195

In every face let joy be seen,
As truth sincere, as hope ferene :
Let Friendship, Love, and Wit combine,
To flavor both the meat and wine,
With that rich relish to each sense,
Which they, and they alone, dispense:
Let Music too their mirth prolong,
With warbled air and festive song :
Then, when at eve, the star of love
Glows with soft radiance from above,
And each companionable guest
Withdraws, replenish'd, not oppreft,
Let each, well-pleas’d, at parting say-
My life be such a wedding-day!

205

E P I G R A

M:

Written at TUNBRIDGE Wells, 1760.

W!

HEN Churchill led his legions on,

Success still follow'd where he shone,
And are those triumphs, with the dead,
All from his house, for ever fled ?
Not fo : by softer furer arms,
They yet survive in beauty's charms;
For, look on blooming Pembroke's face,
Even now he triumphs in his race.,

AN

MAS QUE OF ALFRED: Sung by a SHEPHER DESs who has loft het

Lover in the Wars.

A Youth, adornd with every art,

To warm and win the coldest heart,
In secret mine posseft.
The morning bud that fairest blows,
The vernal oak that straitest grows;

His face and shape expreft.

In moving founds he told his tale,
Soft as the sighings of the gale,

That wakes the flowery year.
What wonder he could charm with ease,
Whom happy Nature taught to please,

Whom Honour made sincere.

At morn he left me-fought-and fell!
The fatal evening heard his knell,

And saw the tears I shed :
Tears that mult ever, ever fall;
For ah! no fighs the past recall,

No cries awake the dead !

C O N T E N T S.

C Α Ν Τ ο I. INVOCATION, addressed to Fancy. Subject

proposed; a short excursive survey of the Earth and Heavens. The poems opens with a description of the face of Nature in the different scenes of morning, funrise, noon, with a thunder-storm, evening, night, and a particular night-piece, with the character of a

friend deceased. With the return of morning Fancy continues her ex

cursion, first northward--A view of the arctic continent and the deserts of I artary-From thence southward : a general prospect of the globe, followed by another of the mid-land part of Europe, suppose Italy. A city there upon the point of being swallowed up by an earthquake: figns that usher it in : described in its causes and effects at length-Eruption of a burning mountain, happening at the same time and from the same causes, likewise described.

CANTO II, Contains, on the same plan, a survey of the solar

system, and of the fixed stars.

is among

This poem the author's earliest performances.

Whether the writing may, in some degree, atone for the irregularity of the composition, which he confesles, and does not even attempt to excuse, is subinitted entirely to the candor of the reader.

THE

THE

EXCURSION.

N.

C Α Ν Τ ο Ι. COM

OMPANION of the Musc, creative power,

Imagination ! 'at whose great command
Arise unnumber'd images of things,
Thy hourly offspring: thou, who canst at will
People with air-born shapes the filent wood,
And solitary vale, thy own domain,
Where Contemplation haunts; Oh come, invok'd,
To waft me on thy many-tinctur’d wing,
O’er Earth’s extended space : and thence, on high,
Spread to superior Worlds thy holder flight,
Excursive, unconfin’d. Hence from the haunts
Of vice and folly, vanity and man

Toyon expanse of plains, where Truth delights,
Simple of heart; and, hand in hand with her,
Where blameless Virtue walks. Now parting Spring,
Parent of beauty and of song, has left,
His mantle, flower-embroider'd on the ground.
While Summer laughing comes, and bids the Months
Crown his prime season with their choicest stores;
Fresh roses opening to the solar ray,
And fruits flow-swelling on the loaded bough.

Here let me frequent roam, preventing morn, Aitentive to the cock, whose early throat,

Heard