Poems on several occasions

“How shall she teach?” Ah! how indeed?
Then know, my friend, the strength within ye:
Leave praising organs, and proceed
To' extol the sense of Buonancini.

II

Our souls, like Jacob's, take their flight,
Borne up to heaven in rapture seeming:
But heaven, if I remember right,
Came down to Jacob in his dreaming.
Pindaric flights we find in thee,
Base earth with highest heaven confounding:
Poor symbol is the trumpet-key
Of an archangel's trumpet sounding.

III

Hark how in Pope with “lengthen'd notes and slow
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.”
Hear Congreve's wit employ his tuneful tongue
To tell how beauteous Arabella sung;

514

And bid each ruder gasp of breath
Be calm as in the arms of death.
Freely from either bard purloin,
And spoil the verses:—They are thine.
“Again we hear” the words; the sense is drown'd,
Lost, like thy wits, “in ecstasy of sound;”
In ecstasy of sound, without pretence
To raise our souls to ecstasy by sense.

I.

The clown, (a brute!) as well he might,
Gapes at the sounds that would amaze one,
Terms that like conjuring affright,
As “solo, fugue, and diapason.”
Some god, he guesses, is at least
In the' organ that his heart so pierces;
Which none was ever such a beast
To fancy of thy lyric verses.

515

II.

“It speaks so sweet, so wondrous well:”
How strong the thought! how fine the rhyme is!
That line, if Dennis aught can tell,
A perfect pattern of sublime is.
Should strains like these stop the career
Of Puritanic zeal advancing,
As strange the story would appear
As Orpheus with his country-dancing.

III.

Though rage accurst the frantic breast can swell
With more than barbarous Puritanic zeal,
Music divine demands the poet's praise,
Worthy Cæcilia's ode and Dryden's lays.
Thy numbers yet unheeded flow;
And reason is they should do so:
Nor needs the fancy heighten'd be
To scorn thy grovelling poetry.

516

Let Phillips sing sweet Philomela's fate;
Who durst the' harmonious artist emulate?
Concerns it you? except like her you try,
Then drop the contest, flag the wings, and die.

I.

But let this melancholy pass:
The sing-song is not yet half over:
You quickly die; but then, alas!
Revive as quickly, like a lover.
Struck with the sound alone stark mad,
You scorn, whilst in your head 'tis ringing,
What by the world is done or said;
And one would guess so by your singing.

517

II.

It is not sound alone or air,
But harmony, the soul engages:
Yet harmony must not compare,
Though Handel's, to the sacred pages.
If human art to such high-flown
And dangerous compliments can win ye,
And raise “a spirit not your own,”
I fear 't will prove the devil's in ye.

III.

Avaunt, ye lies! and devils, fly the ground!
Nor break the circle of the sacred sound;
Nor mingle truths divine with Pagan dreams,
Nor Jordan's flood with Aganippe's streams.
No Thracian fable should be here;
Nor Delphic Pythoness appear,
With all Apollo's rage oppress'd,
Tormented, raving, and possess'd.
Sure, even in verse some difference is allow'd
Betwixt vain idols and the living God.
Name not Jove's nod with great Jehovah's will,
Nor join Olympus' top to Sion-hill.

518

I.

Bassoon, flute, cornet, fiddle, voice,
Humane or human, choice delight is:
Rapt up to heaven and angels' joys,
We spurn the world that out of sight is.
Nor had our poet been to blame,
To give his readers better bargain,
All kind of instruments to name
Betwixt a Jew's-harp and an organ.

II.

That “long nor king nor god can please
The stubborn, murmuring British nation,”
Is just like simile of Bayes,
And wants a little application.

519

When Whigs, in peaceful Charles's reign,
Their Ignoramus-men relied on,
This truth, express'd in Tory strain,
Flow'd from the matchless pen of Dryden:—

III.

“A pamper'd people, whom, debauch'd with ease,
No king can govern, and no god can please,”
Handel can calm, as when Aurora's beams
Dispel vain phantoms and delusive dreams;
Though vainer phantom cannot be
Dispell'd, or verier dream, than she.
“The Graces with his finger move,
Inspiring concord, joy, and love;”
Though moving Graces can no more be found
Than Fairies dancing upon Christian ground.
Whate'er your sermons or your prose may be,
At least half-heathen is your poetry.

I.

But now, as Yorkshire dragon's was,
The poet's sting too in the tail is:
“Long as a flail,” the ballad says;
And there no fence against a flail is.

520

Music can care and frenzy quell,
Make discord bland and envy hearty;
Nay, make the fiend forego his hell,
But not the Whig forget his party.

II.

Let Pope of Orpheus talk no more;
For Handel's organ can go further:
Were all things into chaos tore,
He could restore them into order.
Lions to tame, or teach a jig
To trees, is but a simple story:
He can extract a passive Whig
Out of a furious rebel Tory.

III.

Behold how Pope in genuine beauty shines,
And sings harmonious his unborrow'd lines:
“Intestine war no more our passions wage;
E'en giddy factions hear away their rage.”

521

His bullion is; thine, wire alone:
The colour stays, the weight is gone.
“Some secret power the storm restrains,”
You tell us, “when the tempest reigns.”
Know you not, then, the Power who bade it blow,
And taught the' obedient surges where to flow?
The God who made the seas, alone, can say,
“Hither, ye billows, roll; and here, thou whirlwind, stay!”

I.

E'en let the grumbler rave that will;
While Handel plays, we need not fear him.
Paulet and Hungerford, be still:
Lechmere and Wharton, hear him, hear him!
When reason gets into the throne,
The court shall teach us to be godly;
Pipes sound with breath that's not their own:
Is Fleetwood such an one, or Hoadly?

522

II.

When Whigs are out of power and place,
Their country bleeds; they rise to save her:
They rise then in their prince's face,
Are always patriots—out of favour.
Let the king smile, the tables turn,
The changing dyes change the chameleon;
The Whig shall at resistance spurn,
Whose very essence is rebellion.

III.

'Twas Harcourt's speech which taught the turn to use,
“That Tories cause the mischiefs they accuse.”
Thus Appius blind could Rome's great senate guide:
But Roman Appius never changed his side.
We need not silver tongues to show
The dear-bought blessings which we know.
“Dear-bought” the blessings needs must be
With seven-years' Commons and South Sea!
May gracious Heaven more mercy to us show
Than these its rods and scourges here below!
Grant us at last that happy state to see
Where, without discord, all is harmony!

University of Virginia Library

AN ODE TO THE REV. DANIEL PRAT, M.A.

OCCASIONED BY ONE OF HIS.

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