 | The Poetical Works of Reginald Heber |  |
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LINES SPOKEN IN THE THEATRE, OXFORD, ON LORD GRENVILLE'S INSTALLATION AS CHANCELLOR.
Ye viewless guardians of these sacred shades,These lines were spoken (as is the custom of the University on the installation of a new chancellor) by a young nobleman, whose diffidence induced him to content himself with the composition of another. Of this diffidence his friends have reason to complain, as it suppressed some elegant lines of his own on the same occasion.
Dear dreams of early song, Aonian maids!—
And you, illustrious dead! whose spirits speak
In each warm flush that tints the student's cheek,
As, wearied with the world, he seeks again
The page of better times and greater men;
If with pure worship we your steps pursue,
And youth, and health, and rest forget for you,
(Whom most we serve, to whom our lamp burns bright
Through the long toils of not ingrateful night,)
Yet, yet be present!—Let the worldly train
Mock our cheap joys, and hate our useless strain,
Intent on freighted wealth, or proud to rear
The fleece Iberian or the pamper'd steer ;—
Let sterner science with unwearied eye
Explore the circling spheres and map the sky;
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And of his iron arch the rainbow span:
Yet, while, in burning characters imprest,
The poet's lesson stamps the youthful breast;
Bids the rapt boy o'er suffering virtue bleed,
Adore a brave or bless a gentle deed,
And in warm feeling from the storied page
Arise the saint, the hero, or the sage;
Such be our toil !—Nor doubt we to explore
The thorny maze of dialectic lore,
To climb the chariot of the gods, or scan
The secret workings of the soul of man;
Upborne aloft on Plato's eagle flight,
Or the slow pinion of the Stagyrite.—
And, those grey spoils of Herculanean pride,
If aught of yet untasted sweets they hide ;—
If Padua's sage be there, or art have power
To wake Menander from his secret bower.
Such be our toil !—Nor vain the labour proves,
Which Oxford honours, and which Grenville loves!
—On, eloquent and firm !—whose warning high
Rebuked the rising surge of anarchy,
When, like those brethren stars to seamen known,
In kindred splendour Pitt and Grenville shone ;—
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Has ceased to lash the shore, nor storm forgot to rave.
Go on! and oh, while adverse factions raise
To thy pure worth involuntary praise;
While Gambia's swarthy tribes thy mercies bless,
And from thy counsels date their happiness;
Say, (for thine Isis yet recals with pride
Thy youthful triumphs by her leafy side,)
Say, hast thou scorn'd, mid pomp, and wealth, and power,
The sober transports of a studious hour?—
No, statesman, no !—thy patriot fire was fed
From the warm embers of the mighty dead;
And thy strong spirit's patient grasp combined
The souls of ages in a single mind.—
—By arts like these, amidst a world of foes,
Eye of the earth, th' Athenian glory rose ;—
Thus last and best of Romans, Brutus shone ;—
Our Somers thus, and thus our Clarendon;
Such Cobham was ;—such, Grenville, long be thou,
Our boast before,—our chief and champion now !—
| The Poetical Works of Reginald Heber | |