'll set the captive free—
I sought the living Bee to find,
And found the picture of a Bee.

Attentive to our trifling selves,
From thence we plan the rule of all;
Thus Nature with the fabled elves
We rank, and these her sports we call.

Be far, my friends, from you, from me,
Th' unhallow'd term, the thought profane,
That Life's majestic source may be
In idle fancy's trifling vein.

Remember still, 'tis Nature's plan
Religion in your love to find;
And know, for this, she first in man
Inspir'd the imitative mind.

As conscious that affection grows,
Pleas'd with the pencil's mimic power;
That power with leading hand she shews,
And paints a Bee upon a flower.

Mark, how that rooted mandrake wears
His human feet, his human hands!
Oft, as his shapely form he tears,
Aghast the frighted ploughman stands.

See where, in yonder orient stone,
She seems e'en with herself at strife,
While fairer from her hand is shewn
The pictur'd, than the native life.

Helvetia's rocks, Sabrina's waves,
Still many a shining pebble bear,
Where oft her studious hand engraves
The perfect form, and leaves it there.

O long, my Paxton, boast her art;
And long her laws of love fulfil:
To thee she gave her hand and heart,
To thee, her kindness and her skill!

This is a species of the orchis, which is found in the barren and mountainous parts of Lincolnshire, Worcestershire, Kent, and Herefordshire. Nature has formed a bee apparently feeding on the breast of a flower with so much exactness, that it is impossible at a very small distance to distinguish the imposition. For this purpose she has observed an economy different from what is found in most other flowers, and has laid the petals horizontally. The genius of the orchis, or satyrion, she seems professedly to have made use of for her paintings, and on the different species has drawn the perfect forms of different insects, such as bees, flies, butterflies, &c.

The well known fables of the Painter and the Statuary that fell in love with objects of their own creation, plainly arose from the idea of that attachment, which follows the imitation of agreeable objects, to the objects imitated.

An ingenious portrait painter in Rathbone Place.

FABLE X. THE WILDING AND THE BROOM.

In yonder green wood blows the Broom;
Shepherds, we'll trust our flocks to stray.
Court Nature in her sweetest bloom,
And steal from care one summer-day.

From him whose gay and graceful brow
Fair-handed Hume with roses binds,
We'll learn to breathe the tender vow,
Where slow the fairy Fortha winds.

And oh! that he whose gentle breast
In Nature's softest mould was made,
Who left her smiling works imprest
In characters that cannot fade;

That he might leave his lowly shrine,
Tho' softer there the seasons fall—
They come, the sons of verse divine,
They come to Fancy's magic call.

“What airy sounds invite
“My steps not unreluctant, from the depth
“Of Shene's delightful groves? Reposing there
“No more I hear the busy voice of men
“Far-toiling o'er the globe—save to the call
“Of soul-exalting poetry, the ear
“Of death denies attention. Rouz'd by her,
“The genius of sepulchral silence opes
“His drowsy cells, and yields us to the day.
“For thee, whose hand, whatever paints the spring,
“Or swells on summer's breast, or loads the lap
“Of autumn, gathers heedful—Thee whose rites
“At Nature's shrine with holy care are paid
“Daily and nightly, boughs of brightest green,
“And every fairest rose, the god of groves,
“The queen of flowers, shall sweeter save for thee.
“Yet not if beauty only claim thy lay,
“Tunefully trifling. Fair philosophy,
“And Nature's love, and every moral charm
“That leads in sweet captivity the mind
“To virtue—ever in thy nearest cares
“Be these, and animate thy living page
“With truth resistless, beaming from the source

“Of perfect ligh immortal—Vainly boasts
“That golden Broom its sunny robe of flowers:
“Fair are the sunny flowers; but, fading soon
“And fruitless, yield the forester's regard
“To the well-loaded Wilding—Shepherd, there
“Behold the fate of song, and lightly deem
“Of all but moral beauty.”

“Not in vain”—
I hear my Hamilton reply,
(The torch of fancy in his eye)
“'Tis not in vain,” I hear him say,
“That Nature paints her works so gay;
“For, fruitless tho' that fairy Broom,
“Yet still we love her lavish bloom.
“Cheer'd with that bloom, yon desart wild
“Its native horrors lost, and smil'd.
“And oft we mark her golden ray
“Along the dark wood scatter day.

“Of moral uses take the strife;
“Leave me the elegance of life.
“Whatever charms the ear or eye,
“All beauty and all harmony;
“If sweet sensations these produce,
“I know they have their moral use.
“I know that Nature's charms can move
“The springs that strike to Virtue's love.”

William Hamilton of Bangour.

Thomson.

FABLE XI. THE MISLETOE AND THE PASSION-FLOWER.

In this dim cave a druid sleeps,
Where stops the passing gale to moan;
The rock he hollow'd o'er him weeps,
And cold drops wear the fretted stone.

In this dim cave, of diff'rent creed,
An hermit's holy ashes rest:
The school-boy finds the frequent bead,
Which many a formal matin blest.

That truant-time full well I know,
When here I brought, in stolen hour,
The druid's magic Misletoe,
The holy hermit's Passion-flower.

The off'rings on the mystic stone
Pensive I laid, in thought profound,
When from the cave a deep'ning groan
Issued, and froze me to the ground.

I hear it still—Dost thou not hear?
Does not thy haunted fancy start?
The sound still vibrates thro' mine ear—
The horror rushes on my heart.

Unlike to living sounds it came,
Unmix'd, unmelodiz'd with breath;
But, grinding thro' some scrannel frame,
Creak'd from the bony lungs of death.

I hear it still—“Depart,” it cries;
“No tribute bear to shades unblest:
“Know, here a bloody druid lies,
“Who was not nurs'd at Nature's breast.

“Associate he with dæmons dire,
“O'er human victims held the knife,
“And pleas'd to see the babe expire,
“Smil'd grimly o'er its quiv'ring life.

“Behold his crimson-streaming hand
“Erect!—his dark, fix'd, murd'rous eye!”
In the dim cave I saw him stand;
And my heart died—I felt it die.

I see him still—Dost thou not see
The haggard eye-ball's hollow glare?
And gleams of wild ferocity
Dart thro' the sable shade of hair?

What meagre form behind him moves,
With eye that rues th' invading day;
And wrinkled aspect wan, that proves
The mind to pale remorse a prey?

What wretched—Hark—the voice replies,
“Boy, bear these idle honours hence!
“For, bere a guilty hermit lies,
“Untrue to Nature, Virtue, Sense.

“Tho' Nature lent him powers to aid
“The moral cause, the mutual weal;
“Those powers he sunk in this dim shade,
“The desp'rate suicide of zeal.

“Go, teach the drone of saintly haunts,
“Whose cell's the sepulchre of time;
“Tho' many a holy hymn he chaunts,
“His life is one continu'd crime.

“And bear them hence, the plant, the flower;
“No symbols those of systems vain!
“They have the duties of their hour;
“Some bird, some insect to sustain.”

THE COUNTRY JUSTICE.

[_]

BY ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S JUSTICES OF THE PEACE FOR THE COUNTY OF SOMERSET.

1. PART THE FIRST.

TO RICHARD BURN, LL.D. ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S JUSTICES OF THE PEACE FOR THE COUNTIES OF WESTMORLAND AND CUMBERLAND.

INTRODUCTION.

In Richard's days, when lost his pastur'd plain,
The wand'ring Briton sought the wild wood's reign,
With great disdain beheld the feudal hord,
Poor life-let vassals of a Norman Lord;
And, what no brave man ever lost, possess'd
Himself—for Freedom bound him to her breast.

Lov'st thou that Freedom? By her holy shrine,
If yet one drop of British blood be thine,
See, I conjure thee, in the desart shade,
His bow unstrung, his little household laid,
Some brave forefather; while his fields they share,
By Saxon, Dane, or Norman banish'd there!
And think he tells thee, as his soul withdraws,
As his heart swells against a tyrant's laws,
The war with Fate, though fruitless to maintain,
To guard that liberty he lov'd in vain.

Were thoughts like these the dream of ancient time?
Peculiar only to some age, or clime?
And does not Nature thoughts like these impart,
Breathe in the soul, and write upon the heart?

Ask on their mountains yon deserted band,
That point to Paoli with no plausive hand;
Despising still, their freeborn souls unbroke,
Alike the Gallic and Ligurian yoke!

Yet while the patriots' gen'rous rage we share,
Still civil safety calls us back to care;—
To Britain lost in either Henry's day,
Her woods, her mountains one wild scene of prey!
Fair Peace from all her bounteous vallies fled,
And Law beneath the barbed arrow bled.

In happier days, with more auspicious fate,
The far-fam'd Edward heal'd his wounded state;
Dread of his foes, but to his subjects dear,
These learn'd to love, as those are taught to fear,
Their laurell'd Prince with British pride obey,
His glory shone their discontent away.

With care the tender flower of love to save,
And plant the olive on Disorder's grave,
For civil storms fresh barriers to provide,
He caught the fav'ring calm and falling tide.

The Appointment, and its Purposes.

The social laws from insult to protect,
To cherish peace, to cultivate respect;
The rich from wanton cruelty restrain,
To smooth the bed of penury and pain;
The hapless vagrant to his rest restore,
The maze of fraud, the haunts of theft explore;
The thoughtless maiden, when subdu'd by art,
To aid, and bring her rover to her heart;
Wild riot's voice with dignity to quell,
Forbid unpeaceful passions to rebel,
Wrest from revenge the meditated harm,
For this fair Justice rais'd her sacred arm;
For this the rural magistrate, of yore,
Thy honours, Edward, to his mansion bore.

Ancient Justice's Hall.

Oft, where old Air in conscious glory sails,
On silver waves that flow thro' smiling vales,
In Harewood's groves, where long my youth was laid,
Unseen beneath their ancient world of shade,
With many a group of antique columns crown'd,
In gothic guise such mansion have I found.

Nor lightly deem, ye apes of modern race,
Ye cits that sore bedizen Nature's face,

Of the more manly structures here ye view;
They rose for greatness that ye never knew!
Ye reptile cits, that oft have mov'd my spleen
With Venus, and the Graces on your green!
Let Plutus, growling o'er his ill-got wealth,
Let Mercury, the thriving god of stealth,
The shopman, Janus, with his double looks,
Rise on your mounts, and perch upon your books!
But, spare my Venus, spare each sister Grace,
Ye cits, that sore bedizen Nature's face!

Ye royal architects, whose antic taste,
Would lay the realms of Sense and Nature waste;
Forgot, whenever from her steps ye stray,
That folly only points each other way;
Here, tho' your eye no courtly creature sees,
Snakes on the ground, or monkies in the trees;
Yet let not too severe a censure fall,
On the plain precincts of the ancient Hall.

For tho' no sight your childish fancy meets,
Of Thibets' dogs, or China's perroquets;
Tho' apes, asps, lizzards, things without a tail,
And all the tribes of foreign monsters fail;
Here shall ye sigh to see, with rust o'ergrown,
The iron griffin and the sphynx of stone;
And mourn, neglected in their waste abodes,
Fire-breathing drakes, and water-spouting gods.

Long have these mighty monsters known disgrace,
Yet still some trophies hold their ancient place;
Where, round the Hall, the oak's high surbase rears
The field-day triumphs of two hundred years.

Th' enormous antlers here recal the day
That saw the forest-monarch forc'd away;
Who, many a flood, and many a mountain past,
Nor finding those, nor deeming these the last,
O'er floods, o'er mountains yet prepar'd to fly,
Long ere the death-drop fill'd his failing eye!

Here, fam'd for cunning, and in crimes grown old,
Hangs his grey brush, the felon of the fold.
Oft, as the rent feast swells the midnight cheer,
The maudlin farmer kens him o'er his beer,
And tells his old, traditionary tale,
Tho' known to ev'ry tenant of the vale.

Here, where, of old, the festal ox has fed,
Mark'd with his weight, the mighty horns are spread:
Some ox, O Marshall, for a board like thine,
Where the vast master with the vast sirloin
Vied in round magnitude—Respect I bear
To thee, tho' oft the ruin of the chair.

These, and such antique tokens, that record
The manly spirit, and the bounteous board,

Me more delight than all the gew-gaw train,
The whims and zigzags of a modern brain,
More than all Asia's marmosets to view
Grin, frisk, and water in the walks of Kew.

Character of a Country Justice.

Thro' these fair vallies, stranger, hast thou stray'd,
By any chance, to visit Harewood's shade,
And seen with honest, antiquated air,
In the plain Hall the magistratial chair?
There Herbert sate—the love of human kind,
Pure light of truth, and temperance of mind,
In the free eye the featur'd soul display'd,
Honour's strong beam, and Mercy's melting shade;
Justice, that, in the rigid paths of law,
Would still some drops from Pity's fountain draw,
Bend o'er her urn with many a gen'rous fear,
Ere his firm seal should force one orphan's tear;
Fair Equity, and Reason scorning art,
And all the sober virtues of the heart—
These sate with Herbert, these shall best avail,
Where statutes order; or where statutes fail.

General Motives for Lenity.

Be this, ye rural Magistrates, your plan:
Firm be your justice, but be friends to Man.

He whom the mighty master of this ball,
We fondly deem, or farcically call,
To own the Patriarch's truth however loth,
Holds but a mansion crush'd before the moth.

Frail in his genius, in his heart, too, frail,
Born but to err, and erring to bewail;
Shalt thou his faults with eye severe explore,
And give to life one human weakness more?

Still mark if Vice or Nature prompts the deed;
Still mark the strong temptation and the need:
On pressing Want, on Famine's pow'rful call,
At least more lenient let thy justice fall,

Apology for Vagrants.

For him, who, lost to ev'ry hope of life,
Has long with fortune held unequal strife,
Known to no human love, no human care,
The friendless, homeless object of despair;
For the poor Vagrant, feel, while he complains,
Nor from sad freedom send to sadder chains.
Alike, if folly or misfortune brought
Those last of woes his evil days have wrought;
Believe with social mercy and with me,
Folly's misfortune in the first degree.

Perhaps on some inhospitable shore
The houseless wretch a widow'd parent bore;
Who, then, no more by golden prospects led,
Of the poor Indian begg'd a leafy bed.
Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that parent mourn'd her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolv'd in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years,
The child of misery, baptiz'd in tears!

Apostrophe to Edward the Third.

O Edward, here thy fairest laurels fade!
And thy long glories darken into shade

While yet the palms thy hardy veterans won,
The deeds of valour that for thee were done,
While yet the wreaths for which they bravely bled,
Fir'd thy high soul, and flourish'd on thy head,
Those veterans to their native shores return'd,
Like exiles wander'd, and like exiles mourn'd;
Or, left at large no longer to bewail,
Were vagrants deem'd, and destin'd to a jail!

Were there no royal, yet uncultur'd lands,
No wastes that wanted such subduing hands?
Were Cressy's heroes such abandon'd things?
O fate of war! and gratitude of kings!

The Gypsey-Life.

The gypsey-race my pity rarely move;
Yet their strong thirst of Liberty I love.
Not Wilkes, our freedom's holy martyr, more;
Nor his firm phalanx, of the common shore.

For this in Norwood's patrimonial groves,
The tawny father with his offspring roves;
When summer suns lead slow the sultry day,
In mossy caves, where welling waters play,
Fann'd by each gale that cools the fervid sky,
With this in ragged luxury they lie.
Oft at the sun the dusky elfins strain
The sable eye, then, snugging, sleep again;
Oft, as the dews of cooler evening fall,
For their prophetic mother's mantle call.

Far other cares that wandering mother wait,
The mouth, and oft the minister of Fate!
From her to hear, in ev'ning's friendly shade,
Of future fortune, flies the village-maid,
Draws her long-hoarded copper from its hold;
And rusty halfpence purchase hopes of gold.

But, ah! ye maids, beware the Gypsey's lures!
She opens not the womb of Time, but yours.
Oft has her hands the hapless Marian wrung,
Marian, whom Gay in sweetest strains has sung!

The parson's maid—sore cause had she to rue
The Gypsey's tongue; the parson's daughter too.
Long had that anxious daughter sigh'd to know
What Vellum's sprucy clerk, the valley's beau,
Meant by those glances, which at church he stole,
Her father nodding to the psalm's slow drawl;
Long had she sigh'd, at length a prophet came,
By many a sure prediction known to fame,
To Marian known, and all she told, for true:
She knew the future, for the past she knew.

Where, in the darkling shed, the moon's dim rays
Beam'd on the ruins of a one-horse chaise
Villaria sate, while faithful Marian brought
The wayward prophet of the woe she sought.
Twice did her hands, the income of the week,
On either side, the crooked sixpence seek;
Twice were those hands withdrawn from either side,
To stop the titt'ring laugh, the blush to hide.
The wayward prophet made no long delay,
No novice she in Fortune's devious way!
“Ere yet,” she cried, “ten rolling months are o'er,
“Must ye be mothers; maids, at least no more.
“With you shall soon, O lady fair, prevail
“A gentle youth, the flower of this fair vale.
“To Marian, once of Colin Clout the scorn,
“Shall bumkin come, and bumkinets be born.”

Smote to the heart, the maidens marvell'd sore,
That ten short months had such events in store;
But holding firm, what village-maids believe,
‘That strife with fate is milking in a sieve;’
To prove their prophet true, tho' to their cost,
They justly thought no time was to be lost.

These foes to youth, that seek, with dang'rous art,
To aid the native weakness of the heart;
These miscreants from thy harmless village drive,
As wasps felonious from the lab'ring hive.

END OF THE FIRST PART.

2. PART THE SECOND.

TO ROBERT WILSON CRACROFT, ESQ.

Born with a gentle heart, and born to please
With native goodness, of no fortune vain,
The social aspect of inviting ease,
The kind opinion, and the sense humane;

To thee, my Cracroft, whom, in early youth,
With lenient hand, and anxious love I led
Thro' paths where science points to manly truth,
And glory gilds the mansions of the dead:

To thee this offering of maturer thought,
That, since wild Fancy flung the lyre aside,
With heedful hand the Moral Muse hath wrought,
That Muse devotes, and bears with honest pride.

Yet not that period of the human year,
When Fancy reign'd, shall we with pain review,
All Nature's seasons different aspects wear,
And now her flowers, and now her fruits are due.

Not that in youth we rang'd the smiling meads,
On Essex' shores the trembling angle play'd,
Urging at noon the slow boat in the reeds,
That wav'd their green uncertainty of shade.

Nor yet the days consum'd in Hackthorn's vale,
That lonely on the heath's wild bosom lies,
Should we with stern severity bewail,
And all the lighter hours of life despise.

For Nature's seasons different aspects wear,
And now her flowers, and now her fruits are due;
A while she freed us from the scourge of Care,
But told us then—for social ends we grew.

To find some virtue trac'd on life's short page,
Some mark of service paid to human kind,
Alone can chear the wintry paths of age,
Alone support the far-reflecting mind.

Oh! often thought—when Smith's discerning care
To further days prolong'd this failing frame!
To die, was little—But what heart could bear
To die, and leave an undistinguish'd name?

Blagdon-House, Feb. 22, 1775.

Protection of the Poor.

Yet, while thy rod restrains the needy crew,
Remember that thou art their monarch too.
King of the Beggars!—Lov'st thou not the name?
O, great from Ganges to the golden Tame!
Far-ruling sovereign of this begging ball,
Low at thy footstool other thrones shall fall.
His alms to thee the whisker'd Moor convey,
And Prussia's sturdy beggar own thy sway;
Courts, senates—all to Baal that bend the knee,
King of the beggars, these are fiefs to thee!

But still, forgot the grandeur of thy reign,
Descend to duties meaner crowns disdain;
That worst excrescency of power forego,
That pride of kings, Humanity's first foe.

Let age no longer toil with feeble strife,
Worn by long service in the war of life;
Nor leave the head, that time hath whiten'd, bare
To the rude insults of the searching air;
Nor bid the knee, by labour harden'd, bend,
O thou, the poor man's hope, the poor man's friend!

If, when from Heav'n severer seasons fall,
Fled from the frozen roof, and mouldering wall,
Each face the picture of a winter-day,
More strong than Teniers' pencil could pourtray;—
If then to thee resort the shivering train,
Of eruel days, and cruel man complain,
Say to thy heart [remembering him who said]
‘These people come from far, and have no bread.’

Nor leave thy venal clerk empower'd to hear;
The voice of want is sacred to thy ear.
He, where no fees his sordid pen invite,
Sports with their tears, too indolent to write;
Like the fed monkey in the fable, vain
To hear more helpless animals complain.

But chief thy notice shall one monster claim,
A monster furnish'd with a human frame,
The parish-officer!—tho' Verse disdain
Terms that deform the splendor of the strain;
It stoops to bid thee bend the brow severe
On the sly, pilfering, cruel overseer;
The shuffling farmer, faithful to no trust,
Ruthless as rocks, insatiate as the dust!

When the poor hind, with length of years decay'd,
Leans feebly on his once subduing spade,
Forgot the service of his abler days,
His profitable toil, and honest praise,
Shall this low wretch abridge his scanty bread,
This slave, whose board his former labours spread?

When harvest's burning suns and sick'ning air
From labour's unbrac'd hand the grasp'd hook tear,
Where shall the helpless family be fed,
That vainly languish for a father's bread?
See the pale mother, sunk with grief and care,
To the proud farmer fearfully repair;
Soon to be sent with insolence away,
Referr'd to vestries, and a distant day!
Referr'd—to perish!—Is my verse severe?
Unfriendly to the human character?
Ah! to this sigh of sad experience trust.
The truth is rigid, but the tale is just.

If in thy courts this caitiff wretch appear,
Think not, that patience were a virtue here.
His low-born pride with honest rage controul;
Smite his hard heart, and shake his reptile soul.

But, hapless! oft thro' fear of future woe,
And certain vengeance of th' insulting foe,
Oft, ere to thee the poor prefer their pray'r,
The last extremes of penury they bear.

Wouldst thou then raise thy patriot office higher,
To something more than magistrate aspire?
And, left each poorer, pettier chace behind,
Step nobly forth, the friend of human kind?
The game I start courageously pursue!
Adieu to fear! to indolence adieu!
And, first we'll range this mountain's stormy side,
Where the rude winds the shepherd's roof deride,
As meet no more the wintry blast to bear,
And all the wild hostilities of air.
—That roof have I remember'd many a year;
It once gave refuge to a hunted deer—
Here, in those days, we found an aged pair;—
But Time untenants—Hah! what seest thou there?
“Horror!—By Heav'n, extended on a bed
“Of naked fearn, two human creatures dead!
“Embracing as alive!—ah, no!—no life!
“Cold, breathless!”
'Tis the shepherd and his wife.

I knew the scene, and brought thee to behold
What speaks more strongly than the story told.

They died thro' want—
“By every power I swear,
“If the wretch treads the earth, or breathes the air,
“Thro' whose default of duty, or design,
“These victims fell, he dies.”
They fell by thine.
“Infernal!—Mine!—by—”
Swear on no pretence:
A swearing Justice wants both grace and sense.

When thy good father held this wide domain,
The voice of sorrow never mourn'd in vain.
Sooth'd by his pity, by his bounty fed,
The sick found med'cine, and the aged bread.
He left their interest to no parish-care,
No bailiff urg'd his little empire there:
No village-tyrant starv'd them, or oppress'd;
He learnt their wants, and he those wants redress'd.

E'en these, unhappy! who, beheld too late,
Smote thy young heart with horror at their fate,
His bounty found, and destin'd here to keep
A small detachment of his mountain-sheep.
Still pleas'd to see them from the annual fair
Th' unwritten history of their profits bear;
More nobly pleas'd those profits to restore,
And, if their fortune fail'd them, make it more.

When Nature gave her precept to remove
His kindred spirit to the realms of love,
Afar their anguish from thy distant ear,
No arm to save, and no protection near,
Led by the lure of unaccounted gold,
Thy bailiff seiz'd their little flock, and sold.

Their want contending parishes survey'd,
And this disown'd, aud that refus'd to aid:
A while, who should not succour them, they tried,
And in that while the wretched victims died.

“I'll scalp that bailiff—sacrifice.”
In vain
To rave at mischief, if the cause remain!

O days long lost to man in each degree!
The golden days of hospitality!
When liberal fortunes vied with liberal strife
To fill the noblest offices of life;
When Wealth was Virtue's handmaid, and her gate
Gave a free refuge from the wrongs of fate;
The poor at hand their natural patrons saw,
And lawgivers were supplements of law!

Lost are those days, and Fashion's boundless sway
Has borne the guardian magistrate away.
Save in Augusta's streets, on Gallia's shore,
The rural patron is beheld no more.

No more the poor his kind protection share,
Unknown their wants, and unreceiv'd their pray'r.

Yet has that Fashion, long so light and vain,
Reform'd at last, and led the moral train?
Have her gay vot'ries nobler worth to boast
For Nature's love, for Nature's virtue lost?
No—fled from these, the sons of fortune find
What poor respect to wealth remains behind.
The mock regard alone of menial slaves,
The worship'd calves of their outwitting knaves!

Foregone the social, hospitable days,
When wide vales echo'd with their owner's praise,
Of all that ancient consequence bereft,
What has the modern Man of Fashion left?

Does he, perchance, to rural scenes repair,
And “waste his sweetness” on the essenc'd air?
Ah! gently lave the feeble frame he brings,
Ye scouring seas! and ye sulphureous springs!

And thou, Brighthelmstone, where no cits annoy,
(All borne to Margate, in the Margate-hoy,)
Where, if the hasty creditor advance,
Lies the light skiff, and ever-bailing France,
Do thou defend him in the dog-day suns!
Secure in winter from the rage of duns!

While the grim catchpole, the grim porter swear,
One that he is, and one, he is not there,
The tortur'd us'rer, as he murmurs by,
Eyes the Venetian blinds, and heaves a sigh.

O, from each title folly ever took,
Blood! Maccarone! Cicisbeo! or Rook!
From each low passion, from each low resort,
The thieving alley, nay, the righteous court,
From Bertie's, Almack's, Arthur's, and the nest
Where Judah's ferrets earth with Charles unblest;—
From these and all the garbage of the great,
At Honour's, Freedom's, Virtue's call—retreat!

Has the fair vale, where rest, conceal'd in flowers,
Lies in sweet ambush for thy careless hours,
The breeze, that, balmy fragrance to infuse,
Bathes its soft wing in aromatic dews,
The stream, to soothe thine ear, to cool thy breast,
That mildly murmurs from its crystal rest;—
Have these less charms to win, less power to please,
Than haunts of rapine, harbours of disease?

Will no kind slumbers o'er thine eyelids creep,
Save where the sullen watchman growls at sleep?
Does morn no sweeter, purer breath diffuse
Than steams thro' alleys from the lungs of Jews?
And is thy water, pent in putrid wood,
Bethesda-like, when troubled only good?

Is it thy passion Linley's voice to hear,
And has no mountain-lark detain'd thine ear?
Song marks alone the tribes of airy wing;
For, trust me, man was never meant to sing:
And all his mimic organs e'er exprest,
Was but an imitative howl at best.

Is it on Garrick's attitude you doat?
See on the pointed cliff yon lordly goat!
Like Lear's, his beard descends in graceful snow,
And wild he looks upon the world below.

Superior here the scene in every part!
Here reigns great Nature, and there little art!
Here let thy life assume a nobler plan,
To Nature faithful, and the friend of man!

Unnumber'd objects ask thy honest care,
Beside the orphan's tear, the widow's pray'r.
Far as thy power can save, thy bounty bless,
Unnumber'd evils call for thy redress.

Seest thou afar yon solitary thorn,
Whose aged limbs the heath's wild winds have torn?
While yet to cheer the homeward shepherd's eye,
A few seem straggling in the ev'ning sky!
Not many suns have hasten'd down the day,
Or blushing moons immers'd in clouds their way,

Since there a scene, that stain'd their sacred light,
With horror stopp'd a felon in his flight;
A babe just born that signs of life exprest,
Lay naked o'er the mother's lifeless breast.
The pitying robber, conscious that, pursu'd,
He had no time to waste, yet stood and view'd;
To the next cot the trembling infant bore,
And gave a part of what he stole before;
Nor known to him the wretches were, nor dear,
He felt as man, and dropp'd a human tear.

Far other treatment she who breathless lay,
Found from a viler animal of prey.

Worn with long toil on many a painful road,
That toil increas'd by Nature's growing load,
When ev'ning brought the friendly hour of rest,
And all the mother throng'd about her breast,
The ruffian officer oppos'd her stay,
And, cruel, bore her in her pangs away,
So far beyond the town's last limits drove,
That to return were hopeless, had she strove.
Abandon'd there—with famine, pain and cold,
And anguish, she expir'd—the rest I've told.

“Now let me swear—For, by my soul's last sigh,
“That thief shall live, that overseer shall die.”

Too late!—His life the gen'rous robber paid,
Lost by that pity which his steps delay'd!
No soul-discerning Mansfield sate to hear,
No Hertford bore his prayer to mercy's ear;
No lib'ral justice first assign'd the gaol,
Or urg'd, as Camplin would have urg'd his tale.

The living object of thy honest rage,
Old in parochial crimes, and steel'd with age,
The grave church-warden! unabash'd he bears
Weekly to church his book of wicked prayers.
And pours, with all the blasphemy of praise,
His creeping soul in Sternhold's creeping lays!

Refers to the conclusion of the First Part.

The Mahometan Princes seem to have a regular system of begging. Nothing so common as to hear that the Dey of Algiers, &c. &c. are dissatisfied with their presents. It must be owned, it would be for the welfare of the world, if Princes in general would adhere to the maxim, that, “it is better to “beg than to steal.”

Tu poscis vilia rerum,
Quamvis fers te nullius egentem.
Hor.

END OF THE SECOND PART.

3. PART THE THIRD.

TO THOMAS SMITH, M.D. Of Wrington, in the County of Somerset, THIS LAST OF THE LITTLE POEMS, INTENDED TO CULTIVATE, IN THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE, THAT HUMANITY BY WHICH HE IS SO AMIABLY DISTINGUISHED, IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY HIS MOST OBLIGED, MOST AFFECTIONATE, AND MOST FAITHFUL SERVANT, THE AUTHOR.

Depredation.

O, No! Sir John—the Muse's gentle art
Lives not to blemish, but to mend the heart.
While Gay's brave robber grieves us for his fate,
We hold the harpies of his life in hate.
Ingenuous youth, by Nature's voice addrest,
Finds not the harden'd, but the feeling breast;
Can form no wish the dire effects to prove
Of lawless valour, or of venal love,
Approves the fondness of the faithful maid,
And mourns a gen'rous passion unrepaid.

Yet would I praise the pious zeal that saves
Imperial London from her world of knaves;
Yet would I count it no inglorious strife
To scourge the pests of property and life.

Come then, long skill'd in theft's illusive ways,
Lord of the clue that thrids her mighty maze!
Together let us beat all Giles's fields,
Try what the night-house, what the round-house yields,

Hang when we must, be candid when we please,
But leave no bawd, unlicens'd, at her ease.

Say first, of thieves above, or thieves below,
What can we order till their haunts we know?
Far from St.James's let your Nimrods stray,
But stop and call at Stephen's in their way.
That ancient victualler, we've been told, of late,
Has kept bad hours, encourag'd high debate;
That those without still pelting those within,
Have stunn'd the peaceful neighbours with their din;
That if you close his private walls invest,
'Tis odds, you meet with some unruly guest—
Good Lord, Sir John, how would the people stare,
To see the present and the late Lord Mayor,
Bow to the majesty of Bow-street chair!

Illustrious chiefs! can I your haunts pass by,
Nor give my long-lov'd Liberty a sigh?
That heav'nly plant which long unblemish'd blew,
Dishonour'd only, only hurt by you!
Dishonour'd, when with harden'd front you claim
To deeds of darkness her diviner name!
For you grim Licence strove with hydra breath
To spread the blasts of pestilence and death:
Here for poor vice, for dark ambition there
She scatter'd poison thro' the social air.

Yet here, in vain—Oh, had her toil been vain,
When with black wing she swept the western main;
When with low labour, and insidious art,
She tore a daughter from her parent's heart!

Oh, Patriots, ever patriots out of place,
Fair Honour's foil, and Liberty's disgrace!
With spleen I see your wild illusions spread
Thro' the long region of a land misled;
See commerce sink, see cultivation's charms
Lost in the rage of anarchy and arms!

And thou, O Ch—m, once a nation's pride,
Borne on the brightest wave of glory's tide!
Hast thou the parent spurn'd, the erring child
With prospects vain to ruin's arms beguil'd?
Hast thou the plans of dire defection prais'd
For the poor pleasure of a statue rais'd?

Oh, Patriots, ever patriots out of place,
From Charles quite graceless, up to Grafton's grace!

Where forty-five once mark'd the dirty door,
And the chain'd knife invites the paltry whore;
Tho' far, methinks, the choicest guests are fled,
And Wilkes and Humphrey number'd with the dead,

Wilkes, who in death would friendship's vows fulfil,
True to his cause, and dines with Humphrey still—
Where sculks each dark, where roams each desp'rate wight,
Owls of the day and vultures of the night,—
Shall we, O Knight, with cruel pains explore,
Clear these low walks, and think the bus'ness o'er?
No—much, alas! for you, for me remains,
Where Justice sleeps, and Depredation reigns.

Wrapt in kind darkness, you no spleen betray,
When the gilt Nabob lacqueys all the way:
Harmless to you his towers, his forests rise,
That swell with anguish my indignant eyes;
While in those towers raz'd villages I see,
And tears of orphans watering every tree.
Are these mock-ruins that invade my view?
These are the entrails of the poor Gentoo.
That column's trophied base his bones supply;
That lake the tears that swell'd his sable eye!
Let here, O Knight, their steps terrific steer
Thy hue and cry, and loose thy bloodhounds here.

Oh, Mercy, thron'd on his eternal breast,
Who breath'd the savage waters into rest;
By each soft pleasure that thy bosom smote,
When first creation started from his thought;
By each warm tear that melted o'er thine eye,
When on his works was written ‘These must die!’

If secret slaughter yet, nor cruel war
Have from these mortal regions forc'd thee far,
Still to our follies, to our frailties blind,
Oh, stretch thy healing wings o'er human kind!
—For them I ask not, hostile to thy sway,
Who calmly on a brother's vitals prey;
For them I plead not, who, in blood embru'd,
Have ev'ry softer sentiment subdu'd.

This was written about the year 1776.

Chained to the table, to prevent depredations.

Prisons.

Yet, gentle power, thy absence I bewail,
When seen the dank, dark regions of a gaol;
When found alike in chains and night enclos'd,
The thief detected, and the thief suppos'd!
Sure, the fair light and the salubrious air
Each yet-sus pected prisoner might share.
—To lie, to languish in some dreary cell,
Some loathed hold, where guilt and horror dwell,
Ere yet the truth of seeming facts be tried,
Ere yet their country's sacred voice decide,
Britain, behold thy citizens expos'd,
And blush to think the Gothic age unclos'd!

Filiation.

Oh, more than Goths, who yet decline to raze
That pest of James's puritanic days,

The savage law that barb'rously ordains
For female virtue lost a felon's pains!—
Dooms the poor maiden, as her fate severe,
To toil and chains a long-enduring year.

Th' unnatural monarch, to the sex unkind,
An owl obscene, in learning's sunshine blind!
Councils of pathics, cabinets of tools,
Benches of knaves, and parliaments of fools!
Fanatic fools, that, in those twilight times,
With wild religion cloak'd the worst of crimes!—
Hope we from such a crew, in such a reign,
For equal laws, or policy humane?

Here, then, O Justice, thy own power forbear;
The sole protector of th' unpitied fair.
Tho' long intreat the ruthless overseer;
Tho' the loud vestry tease thy tortur'd ear;
Tho' all to acts, to precedents appeal,
Mute be thy pen, and vacant rest thy seal.

Yet shalt thou know, nor is the diff'rence nice,
The casual fall from impudence of vice.
Abandon'd guilt by active laws restrain,
But pause.....if Virtue's slightest spark remain.
Left to the shameless lash, the hard'ning gaol,
The fairest thoughts of modesty would fail.

The down-cast eye, the tear that flows amain,
As if to ask her innocence again;
The plaintive babe, that slum'bring seem'd to lie
On her soft breast, and wakes at the heav'd sigh;
The cheek that wears the beauteous robe of shame;
How loth they leave a gentle breast to blame!

Here, then, O Justice, thy own power forbear;—
The sole protector of th' unpitied fair!

7I. c. 4.

THE ORIGIN OF THE VEIL.

Warm from this heart while flows the faithful line,
The meanest friend of beauty shall be mine.
What Love, or Fame, or Fortune could bestow,
The charm of praise, the ease of life I owe
To Beauty present, or to Beauty fled,
To Hertford living, or Caernarvon dead,
To Tweedale's taste, to Edgecumbe's sense serene,
And, Envy spare this boast, to Britain's Queen.
Kind to the lay that all unlabour'd flow'd,
What Fancy caught, where Nature's pencil glow'd,
She saw the path to new, tho' humble fame,
Gave me her praise, and left me fools to blame.

Strong in their weakness are each woman's charms,
Dread that endears, and softness that disarms.
The tim'rous eye retiring from applause,
And the mild air that fearfully withdraws,
Marks of our power these humble graces prove,
And, dash'd with pride, we deeper drink of Love.

Chief of those charms that hold the heart in thrall,
At thy fair shrine, O Modesty, we fall.
Not Cynthia rising o'er the wat'ry way,
When on the dim wave falls her friendly ray;
Not the pure æther of Æolian skies,
That drinks the day's first glories as they rise;
Not all the tints from evening-clouds that break,
Burn in the beauties of the virgin's cheek;
When o'er that cheek, undisciplin'd by art,
The sweet suffusion rushes from the heart.

Yet the soft blush, untutor'd to controul,
The glow that speaks the susceptible soul,
Led by nice honour, and by decent pride,
The voice of ancient virtue taught to hide;
Taught beauty's bloom the searching eye to shun,
As early flowers blow fearful of the sun.

Far as the long records of time we trace,
Still flow'd the Veil o'er modesty's fair face:

The guard of beauty, in whose friendly shade,
Safe from each eye the featur'd soul is laid,—
The pensive thought that paler looks betray,
The tender grief that steals in tears away,
The hopeless wish that prompts the frequent sigh,
Bleeds in the blush, or melts upon the eye.

The man of faith thro' Gerar doom'd to stray,
A nation waiting his eventful way,
His fortune's fair companion at his side,
The world his promise, Providence his guide;
Once, more than virtue dar'd to value life,
And call'd a sister whom he own'd a wife.
Mistaken father of the faithful race,
Thy fears alone could purchase thy disgrace.
“Go,” to the fair, when conscious of the tale,
Said Gerar's Prince, “thy husband is thy veil.”

O ancient faith! O virtue mourn'd in vain!
When Hymen's altar never held a stain;
When his pure torch shed undiminish'd rays,
And fires unholy died beneath the blaze!
For faith like this fair Greece was early known,
And claim'd the Veil's first honours as her own.

Ere half her sons, o'er Asia's trembling coast,
Arm'd to revenge one woman's virtue lost;

Ere he, whom Circe sought to charm in vain,
Follow'd wild fortune o'er the various main,
In youth's gay bloom he plied th' exulting oar,
From Ithaca's white rocks to Sparta's shore:
Free to Nerician gales the vessel glides,
And wild Eurotas smoothes his warrior tides;
For am'rous Greece, when Love conducts the way,
Beholds her waters, and her winds obey.
No object hers but Love's impression knows,
No wave that wanders, and no breeze that blows,
Her groves, her mountains have his power confest,
And Zephyr sigh'd not but for Flora's breast.

'Twas when his sighs in sweetest whispers stray'd,
Far o'er Laconia's plains from Eva's shade;
When soft-ey'd Spring resum'd his mantle gay,
And lean'd luxurious on the breast of May,
Love's genial banners young Ulysses bore,
From Ithaca's white rocks to Sparta's shore.

With all that soothes the heart, that wins, or warms,
All princely virtues, and all manly charms,
All Love can urge, or Eloquence persuade,
The future hero woo'd his Spartan maid.

Yet long he woo'd—in Sparta slow to yield,
Beauty, like valour, long maintain'd the field.

“No bloom so fair Messene's banks disclose,
“No breath so pure o'er Tempe's bosom blows;
“No smile so radiant throws the genial ray
“Thro' the fair eye-lids of the op'ning day;
“But deaf to vows with fondest psssion prest,
“Cold as the wave of Hebrus' wint'ry breast,
“Penelope regards no lover's pain,
“And owns Ulysses eloquent in vain.

“To vows that vainly waste their warmth in air,
“Insidious hopes that lead but to despair,
“Affections lost, desires the heart must rue,
“And Love, and Sparta's joyless plains, adieu!

“Yet still this bosom shall one passion share,
“Still shall my country find a father there.
“Ev'n now the children of my little reign
“Demand that father of the faithless main,
“Ev'n now, their prince solicitous to save,
“Climb the tall cliff, and watch the changeful wave.

“But not for him their hopes, or fears alone!
“They seek the promis'd partner of his throne;
“For her their incense breathes, their altars blaze,
“For her to heaven the suppliant eye they raise.
“Ah! shall they know their prince implor'd in vain?
“Can my heart live beneath a nation's pain?”

There spoke the virtue that her soul admir'd,
The Spartan soul, with patriot ardour fir'd.
“Enough!” she cried—“Be mine to boast a part
“In him, who holds his country to his heart.
“Worth, honour, faith, that fair affection gives,
“And with that virtue, ev'ry virtue lives.”

Pleas'd that the nobler principles could move
His daughter's heart, and soften it to love,
Icarius own'd the auspices divine,
Wove the fair crown, and bless'd the holy shrine.

But ah! the dreaded parting hour to brave!
Then strong affection griev'd for what it gave.
Should he the comfort of his life's decline,
His life's last charm to Ithaca resign?
Or, wand'ring with her to a distant shore,
Behold Eurotas' long-lov'd banks no more?

Expose his grey hairs to an alien sky,
Nor on his country's parent bosom die?

“No, Prince,” he cried; “for Sparta's happier plain
“Leave the lov'd honours of thy little reign.
“The grateful change shall equal honours bring,
“—Lord of himself, a Spartan is a King.”

When thus the Prince, with obvious grief opprest,
“Canst thou not force the father from thy breast?
“Not without pain behold one child depart,
“Yet bid me tear a nation from my heart?
“—Not for all Sparta's, all Eubœa's plains”—
He said, and to his coursers gave the reins.

Still the fond sire pursues with suppliant voice,
'Till, mov'd, the Monarch yields her to her choice.
“Tho' mine by vows, by fair affection mine,
“And holy truth, and auspices divine,
“This suit let fair Penelope decide,
“Remain the daughter, or proceed the bride.”

O'er the quick blush her friendly mantle fell,
And told him all that modesty could tell.

No longer now the father's fondness strove
With patriot virtue or acknowledg'd love,
But on the scene that parting sighs endear'd,
Fair Modesty's first honour'd fane he rear'd.

The daughter's form the pictur'd goddess wore,
The daughter's veil before her blushes bore,
And taught the maids of Greece this sovereign law—
—She most shall conquer, who shall most withdraw.

The Fables of Flora.

Plato mentions two provinces in Persia, one of which was called the Queen's Girdle, the other the Queen's Veil, the revenues of which, no doubt, were employed in purchasing those parts of her Majesty's dress. It was about the middle of the third century, that the eastern women, on taking the vow of virginity, assumed that veil which had before been worn by the Pagan pricstesses, and which is used by the religious among the Romanists now.

He is the veil of thine eyes to all that are with thee, and to all others.—Gen. xx. 16. Vet. Trans.

From the mountain Neritos in Ithaca, now called Nericia.

The Spartan river.

E merite d'Alberghe amore.—Tasso.

A mountain in Peloponnesus.

Omnes omnium caritates, &c.—Cic.

The women of ancient Greece, at the marriage ceremony, wore garlands of flowers, probably as emblems of purity, fertility, and beauty. Thus Euripides,

------αλλ' ομως
Σοι κατασεψατ' εγωνιν ηνον, ως γαμουμενην:
Iph.

The modern Greek ladies wear these garlands in various forms, whenever they appear dressed; and frequently adorn themselves thus for their own amusement, and when they do not expect to be seen by any but their domestics. Voyage Litteraire de la Grece.

The ancients esteemed this one of the greatest misfortunes that could befall them. The Trojans thought it the most lamentable circumstance attending the loss of their pilot Palinurus, that his body should lie in a foreign country.

—Ignotâ, Palinure, jacebis arenâ.
Virgil.

Pausanias, who has recorded the story on which this little poem is founded, tells us that this was the first temple erected to Modesty in Greece.

See the Veil of Modesty in the Musæum Capitolinum, vol. iii.; and for further proofs of its high antiquity, see Hom. Odyss. lib. vi. Claud. Epithal. Honor. where he says,

Et crines festina ligat, peplumque fluentem
Allevat—

Iphig. in Taur. Act. iv.; and Colut. Rapt. Helen. lib. i. v. 381, where Hermione tears her gold-embroidered veil on the disappearance of Helen.

—Aureum quoque rupit capitis tegmen.

VERSES IN MEMORY OF A LADY.

WRITTEN AT SANDGATE CASTLE, 1768.

Nec tantum ingenio, quantum servire dolori.
Propert.

Let others boast the false and faithless pride,
No nuptial charm to know, or known, to hide,
With vain disguise from Nature's dictates part,
For the poor triumph of a vacant heart;
My verse the god of tender vows inspires,
Dwells on my soul, and wakens all her fires.

Dear, silent partner of those happier hours,
That pass'd in Hackthorn's vales, in Blagdon's bowers!
If yet thy gentle spirit wanders here,
Borne by its virtues to no nobler sphere;
If yet that pity which, of life possest,
Fill'd thy fair eye, and lighten'd thro' thy breast;
If yet that tender thought, that gen'rous care,
The gloomy power of endless night may spare;
Oh! while my soul for thee, for thee complains,
Catch her warm sighs, and kiss her bleeding strains.
Wild, wretched wish! Can pray'r with feeble breath,
Pierce the pale ear, the statu'd ear of death?

100

Let patience pray, let hope aspire to prayer!
And leave me the strong language of despair!

Hence ye vain painters of ingenious woe,
Ye Lytteltons, ye shining Petrarchs, go!
I hate the languor of your lenient strain,
Your flow'ry grief, your impotence of pain.
Oh! had ye known, what I have known, to prove
The searching flame, the agonies of love!
Oh! had ye known how souls to souls impart
Their fire, or mix'd the life-drops of the heart!
Not like the streams that down the mountain side,
Tunefully mourn, and sparkle as they glide;
Not like the breeze, that sighs at ev'ning-hour
On the soft bosom of some folding flower;
Your stronger grief, in stronger accents borne,
Had sooth'd the breast with burning anguish torn.
The voice of seas, the winds that rouse the deep,
Far-sounding floods that tear the mountain's steep;
Each wild and melancholy blast that raves
Round these dim towers, and smites the beating waves—
This soothes my soul—'tis Nature's mournful breath,
'Tis Nature struggling in the arms of death!

See, the last aid of her expiring state,
See Love, e'en Love, has lent his darts to fate!

101

Oh! when beneath his golden shafts I bled,
And vainly bound his trophies round my head;
When crown'd with flowers, he led the rosy day,
Liv'd to my eye, and drew my soul away—
Could fear, could fancy, at that tender hour,
See the dim grave demand the nuptial flower?
There, there his wreathes dejected Hymen strew'd;
And mourn'd their bloom unfaded as he view'd.
There each fair hope, each tenderness of life,
Each nameless charm of soft obliging strife,
Delight, love, fancy, pleasure, genius fled,
And the best passions of my soul lie dead;
All, all is there in cold oblivion laid,
But pale remembrance bending o'er a shade.

O come, ye softer sorrows, to my breast!
Ye lenient sighs, that slumber into rest!
Come, soothing dreams, your friendly pinions wave,
We'll bear the fresh rose to yon honour'd grave;
For once this pain, this frantic pain forego,
And feel at last the luxury of woe!

Ye holy suff'rers, that in silence wait
The last sad refuge of relieving fate!
That rest at eve beneath the cypress' gloom,
And sleep familiar on your future tomb;
With you I'll waste the slow-departing day,
And wear, with you, th' uncolour'd hours away.

102

Oh! lead me to your cells, your lonely aisles,
Where resignation folds her arms and smiles;
Where holy faith unwearied vigils keeps,
And guards the urn where fair Constantia sleeps:
There, let me there in sweet oblivion lie,
And calmly feel the tutor'd passions die.

The lady died in child-bed.

See Spectator, Nor.164.

103

MONODY.

SUNG BY A REDBREAST.

The gentle pair that in these lonely shades,
Wand'ring, at eve or morn, I oft have seen,
Now, all in vain, I seek at eve or morn,
With drooping wing, forlorn.
Along the grove, along the daisied green,
For them I've warbled many a summer's day,
Till the light dews impearled all the plain,
And the glad shepherd shut his nightly fold;
Stories of love, and high adventures old
Were the dear subjects of my tuneful strain.
Ah! where is now the hope of all my lay?
Now they, perchance, that heard them all are dead!
With them the meed of melody is fled,
And fled with them the list'ning ear of praise.
Vainly I dreamt, that when the wint'ry sky
Scatter'd the white flood on the wasted plain,
When not one berry, not one leaf was nigh,
To sooth keen hunger's pain,
Vainly I dreamt my songs might not be vain.

104

That oft within the hospitable hall
Some scatter'd fragment haply I might find,
Some friendly crumb perchance for me design'd,
When seen despairing on the neighbouring wall.
Deluded bird, those hopes are now no more!
Dull time has blasted the departing year,
And winter frowns severe,
Wrapping his wan limbs in his mantle hoar.
Yet not within the hospitable hall
The cheerful sound of human voice I hear;
No piteous eye is near,
To see me drooping on the lonely wall.

105

TO A REDBREAST.

Little bird, with bosom red,
Welcome to my humble shed!
Courtly domes of high degree
Have no room for thee and me;
Pride and pleasure's fickle throng
Nothing mind an idle song.
Daily near my table steal,
While I pick my scanty meal.
Doubt not, little though there be,
But I'll cast a crumb to thee;
Well rewarded, if I spy
Pleasure in thy glancing eye:
See thee, when thou'st eat thy fill,
Plume thy breast, and wipe thy bill.
Come, my feather'd friend, again
Well thou know'st the broken pane
Ask of me thy daily store;
Go not near Avaro's door;
Once within his iron hall,
Woeful end shall thee befall.
Savage!—He would soon divest
Of its rosy plumes thy breast;
Then, with solitary joy,
Eat thee, bones and all, my boy!

106

A CONTEMPLATION.

O Nature! grateful for the gifts of mind,
Duteous I bend before thy holy shrine;
To other hands be fortune's goods assign'd,
And thou, more bounteous, grant me only thine.

Bring gentlest Love, bring Fancy to my breast;
And if wild Genius, in his devious way,
Would sometimes deign to be my ev'ning guest,
Or near my lone shade not unkindly stray:

I ask no more! for happier gifts than these,
The suff'rer, Man, was never born to prove;
But may my soul eternal slumbers seize,
If lost to genius, fancy, and to love!

107

MENALCAS.

A PASTORAL.

Now cease your sweet pipes, shepherds! cease your lays,
Ye warbling train, that fill the echoing groves
With your melodious love-notes! Die, ye winds,
That o'er Arcadian valleys blow! Ye streams,
Ye garrulous old streams, suspend your course,
And listen to Menalcas.—

Menalcas.
Come, fairest of the beauteous train that sport
On Ladon's flow'ry side, my Delia, come!
For thee thy shepherd, silent as he sits
Within the green wood, sighs: for thee prepares
The various wreathes in vain; explores the shade
Where lowly lurks the violet blue, where droops,
In tender beauty, its fair spotted bells,
The cowslip: oft with plaintive voice he calls
The wakeful echo—What are streams or flowers,
Or songs of blithe birds? What the blushing rose,
Young health, or music, or the voice of praise,
The smile of vernal suns, the fragrant breath
Of ev'ning gales, when Delia dwells afar?

108

INSCRIPTIONS ON A BEECH TREE,

IN THE ISLAND OF SICILY.

Sweet land of Muses! o'er whose favour'd plains
Ceres and Flora held alternate sway;
By Jove refresh'd with life-diffusing rains,
By Phœbus blest with ev'ry kinder ray?

O with what pride do I those times survey,
When Freedom, by her rustic minstrels led,
Danc'd on the green lawn many a summer's day,
While pastoral ease reclin'd her careless head.

In these soft shades: ere yet that shepherd fled,
Whose music pierc'd earth, air, and heav'n, and hell,
And call'd the ruthless tyrant of the dead
From the dark slumbers of his iron cell.

His ear unfolding, caught the magic spell:
He felt the sounds glide softly through his heart;
The sounds that deign'd of Love's sweet power to tell;
And, as they told, would point his golden dart.

109

Fix'd was the god; nor power had he to part,
For the fair daughter of the sheaf-crown'd queen,
Fair without pride, and lovely without art,
Gather'd her wild flowers on the daisied green.

He saw, he sigh'd; and that unmelting breast,
Which arms the hand of death, the power of love confest.

110

A MONODY, INSCRIBED TO MY WORTHY FRIEND JOHN SCOTT, ESQ.

BEING WRITTEN IN HIS GARDEN AT AMWELL, IN HERTFORD. SHIRE, THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1769.

Friend of my genius! on whose natal hour,
Shone the same star, but shone with brighter ray;
Oft as amidst thy Amwell's shades I stray,
And mark thy true taste in each winding bower,
From my full eye why falls the tender shower,
While other thoughts than these fair scenes convey,
Bear on my trembling mind, and melt its powers away?

Ah me! my friend! in happier hours I spread,
Like thee, the wild walk o'er the varied plain;
The fairest tribe of Flora's painted train,
Each bolder shrub that grac'd her genial bed,
When old Sylvanus, by young wishes led,
Stole to her arms, of such fair offspring vain,
That bore their mother's beauties on their head.
Like thee, inspir'd by love—'twas Delia's charms,
Twas Delia's taste the new creation gave:
For her my groves in plaintive sighs would wave,
And call her absent to their master's arms.

111

She comes—Ye flowers, your fairest blooms unfold,
Ye waving groves, your plaintive sighs forbear!
Breathe all your sragrance to the am'rous air,
Ye smiling shrubs whose heads are cloth'd with gold!
She comes, by truth, by fair affection led,
The long lov'd mistress of my faithful heart!
The mistress of my soul, no more to part,
And all my hopes and all my vows are sped.
Vain, vain delusions! dreams for ever fled!
Ere twice the spring had wak'd the genial hour,
The lovely parent bore one beauteous flower,
And droop'd her gentle head,
And sunk, for ever sunk, into her silent bed.

Friend of my genius! partner of my fate!
To equal sense of painful suffering born!
From whose fond breast a lovely parent torn,
Bedew'd thy pale cheek with a tear so late—
Oh! let us mindful of the short, short date,
That bears the spoil of human hopes away,
Indulge sweet mem'ry of each happier day!
No! close, for ever close the iron gate
Of cold oblivion on that dreary cell,
Where the pale shades of past enjoyments dwell,
And, pointing to their bleeding bosoms, say,
On life's disastrous hour what varied woes await!

112

Let scenes of softer, gentler kind,
A wake to fancy's soothing call,
And milder on the pensive mind,
The shadow'd thought of grief shall fall.
Oft as the slowly-closing day
Draws her pale mantle from the dew-star's eye,
What time the shepherd's cry
Leads from the pastur'd hills his flocks away,
Attentive to the tender lay
That steals from Philomela's breast,
Let us in musing silence stray,
Where Lee beholds in mazes slow
His uncomplaining waters flow,
And all his whisp'ring shores invite the charms of rest.

113

IMITATION OF WALLER.

WALLER TO ST. EVREMOND.

O Vales of Penshurst, now so long unseen!
Forgot each shade secure, each winding green;
Those lonely paths, what art have I to tread,
Where once young Love, the blind enthusiast, led?
Yet if the genius of your conscious groves
His Sidney in my Sacharissa loves;
Let him with pride her cruel power unfold;
By him my pains let Evremond be told.

114

THE DUCHESS OF MAZARINE. ON HER RETIRING INTO A CONVENT.

Ye holy cares that haunt these lonely cells,
These scenes where salutary sadness dwells;
Ye sighs that minute the slow wasting day,
Ye pale regrets that wear my life away;
O bid these passions for the world depart,
These wild desires, and vanities of heart,
Hide every trace of vice, of follies past,
And yield to heaven the victory at last.
To that the poor remains of life are due,
'Tis heaven that calls, and I the call pursue.

Lord of my life, my future cares are thine,
My love, my duty greet thy holy shrine:
No more my heart to vainer hopes I give,
But live for thee, whose bounty bids me live.
The power that gave these little charms their grace,
His favours bounded, and confin'd their space;
Spite of those charms shall time, with rude essay,
Tear from the cheek the transient rose away.
But the free mind, ten thousand ages past,
Its Maker's form, shall with its Maker last.

115

Uncertain objects still our hopes employ;
Uncertain all that bears the name of joy!
Of all that feels the injuries of fate
Uncertain is the search, and short the date,
Yet ev'n that boon what thousands wish to gain?
That boon of death, the sad resource of pain!

Once on my path all Fortune's glory fell,
Her vain magnificence, and courtly swell:
Love touch'd my soul at least with soft desires,
And Vanity there fed her meteor fires,
This truth at last the mighty scenes let fall,
An hour of innocence was worth them all.

Lord of my life! O, let thy sacred ray
Shine o'er my heart, and break its clouds away,
Deluding, flattering, faithless world, adieu!
Long hast thou taught me, God is only true!
That God alone I trust, alone adore,
No more deluded, and misled no more.

Come, sacred hour, when wav'ring doubts shall cease!
Come, holy scenes of long repose and peace!
Yet shall my heart, to other interests true,
A moment balance 'twixt the world and you?
Of pensive nights, of long-reflecting days,
Be yours, at last, the triumph and the praise.

116

Great, gracious Master, whose unbounded sway,
Felt thro' ten thousand worlds, those worlds obey;
Wilt thou for once thy awful glories shade,
And deign t'espouse the creature thou hast made?
All other ties indignant I disclaim,
Dishonour'd those, and infamous to name!

O fatal ties for which such tears I've shed,
For which the pleasures of the world lay dead!
That world's soft pleasures you alone disarm;
That world without you, still might have its charm.
But now those scenes of tempting hope I close,
And seek the peaceful studies of repose;
Look on the past as time that stole away,
And beg the blessings of a happier day.

Ye gay saloons, ye golden-vested halls,
Scenes of high treats and heart-bewitching balls!
Dress, figure, splendour, charms of play, farewell,
And all the toilet's science to excel;
E'en Love that ambush'd in this beauteous hair,
No more shall lie, like Indian archers, there.
Go, erring love! for nobler objects given!
Go beauteous hair, a sacrifice to heaven!

Soon shall the veil these glowing features hide,
At once the period of their power and pride.

117

The helpless lover shall no more complain
Of vows unheard, or unrewarded pain;
While calmly sleep in each untortur'd breast
My secret sorrow, and his sighs profest.

Go, flattering train! and, slaves to me no more,
With the same sighs some happier fair adore!
Your alter'd faith I blame not, nor bewail—
And haply yet, (what woman is not frail?)
Yet, haply, might I calmer minutes prove,
If he that lov'd me knew no other love!

Yet were that ardour, which his breast inspir'd,
By charms of more than mortal beauty fir'd;
What nobler pride! could I to heaven resign
The zeal, the service that I boasted mine!
O, change your false desires, ye flattering train,
And love me pious, whom ye lov'd profane!

These long adieus with lovers doom'd to go,
Or prove their merit, or my weakness show,
But heaven, to such soft frailties less severe,
May spare the tribute of a female tear,
May yield one tender moment to deplore
Those gentle hearts that I must hold no more.

118

THE AMIABLE KING.

The free-born Muse her tribute rarely brings,
Or burns her incense to the power of kings;
But Virtue ever shall her voice command,
Alike a spade or sceptre in her hand.
Is there a prince untainted with a throne,
That makes the interest of mankind his own;
Whose bounty knows no bounds of time or place;
Who nobly feels for all the human race:
A prince that acts in Reason's steady sphere,
No slave to passion, and no dupe to fear;
A breast where mild humanity resides,
Where virtue dictates, and where wisdom guides;
A mind that, stretch'd beyond the years of youth,
Explores the secret springs of taste and truth?
These, these are virtues which the Muse shall sing;
And plant, for these, her laurels round a king!
Britannia's monarch! this shall be thy praise;
For this be crown'd with never-fading bays!

119

THE HAPPY VILLAGER.

Virtue dwells in Arden's vale;
There her hallow'd temples rise;
There her incense greets the skies,
Grateful as the morning gale;
There, with humble Peace, and her,
Lives the happy Villager;

There, the golden smiles of morn
Brighter every field adorn;
There the sun's declining ray
Fairer paints the parting day:
There the woodlark louder sings,
Zephyr moves on softer wings,
Groves in greener honours rise,
Purer azure spreads the skies;
There the fountains clearer flow,
Flowers in brighter beauty blow;
For, with Peace and Virtue, there
Lives the happy Villager.

Distant still from Arden's vale
Are the woes the bad bewail;

120

Distant fell Remorse, and Pain,
And Frenzy smiling o'er her chain!
Grief's quick pang, Despair's dead groan,
Are in Arden's vale unknown:
For with Peace and Virtue, there
Lives the happy Villager!

In his hospitable cell,
Love, and Truth, and Freedom dwell;
And, with aspect mild and free,
The graceful nymph, Simplicity.
Hail, ye liberal graces, hail!
Natives all of Arden's vale:
For, with Peace and Virtue, there
Lives the happy Villager.

121

HYMENEAL.

ON THE MARRIAGE OF HIS PRESENT MAJESTY.

Awake, thou everlasting lyre!
That once the mighty Pindar strung,
When wrapt with more than mortal fire,
The gods of Greece he sung! Awake!
Arrest the rapid foot of Time again
With liquid notes of joy, and pleasure's melting strain.

Crown'd with each beauteous flower that blows
On Acidalia's tuneful side;
With all Aonia's rosy pride,
Where numerous Aganippe flows;
From Thespian groves and fountains wild,
Come, thou yellow-vested boy,
Redolent of youth and joy,
Fair Urania's favour'd child!
George to thee devotes the day:
To Hymen, haste away!

122

Daughter of the genial main!
Queen of youth and rosy smiles,
Queen of dimple dwelling wiles;
Come with all thy Paphian train:
O, give the fair that blooms for Britain's throne,
Thy melting charms of love, thy soul-enchanting zone!

Daughter of the genial main!
Bring that heart-dissolving power,
Which once in Ida's sacred bower
The soul of Jove oppos'd in vain:
The sire of gods thy conqu'ring charms confess'd;
And, vanquish'd, sunk, sunk down on Juno's fost'ring breast.

She comes, the conscious sea subsides;
Old Ocean curbs his thund'ring tides:
Smooth the silken surface lies,
Where Venus' flow'ry chariot flies:
Paphian airs in ambush sleep
On the still bosom of the deep;
Paphian maids around her more,
Keen-ey'd Hope, and Joy, and Love:
Their rosy breasts a thousand Cupids lave,
And dip their wanton wings, and beat the buxom wave.

But mark, of more than vulgar mien,
With regal grace and radiant eye,
A form in youthful majesty!
Britain, hail thy favour'd queen!

123

For her the conscious sea subsides;
Old Ocean curbs his thund'ring tides,
O'er the glassy bosom'd main
Venus leads her laughing train;
The Paphian maids move graceful by her side,
And o'er the buxom waves the rosy Cupids ride.

Fly, ye fairy-footed hours!
Fly, with aromatic flowers!
Such as bath'd in orient dews,
Beauty's living glow diffuse;
Such as in Idalia's grove
Breathe the sweets, the soul of love!

Come, genial god of chaste delight,
With wreathes of festive roses crown'd,
And torch that burns with radiance bright,
And lib'ral robe that sweeps the ground!
Bring the days of golden joy,
Pleasures pure, that never cloy!
Bring to Britain's happy pair,
All that's kind, and good, and fair!
George to thee devotes the day:
To Hymen, haste away.

Daughters of Jove! ye virgins sage,
That wait on Camus' hoary age;
That oft his winding vales along
Have smooth'd your silver-woven song;

124

O wake once more those lays sublime,
That live beyond the wrecks of time!
To crown your Albion's boasted pair,
The never-fading wreath prepare;
While her rocks echo to this grateful strain,
“The friends of freedom and of Britain's reign.”

See Catullus.

125

SONG.

['Tis o'er, the pleasing prospect's o'er!]

'Tis o'er, the pleasing prospect's o'er!
My weary heart can hope no more—
Then welcome, wan despair!
Approach with all thy dreadful train!
Wild anguish, discontent and pain,
And thorny pillow'd care!

Gay hope, and ease, and joy, and rest,
All, all that charms the peaceful breast,
For ever I resign.
Let pale anxiety instead,
That has not where to lay her head,
And lasting woe be mine.

It comes! I feel the painful woe—
My eyes for Solyman will flow
In silent grief again;
Who, wand'ring o'er some mountain drear,
Now haply sheds the pensive tear,
And calls on me in vain.

126

Perhaps, along the lonely shores,
He now the sea's blue breast explores,
To watch the distant sail;
Perhaps, on Sundah's hills forlorn,
He faints, with aching toil o'erborn,
And life's last spirits fail.

Ah, no! the cruel thought forbear!
Avaunt, thou fiend of fell despair,
That only death canst give!
While Heav'n eternal rules above,
Almena yet may find her love,
And Solyman may live!

127

WRITTEN IN A COTTAGE-GARDEN, AT A VILLAGE IN LORRAIN.

OCCASIONED BY A TRADITION CONCERNING A TREE OF ROSEMARY.

[_]

“Arbustum loquitur.”

O thou, whom love and fancy lead
To wander near this woodland hill,
If ever music smooth'd thy quill,
Or pity wak'd thy gentle reed,
Repose beneath my humble tree,
If thou lov'st simplicity.

Stranger, if thy lot has laid
In toilsome scenes of busy life,
Full sorely may'st thou rue the strife
Of weary passions ill repaid.
In a garden live with me,
If thou lov'st simplicity.

128

Flowers have sprung for many a year
O'er the village maiden's grave,
That, one memorial-spring to save,
Bore it from a sister's bier;
And, homeward walking, wept o'er me
The true tears of simplicity.

And soon, her cottage window near,
With care my slender stem she plac'd;
And fondly thus her grief embrac'd;
And cherish'd sad remembrance dear:
For love sincere, and friendship free
Are children of simplicity.

When past was many a painful day,
Slow-pacing o'er the village green,
In white were all its maidens seen,
And bore my guardian friends away.
Ah death! what sacrifice to thee,
The ruins of simplicity.

One gen'rous swain her heart approv'd,
A youth whose fond and faithful breast
With many an artless sigh confess'd,
In Nature's language, that he lov'd:
But, stranger, 'tis no tale to thee,
Unless thou lov'st simplicity.

129

He died—and soon her lip was cold,
And soon her rosy cheek was pale;
The village wept to hear the tale,
When for both the slow bell toll'd—
Beneath yon flow'ry turf they lie,
The lovers of simplicity.

Yet one boon have I to crave;
Stranger, if thy pity bleed,
Wilt thou do one tender deed,
And strew my pale flowers o'er their grave?
So lightly lie the turf on thee,
Because thou lov'st simplicity.

133

THE PASTORAL PART OF MILTON'S EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS.

O for the soft lays of Himeria's maids!
The strains that died in Arethusa's shades;
Tun'd to wild sorrow on her mournful shore,
When Daphnis, Hylas, Bion breath'd no more!
Thames' vocal wave shall ev'ry note prolong,
And all his villas learn the Doric song.

How Thyrsis mourn'd his long liv'd Damon dead,
What sighs he utter'd, and what tears he shed—
Ye dim retreats, ye wandering fountains know,
Ye desert wilds bore witness to his woe:
Where oft in grief he past the tedious day,
Or lonely languish'd the dull night away.

Twice had the fields their blooming honours bore.
And Autumn twice resign'd his golden store,
Unconscious of his loss, while Thyrsis staid
To woo the sweet muse in the Tuscan shade:

134

Crown'd with her favour, when he sought again
His flock forsaken, and his native plain;
When to his old elm's wonted shade return'd—
Then—then, he miss'd his parted friend—and mourn'd.

And go, he cry'd, my tender lambs, adieu!
Your wretched master has no time for you.
Yet are there pow'rs divine in earth or sky?
Gods can they be who destin'd thee to die?
And shalt thou mix with shades of vulgar name;
Lost thy fair honours, and forgot thy fame?
Not he, the god whose golden wand restrains
The pale-ey'd people of the gloomy plains,
Of Damon's fate shall thus regardless be,
Or suffer vulgar shades to herd with thee.
Then go, he cry'd, &c.

Yet while one strain my trembling tongue may try,
Not unlamented, shepherd, shalt thou die.
Long in these fields thy fame shall flourish fair,
And Daphnis only greater honours share;
To Daphnis only purer vows be paid,
While Pan or Pales loves the vulgar shade.
If truth or science may survive the grave,
Or, what is more, a poet's friendship save.
Then go, &c.

These, these are thine: for me what hopes remain?
Save of long sorrow, and of anguish vain.

135

For who, still faithful to my side, shall go,
Like thee, through regions clad with chilling snow?
Like thee, the rage of fiery summers bear,
When fades the wan flower in the burning air?
The lurking dangers of the chase essay,
Or sooth with song and various tales the day?
Then go, &c.

To whom shall I my hopes and fears impart?
Or trust the cares and follies of my heart?
Whose gentle councils put those cares to flight?
Whose cheerful converse cheat the tedious night?
The social hearth when autumn's treasures store,
Chill blow the winds without, and thro' the bleak elm roar
Then go, &c.

When the fierce suns of summer noons invade,
And Pan reposes in the green-wood shade,
The shepherds hide, the nymphs plunge down the deep,
And waves the hedge-row o'er the ploughman's sleep.
Ah! who shall charm with such address refin'd,
Such attic wit, and elegance of mind?
Then go, &c.

Alas! now lonely round my fields I stray,
And lonely seek the pasture's wonted way.
Or in some dim vale's mournful shade repose—
There pensive wait the weary day's slow close,

136

While showers descend, the gloomy tempest raves,
And o'er my head the struggling twilight waves.
Then go, &c.

Where once fair harvest cloath'd my cultur'd plain,
Now weeds obscene and vexing brambles reign;
The groves of myrtle and the clustering vine
Delight no more, for joy no more is mine.
My flocks no longer find a master's care;
Ev'n piteous as they gaze with looks of dumb despair.
Then go, &c.

Thy hazel, Tyt'rus, has no charms for me;
Nor yet thy wild ash, lov'd Alphesibee.
No more shall fancy weave her rural dream,
By Ægan's willow, or Amynta's stream,
The trembling leaves, the fountain's cool serene,
The murmuring zephyr, and the mossy green—
These smile unseen, and those unheeded play,
I cut my shrubs, and careless walk'd away.
Then go, &c.

Mopsus, who knows what fates the stars dispense,
And solves the grove's wild warblings into sense,
Thus Mopsus mark'd—what thus thy spleen can move?
Some baleful planet, or some hopeless love?
The star of Saturn oft annoys the swain,
And in the dull cold breast long holds his leaden reign.
Then go, &c.

137

The nymphs too, piteous of their shepherd's woe,
Came the sad cause solicitous to know.
Is this the port of jocund youth, they cry,
That look disgusted, and that downcast eye?
Gay smiles and love on that soft season wait;
He's twice a wretch whom beauty wounds too late.
Then go, &c.

One gentle tear the British Chloris gave,
Chloris the grace of Maldon's purple wave—
In vain—my grief no soothing words disarm,
No future hopes, nor present good can charm.
Then go, &c.

The happier flocks one social spirit moves,
The same their sports, their pastures and their loves;
Their hearts to no peculiar object tend,
None knows a favo'rite, or selects a friend.
So herd the various natives of the main,
And Proteus drives in crowds his scaly train;
The feather'd tribes too find an easier fate,
The meanest sparrow still enjoys his mate;

138

And when by chance or wearing age she dies,
The transient loss a second choice supplies.
Man, hapless man, for ever doom'd to know
The dire vexations that from discord flow,
In all the countless numbers of his kind,
Can scarcely meet with one congenial mind;
If haply found, death wings the fatal dart,
The tender union breaks, and breaks his heart.
Then go, &c.

Ah me! what error tempted me to go
O'er foreign mountains, and thro' Alpine snow?
Too great the price to mark in Tyber's gloom
The mournful image of departed Rome!
Nay, yet immortal, could she boast again
The glories of her universal reign.
And all that Maro left his fields to see,
Too great the purchase to abandon thee!
To leave thee in a land no longer seen!—
Bid mountains rise, and oceans roll between!—
Ah! not embrace thee!—not to see thee die!
Meet thy last looks, or close thy languid eye!
Not one fond farewell with thy shade to send,
Nor bid thee think of thy surviving friend!
Then go, &c.

Ye Tuscan shepherds, pardon me this tear!
Dear to the muse, to me for ever dear!

139

The youth I mourn a Tuscan title bore—
See Lydian Lucca for her son deplore!
O days of ecstacy! when wrapt I lay
Where Arno wanders down his flow'ry way,—
Pluck'd the pale violet, press'd the velvet mead,
Or bade the myrtle's balmy fragrance bleed!—
Delighted, heard amid the rural throng,
Menalcas strive with Lycidas in song.
Oft would my voice the mimic strain essay,
Nor haply all unheeded was my lay:
For, shepherds, yet I boast your gen'rous meed,
The osier basket, and compacted reed:
Francino crown'd me with a poet's fame,
And Dati taught his beechen groves my name.

Milton seems to have borrowed this sentiment from Guarini.

Che se t'assale a la canuta etate
Amoroso talento,
Havrai doppio tormento,
E di quel, che potendo non volesti,
E di quel, che volendo non potrai.

The Tuscans were a branch of the Pelasgi that migrated into Europe, not many ages after the dispersion. Some of them marched by land as far as Lydia, and from thence detached a colony under the conduct of Tyrsenus to Italy.

When Milton was in Italy, Carlo Dati was professor of philosophy at Florence—a liberal friend to men of genius and learning, as well foreigners as his own countrymen. He wrote a panegyric and some poems on Lewis XIV. besides other tracts.

140

TO THE REV. MR. LAMB.

Lamb, could the muse that boasts thy forming care,
Unfold the grateful feelings of my heart,
Her hand for thee should many a wreath prepare,
And cull the choicest flowers with studious art.

For mark'd by thee was each imperfect ray
That haply wander'd o'er my infant mind;
The dawn of genius brighten'd into day,
As thy skill open'd, as thy lore refin'd.

Each uncouth lay that faulter'd from my tongue,
At eve or morn from Eden's murmurs caught;
Whate'er I painted, and whate'er I sung,
Tho' rude the strain, tho' artless was the draught;

You wisely prais'd, and fed the sacred fire,
That warms the breast with love and honest fame;
You swell'd to nobler heights the infant lyre,
Rais'd the low thought, and check'd th' exuberant flame.

O could the muse in future times obtain
One humble garland from th' Aonian tree!
With joy I'd bind thy favour'd brows again,
With joy I'd form a fairer wreath for thee.

141

EPISTLE TO MR.---

From scenes where fancy no excursion tries,
Nor trusts her wing to smoke-invelop'd skies;
Far from the town's detested haunts remov'd,
And nought but thee deserted that I lov'd;
From noise and folly and the world got free,
One truant thought yet only stays for thee.
What is that world which makes the heart its slave?
A restless sea, revolving wave on wave:
There rage the storms of each uncertain clime;
There float the wrecks of Fortune and of Time:
There Hope's smooth gales in soft succession blow,
While disappointment hides the rock below.
The syren pleasures tune their fatal breath,
And lull you to the long repose of death.
What is that world? ah!—'tis no more
Than the vext ocean while we walk the shore.
Loud roar the winds and swell the wild waves high,
Lash the rude beach, and frighten all the sky;
No longer shall my little bark be rent,
Since Hope resign'd her anchor to Content.

Like some poor fisher that, escap'd with life,
Will trust no more to elemental strife;

142

But sits in safety on the green-bank side,
And lives upon the leavings of the tide;
Like him contented you your friend shall see,
As safe, as happy, and as poor as he.

143

TO A LADY,

ON READING AN ELEGY WRITTEN BY HER ON THE SEARCH OF HAPPINESS.

To seek the lovely nymph you sing,
I've wander'd many a weary mile,
From grove to grove, from spring to spring;
If here or there she deign'd to smile.

Nay, what I now must blush to say,
For sure it hap'd in evil hour;
I once so far mistook my way,
To seek her in the haunts of power.

How should success my search betide,
When still so far I wander'd wrong?
For happiness on Arrowe's side,
Was list'ning to Maria's song.

Delighted thus with you to stay,
What hope have I the nymph to see;
Unless you cease your magic lay,
Or bring her in your arms to me?

144

TO ALMENA.

FROM THE BANKS OF THE IRWAN.

Where trembling poplars shade their parent vale,
And tune to melody the mountain gale;
Where Irwan murmurs musically slow,
And breathing breezes through his osiers blow;
Friend of my heart, behold thy poet laid
In the dear silence of his native shade!
Ye sacred vales, where oft the muse, unseen,
Led my light steps along the moon-light green;
Ye scenes, where peace and fancy held their reign,
For ever lov'd, and once enjoy'd again!
Ah! where is now, that nameless bliss refin'd;
That tranquil hour, that vacancy of mind?
As sweet the wild rose bears its balmy breast;
As soon, the breeze with murmurs sooths to rest;
As smooth, the stream of silver Irwan flows;
As fair, each flower along his border blows:
Yet dwells not here that nameless bliss refin'd,
That tranquil hour, that vacancy of mind.
Is it that knowledge is allied to woe;
And are we happy, only e'er we know?

145

Is it that Hope withholds her golden ray,
That Fancy's fairy visions fade away?
Or can I, distant far from all that's dear,
Be happy only when Almena's near?
That truth, the feelings of my heart disclose:
Too dear the friendship for the friend's repose.
Thus mourn'd the muse, when thro' his osiers wild,
The hill-born Irwan rais'd his head and smil'd:
“Child of my hopes,” he fondly cried, “forbear;
“Nor let thy Irwan witness thy despair.
“Has peace indeed forsook my flow'ry shore?
“Shall Fame, and Hope, and Fancy charm no more?
“Tho' Fame and Hope in kindred air depart,
“Yet Eancy still should hold thee to her heart;
“For, at thy birth, the village hind has seen
“Her light wings waving o'er the shadowy green.
“With rosy wreaths she crown'd the new-born hours,
“And rival fairies fill'd thy bed with flowers;
“In vain—if grief shall waste thy blooming years,
“And life dissolve in solitude and tears.”—

146

TO GEORGE COLMAN, ESQ.

PREFIXED TO THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THEODOSIUS AND CONSTANTIA.

To live beneath the golden star of love,
With happier fancy, passions more refin'd,
Each soft'ning charm of tenderness to prove,
And all the finer movements of the mind—

From gifts like these say, what the boasted gain
Of those who exquisitely feel or know?
The skill from pleasure to extract the pain,
And open all the avenues of woe.

Yet shall we, Colman, at these gifts repine?
Implore cold apathy to steel the heart?
Would you that sensibility resign,
And with those powers of genius would you part?

Ah me! my friend! nor deem the verse divine
That weakness wrote in Petrarch's gentle strain!
When once he own'd at love's unfav'ring shrine,
“A thousand pleasures were not worth one pain.”

147

The dreams of fancy sooth the pensive heart;
For fancy's urn can new delights dispense:
The powers of genius purer joys impart;
For genius brightens all the springs of sense.

O charm of every muse-ennobl'd mind,
Far, far above the groveling crowd to rise!—
Leave the low train of trifling cares behind,
Assert its birthright, and affect the skies!

O right divine, the pride of power to scorn!
On fortune's little vanity look down!
With nobler gifts, to fairer honours born,
Than fear, or folly, fancies in a crown!

As far each boon that Nature's hand bestows,
The worthless glare of fortune's train exceeds,
As yon fair orb, whose beam eternal glows,
Outshines the transient meteor that it feeds.

To Nature, Colman, let thy incense rise,
For, much indebted, much hast thou to pay;
For taste refin'd, for wit correctly wise,
And keen discernment's soul-pervading ray.

To catch the manners from the various face,
To paint the nice diversities of mind,
The living lines of character to trace,
She gave thee powers, and the task assign'd.

148

Seize, seize the pen! the sacred hour departs!
Nor, led by kindness, longer lend thine ear:
The tender tale of two ingenuous hearts
Would rob thee of a moment and a tear.

149

AN ODE

TO THE GENIUS OF WESTMORELAND.

Hail, hidden power of these wild groves,
These uncouth rocks, and mountains grey!
Where oft, as fades the closing day,
The family of Fancy roves.

In what lone cave, what sacred cell,
Coæval with the birth of Time,
Wrapt in high cares, and thought sublime,
In awful silence dost thou dwell?

Oft in the depth of winter's reign,
As blew the bleak winds o'er the dale;
Moaning along the distant gale,
Has Fancy heard thy voice complain.

Oft in the dark wood's lonely way,
Swift has she seen thee glancing by;
Or down the summer evening sky,
Sporting in clouds of gilded day.

150

If caught from thee the sacred fire,
That glow'd within my youthful breast;
Those thoughts too high to be exprest,
Genius, if thou didst once inspire,

O pleas'd accept this votive lay,
That, in my native shades retir'd,
And once, once more by thee inspir'd,
In gratitude I pay.

151

HYMN TO HOPE.

Μουνη δ'αυτοθι ΕΛΠΙς εν αρρηκτοισι δομοισιν
Ενδον εμιμνε------
Hes.

WRITTEN IN 1761.

153

I.

Sun of the soul! whose chearful ray
Darts o'er this gloom of life a smile;
Sweet Hope, yet further gild my way,
Yet light my weary steps awhile,
Till thy fair lamp dissolve in endless day.

II.

O come with such an eye and mien,
As when by amorous shepherd seen;
While in the violet-breathing vale
He meditates his evening tale!
Nor leave behind thy fairy train,
Repose, Belief, and Fancy vain;
That towering on her wing sublime,
Outstrips the lazy flight of time,
Riots on distant days with thee,
And opens all futurity.

III.

O come! and to my pensive eye
Thy far-foreseeing tube apply,

154

Whose kind deception steals us o'er
The gloomy waste that lies before;
Still opening to the distant sight
The sunshine of the mountain's height;
Where scenes of fairer aspect rise,
Elysian groves, and azure skies.

IV.

Nor, gentle Hope, forget to bring
The family of Youth and Spring;
The Hours that glide in sprightly round,
The Mountain-Nymphs with wild thyme crown'd;
Delight that dwells with raptur'd eye
On stream, or flower, or field, or sky:
And foremost in thy train advance
The Loves and Joys in jovial dance;
Nor last be Expectation seen,
That wears a wreath of ever-green.

V.

Attended thus by Beleau's streams,
Oft hast thou sooth'd my waking dreams,
When, prone beneath an osier shade,
At large my vacant limbs were laid;
To thee and Fancy all resign'd,
What visions wander'd o'er my mind!
Illusions dear, adieu! no more
Shall I your fairy haunts explore;

155

For Hope withholds her golden ray,
And Fancy's colours faint away.
To Eden's shores, to Enon's groves,
Resounding once with Delia's loves,
Adieu! that name shall sound no more
O'er Enon's groves or Eden's shore:
For Hope withholds her golden ray,
And Fancy's colours faint away.

VI.

Life's ocean slept,—the liquid gale
Gently mov'd the waving sail.
Fallacious Hope! with flattering eye
You smil'd to see the streamers fly.
The thunder bursts, the mad wind raves,
From slumber wake the 'frighted waves:
You saw me, fled me thus distrest,
And tore your anchor from my breast.

VII.

Yet come, fair fugitive, again!
I love thee still, though false and vain.
Forgive me, gentle Hope, and tell
Where, far from me, you deign to dwell.
To sooth Ambition's wild desires;
To feed the lover's eager fires;
To swell the miser's mouldy store;
To gild the dreaming chymist's ore;

156

Are these thy cares? or more humane,
To loose the war-worn captive's chain,
And bring before his languid sight
The charms of liberty and light:
The tears of drooping Grief to dry;
And hold thy glass to Sorrow's eye?

VIII.

Or do'st thou more delight to dwell
With Silence in the hermit's cell?
To teach Devotion's flame to rise,
And wing her vespers to the skies;
To urge, with still returning care,
The holy violence of prayer;
In rapt'rous visions to display
The realms of everlasting day,
And snatch from Time the golden key,
That opens all eternity?

IX.

Perchance, on some unpeopled strand,
Whose rocks the raging tide withstand,
Thy soothing smile, in desarts drear,
A lonely mariner may chear,
Who bravely holds his feeble breath,
Attack'd by Famine, Pain, and Death.
With thee, he bears each tedious day
Along the dreary beach to stray.

157

Whence their wide way his toil'd eyes strain
O'er the blue bosom of the main;
And meet, where distant surges rave,
A white sail in each foaming wave.

X.

Doom'd from each native joy to part,
Each dear connection of the heart,
You the poor exile's steps attend,
The only undeserting friend.
You wing the slow-declining year;
You dry the solitary tear;
And oft, with pious guile, restore
Those scenes he must behold no more.

XI.

O most ador'd of earth or skies!
To thee ten thousand temples rise;
By age retain'd, by youth carest,
The same dear idol of the breast.
Depriv'd of thee, the wretch were poor
That rolls in heaps of Lydian ore:
With thee the simple hind is gay,
Whose toil supports the passing day.

XII.

The rose-lip'd Loves that, round their queen,
Dance o'er Cythera's smiling green,

158

Thy aid implore, thy power display
In many a sweetly-warbled lay.
For ever in thy sacred shrine,
Their unextinguish'd torches shine;
Idalian flowers their sweets diffuse,
And myrtles shed their balmy dews.
Ah! still propitious, may'st thou deign
To sooth an anxious lover's pain!
By thee deserted, well I know,
His heart would feel no common woe.
His gentle prayer propitious hear,
And stop the frequent-falling tear.

XIII.

For me, fair Hope, if once again
Perchance, to smile on me you deign,
Be such your sweetly-rural air,
And such a graceful visage wear,
As when, with Truth and young Desire,
You wak'd the lord of Hagley's lyre;
And painted to her Poet's mind,
The charms of Lucy, fair and kind.

XIV.

But ah! too early lost!—then go,
Vain Hope, thou harbinger of woe.
Ah! no;—that thought distracts my heart:
Indulge me, Hope, we must not part.

159

Direct the future as you please;
But give me, give me present ease.

XV.

Sun of the soul! whose chearful ray
Darts o'er this gloom of life a smile;
Sweet Hope, yet further gild my way,
Yet light my weary steps awhile,
Till thy fair lamp dissolve in endless day.

160

HYMN TO PLUTUS.

Great god of wealth, before whose sacred throne
Truth, honour, genius, fame, and worth lie prone!
To thy throng'd temples take one vot'ry more:
To thee a poet never kneel'd before.

Adieu the gods that caught my early prayer!
Wisdom that frown'd, and Knowledge fraught with care
Friendship that every veering gale could move!
And tantalizing Hope, and faithless Love!
These, these are slaves that in thy liv'ry shine:
For Wisdom, Friendship, Love himself is thine!

For thee I'll labour down the mine's dark way,
And leave the confines of enliv'ning day;
For thee Asturia's shining sands explore,
And bear the splendours of Potosi's ore;
Scale the high rock, and tempt the raging sea,
And think, and toil, and wish, and wake for thee.
Farewell the scenes that thoughtless youth could please;
The flow'ry scenes of indolence and ease.
Where you the way with magic power beguile,
Bassora's deep, or Lybia's deserts smile.

161

Foes of thy worth, that, insolent and vain,
Deride thy maxims, and reject thy reign,
The frantic tribe of virtue shall depart,
And make no more their ravage in my heart.
Away “The tears that pity taught to flow!”
Away that anguish for a brother's woe!
Adieu to these, and ev'ry tiresome guest,
That drain'd my fortunes, or destroy'd my rest!

Ah, good Avaro! could I thee despise?
Thee, good Avaro; provident and wise?
Plutus, forgive the bitter things I've said!
I love Avaro; poor Avaro's dead.

Yet, yet I'm thine; for Fame's unerring tongue
In thy sooth'd ear thus pours her silver song.
“Immortal Plutus! god of golden ease!
“Form'd ev'ry heart, and ev'ry eye to please!
“For thee Content her downy carpet spreads,
“And rosy Pleasure swells her genial beds.
“'Tis thine to gild the mansions of Despair,
“And beam a glory round the brows of Care;
“To cheat the lazy pace of sleepless hours
“With marble fountains, and ambrosial bowers.”

O grant me, Plutus, scenes like those I sung,
My youthful lyre when vernal fancy strung.
For me their shades let other Studleys rear,
Tho' each tree's water'd with a widow's tear.

162

Detested god!—forgive me! I adore.
Great Plutus, grant me one petition more.
Should Delia, tender, gen'rous, fair and free,
Leave love and truth, and sacrifice to thee,
I charge thee, Plutus, be to Delia kind,
And make her fortunes richer than her mind.
Be her's the wealth all heaven's broad eye can view;
Grant her, good god, Don Philip and Peru.

163

HYMN TO HUMANITY.

Parent of Virtue, if thine ear
Attend not now to Sorrow's cry;
If now the pity-streaming tear
Should haply on thy cheek be dry;
Indulge my votive strain, O sweet Humanity.

Come, ever welcome to my breast,
A tender, but a cheerful guest;
Nor always in the gloomy cell
Of life-consuming sorrow dwell;
For Sorrow, long-indulg'd and slow,
Is to Humanity a foe;
And Grief, that makes the heart its prey,
Wears Sensibility away.
Then comes, sweet nymph, instead of thee,
The gloomy fiend Stupidity.

O may that fiend be banish'd far,
Though passions hold eternal war!
Nor ever let me cease to know
The pulse that throbs at joy or woe.
Nor let my vacant cheek be dry,
When sorrow fills a brother's eye;

164

Nor may the tear that frequent flows
From private or from social woes,
E'er make this pleasing sense depart,
Ye cares, O harden not my heart.

If the fair star of fortune smile,
Let not its flatt'ring power beguile:
Nor borne along the fav'ring tide,
My full sails swell with bloating pride.
Let me from wealth but hope content,
Rememb'ring still it was but lent;
To modest merit spread my store;
Unbar my hospitable door!
Nor feed, for pomp, an idle train,
While Want unpity'd pines in vain.

If Heav'n, in ev'ry purpose wise,
The envy'd lot of wealth denies;
If doom'd to drag life's painful load
Thro' Poverty's uneven road,
And, for the due bread of the day,
Destin'd to toil as well as pray;
To thee, Humanity, still true,
I'll wish the good I cannot do;
And give the wretch that passes by,
A soothing word—a tear—a sigh.

Howe'er exalted, or deprest,
Be ever mine the feeling breast.

165

From me remove the stagnant mind
Of languid indolence, reclin'd;
The soul that one long Sabbath keeps,
And thro' the sun's whole circle sleeps;
Dull Peace, that dwells in Folly's eye,
And self-attending Vanity.
Alike, the foolish, and the vain
Are strangers to the sense humane.

O, for that sympathetic glow
Which taught the holy tear to flow,
When the prophetic eye survey'd
Sion in future ashes laid;
Or, rais'd to Heav'n, implor'd the bread
That thousands in the desert fed!
Or when the heart o'er Friendship's grave
Sigh'd,—and forgot its power to save—
O, for that sympathetic glow,
Which taught the holy tear to flow!

It comes: it fills my labouring breast!
I feel my beating heart opprest.
Oh! hear that lonely widow's wail!
See her dim eye! her aspect pale!
To Heav'n she turns in deep despair,
Her infants wonder at her prayer,
And, mingling tears they know not why,
Lift up their little hands and cry.

166

O God! their moving sorrows see!
Support them, sweet Humanity.

Life, fill'd with grief's distressful train,
For ever asks the tear humane.
Behold in yon unconscious grove
The victims of ill-fated love!
Heard you that agonizing throe?
Sure this is not romantic woe!
The golden day of joy is o'er;
And now they part—to meet no more.
Assist them, hearts from anguish free!
Assist them, sweet Humanity.

Parent of Virtue, if thine ear
Attend not now to Sorrow's cry;
If now the pity-streaming tear
Should haply on thy cheek be dry,
Indulge my votive strain, O sweet Humanity.

167

HYMN TO THE RISING SUN.

From the red wave rising bright,
Lift on high thy golden head;
O'er the misty mountains, spread
Thy smiling rays of orient light!
See the golden god appear;
Flies the fiend of darkness drear;
Flies, and in her gloomy train,
Sable Grief, and Care, and Pain!
See the golden god advance!
On Taurus' heights his coursers prance:
With him haste the vernal hours,
Breathing sweets, and drooping flowers.
Laughing Summer at his side,
Waves her locks in rosy pride;
And Autumn bland with aspect kind,
Bears his golden sheaf behind.
O haste, and spread the purple day
O'er all the wide ethereal way!
Nature mourns at thy delay:
God of glory, haste away!
From the red wave rising bright,
Lift on high thy golden head;
O'er the misty mountains, spread
Thy smiling rays of orient light!

168

A FAREWELL HYMN

TO THE VALLEY OF IRWAN.

Farewell the fields of Irwan's vale,
My infant years where Fancy led;
And sooth'd me with the western gale,
Her wild dreams waving round my head,
While the blythe blackbird told his tale.
Farewell the fields of Irwan's vale!

The primrose on the valley's side,
The green thyme on the mountain's head,
The wanton rose, the daisy pied,
The wilding's blossom blushing red;
No longer I their sweets inhale.
Farewell the fields of Irwan's vale!

How oft, within yon vacant shade,
Has ev'ning clos'd my careless eye!
How oft, along those bands, I've stray'd,
And watch'd the wave that wander'd by!
Full long their loss shall I bewail.
Farewell the fields of Irwan's vale!

169

Yet still, within yon vacant grove,
To mark the close of parting day;
Along yon flow'ry banks to rove,
And watch the wave that winds away;
Fair Fancy sure shall never fail,
Tho' far from these, and Irwan's vale!

170

HYMN TO THE ETERNAL PROVIDENCE.

Life of the world, Immortal Mind;
Father of all the human kind!
Whose boundless eye that knows no rest,
Intent on Nature's ample breast;
Explores the space of earth and skies,
And sees eternal incense rise!
To thee my humble voice I raise;
Forgive, while I presume to praise.

Tho' thou this transient being gave,
That shortly sinks into the grave;
Yet 'twas thy goodness, still to give
A being that can think and live;
In all thy works thy wisdom see,
And stretch its tow'ring mind to thee.
To thee my humble voice I raise;
Forgive, while I presume to praise.

And still this poor contracted span,
This life, that bears the name of Man;

171

From thee derives its vital ray,
Eternal Source of life and day!
Thy bounty still the sunshine pours,
That gilds its morn and ev'ning hours,
To thee my humble voice I raise;
Forgive, while I presume to praise.

Thro' Error's maze, thro' Folly's night,
The lamp of Reason lends me light.
When stern Affliction waves her rod,
My heart confides in thee, my God!
When Nature shrinks, oppress'd with woes,
E'en then she finds in thee repose.
To thee my humble voice I raise;
Forgive, while I presume to praise.

Affliction flies, and Hope returns;
Her lamp with brighter splendour burns;
Gay Love with all his smiling train,
And Peace and Joy are here again.
These, these, I know, 'twas thine to give;
I trusted; and, behold, I live!
To thee my humble voice I raise;
Forgive, while I presume to praise.

O may I still thy favour prove!
Still grant me gratitude and love.
Let truth and virtue guide my heart;
Nor peace, nor hope, nor joy depart;

172

But yet, whate'er my life may be,
My heart shall still repose on thee!
To thee my humble voice I raise!
Forgive, while I presume to praise.

THE END.