The blights of envy, of those insect-clouds,
That, blasting merit, often cover courts:
Nay, should, perchance, some kind Mæcenas aid
The doubtful beamings of his prince's soul,
His wavering ardor fix, and unconfin'd
Diffuse his warm beneficence around;
Yet death, at last, and wintry tyrants come,
Each sprig of genius killing at the root.
But when with me imperial bounty joins,
Wide o'er the public blows eternal Spring:
While mingled Autumn every harvest pours
Of every land: whate'er invention, art,
Creating toil and Nature can produce."
And form to life. Instead of barren heads,
Barbarian pedants, wrangling sons of pride,
And truth-perplexing metaphysic wits,
Men, patriots, chiefs, and citizens are form'd.
"Lo! Justice, like the liberal light of Heaven, Unpurchas'd shines on all, and from her beam, Appalling guilt, retire the savage crew,
That prowl amid the darkness they themselves
Have thrown around the laws. Oppression grieves:
See! how her legal furies bite the lip,
Here ceas'd the goddess; and her ardent wings, While Yorks and Talbots their deep snares detect,
Dipt in the colors of the heavenly bow,
Stood waving radiance round, for sudden flight
Prepar'd, when thus, impatient, burst my prayer.
"Oh, forming light of life! O, better Sun!
Sun of mankind! by whom the cloudy north,
Sublim'd, not envies Languedocian skies,
That, unstain'd ether all, diffusive smile:
When shall we call these ancient laurels ours?
And when thy work complete?" Straight with her Trade without guile, civility that marks
And seize swift justice through the clouds they raise.
"See! social Labor lifts his guarded head,
And men not yield to government in vain.
From the sure land is rooted ruffian force,
And, the lewd nurse of villains, idle waste; [bowl,
Lo! raz'd their haunts, down dash'd their maddening
A nation's poison! beauteous order reigns!
Manly submission, unimposing toil,
hand,
From the foul herd of brutal slaves thy sons,
And fearless peace. Or should affronting war
To slow but dreadful vengeance rouse the just,
Unfailing fields of freemen I behold!
That know, with their own proper arm, to guard
Their own blest isle against a leaguing world.
Despairing Gaul her boiling youth restrains,
Dissolv'd her dream of universal sway:
The winds and seas are Britain's wide domain;
And not a sail, but by permission, spreads.
"Lo! swarming southward on rejoicing sons,
Gay colonies extend; the calm retreat
Of undeserv'd distress, the better home
Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands,
Not built on rapine, servitude, and woe,
And in their turn some petty tyrant's prey;
But, bound by social freedom, firm they rise;
Such as, of late, an Oglethorpe has form'd,
And, crowding round, the charm'd Savannah sees.
. "Horrid with want and misery, no more
Our streets the tender passenger afflict.
Nor shivering age, nor sickness without friend,
Or home, or bed to bear his burning load,
Nor agonizing infant, that ne'er earn'd
Its guiltless pangs, I see! The stores, profuse,
Which British bounty has to these assign'd,
No more the sacrilegious riot swell
Of cannibal devourers! Right applied,
No starving wretch the land of freedom stains.
If poor, employment finds; if old, demands;
If sick, if maim'd, his miserable due;
And will, if young, repay the fondest care.
Sweet sets the sun of stormy life, and sweet
The morning shines, in mercy's dews array'd.
Lo! how they rise! these families of Heaven!
That! chief, (but why-ye bigots!-why so late?)
Where blooms and warbles glad a rising age:
What smiles of praise! and while their song ascends,
The listening seraph lays his lute aside.
"Hark! the gay Muses raise a nobler strain, With active nature, warm impassion'd truth, Engaging fable, lucid order, notes
Of various string, and heart-felt image fill'd.
Behold! I see the dread delightful school
Of temper'd passions, and of polish'd life,
Celestial red, she touch'd my darken'd eyes.
As at the touch of day the shades dissolve,
So quick, methought, the misty circle clear'd,
That dims the dawn of being here below:
The future shone disclos'd, and, in long view,
Bright rising eras instant rush'd to light.
"They come! great goddess! I the times behold!
The times our fathers, in the bloody field,
Have earn'd so dear, and, not with less renown,
In the warm struggles of the Senate fight.
The times I see! whose glory to supply,
For toiling ages, commerce round the world
Has wing'd unnumber'd sails, and from each land
Materials heap'd, that, well-employ'd, with Rome
Might vie our grandeur, and with Greece our art.
"Lo! princes I behold! contriving still,
And still conducting firm some brave design;
Kings! that the narrow joyless circle scorn,
Burst the blockade of false designing men,
Of treacherous smiles, of adulation fell,
And of the blinding clouds around them thrown:
Their court rejoicing millions; worth alone,
And virtue dear to them; their best delight,
In just proportion to give general joy :
Their jealous care thy kingdom to maintain;
The public glory theirs; unsparing love
Their endless treasure; and their deeds their praise.
With thee they work. Nought can resist your force:
Life feels it quickening in her dark retreats;
Strong spread the blooms of genius, science, art;
His bashful bounds disclosing merit breaks;
And, big with fruits of glory, virtue blows
Expansive o'er the land. Another race
Of generous youth, of patriot-sires, I see!
Not those vain insects fluttering in the blaze
Of court, and ball, and play; those venal souls,
Corruption's veteran unrelenting bands,
That, to their vices slaves, can ne'er be free.
"I see the fountain's purg'd; whence life derives
A clear or turbid flow; see the young mind
Not fed impure by chance, by flattery fool'd,
Or by scholastic jargon bloated proud,
But fill'd and nourish'd by the light of truth.
Then, beam'd through fancy the refining ray,
And pouring on the heart, the passions feel
At once informing light and moving flame;
Till moral, public, graceful action crowns
The whole. Behold! the fair contention glows,
In all that mind or body can adorn,
* An hospital for foundlings.
Restor'd: behold! the well-dissembled scene
Calls from embellish'd eyes the lovely tear,
Or lights up mirth in modest cheeks again.
Lo! vanish'd monster-land. Lo! driven away
Those that Apollo's sacred walls profane;
Their wild creation scatter'd, where a world
Unknown to Nature, chaos more confus'd,
O'er the brute scene its ouran-outangs *
Detested forms! that, on the mind imprest,
Corrupt, confound, and barbarize an age.
pours;
"Behold! all thine again the sister-arts,
Thy graces they, knit in harmonious dance.
Nurs'd by the treasure from a nation drain'd
Their works to purchase, they to nobler rouse
Their untam'd genius, their unfetter'd thought;
Of pompous tyrants, and of dreaming monks,
The gaudy tools, and prisoners, no more.
"Lo! numerous domes a Burlington confess :
For kings and senates fit, the palace see!
The temple breathing a religious awe;
Ev'n fram'd with elegance the plain retreat,
The private dwelling. Certain in his aim,
Taste, never idly working, saves expense.
"See! Sylvan scenes, where, Art, alone, pretends
To dress her mistress, and disclose her charms:
Such as a Pope in miniature has shown;
A Bathurst o'er the widening forestt spreads;
And such as form a Richmond, Chiswick, Stowe.
"August, around, what public works I see! Lo! stately streets, lo! squares that court the breeze, In spite of those to whom pertains the care, Ingulfing more than founded Roman ways. Lo! ray'd from cities o'er the brighten'd land, Connecting sea to sea, the solid road. Lo! the proud arch (no vile exactor's stand) With easy sweep bestrides the chafing flood. See! long canals, and deepen'd rivers, join Each part with each, and with the circling main The whole enliven'd isle. Lo! ports expand, Free as the winds and waves, their sheltering arms. Lo! streaming comfort o'er the troubled deep, On every pointed coast the light-house towers; And, by the broad imperious mole repell'd, Hark! how the baffled storm indignant roars."
As thick to view these varied wonders rose, Shook all my soul with transport, unassur'd, The vision broke; and, on my waking eye, Rush'd the still ruins of dejected Rome.
TELL me, thou soul of her I love,
Ah! tell me, whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?
Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam,
And sometimes share thy lover's woe; Where, void of thee, his cheerless home Can now, alas! no comfort know?
Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk,
While under every well-known tree,
I to thy fancied shadow talk,
And every tear is full of thee;
Should then the weary eye of grief,
Beside some sympathetic stream,
In slumber find a short relief,
O visit thou my soothing dream!
THE HAPPY MAN.
HE's not the Happy Man, to whom is given
A plenteous fortune by indulgent Heaven;
Whose gilded roofs on shining columns rise,
And painted walls enchant the gazer's eyes;
Whose table flows with hospitable cheer,
And all the various bounty of the year;
Whose valleys smile, whose gardens breathe the
Spring,
Whose carved mountains bleat, and forests sing;
For whom the cooling shade in Summer twines,
While his full cellars give their generous wines;
From whose wide fields unbounded Autumn pours
A golden tide into his swelling stores:
Whose Winter laughs; for whom the liberal gales
Stretch the big sheet, and toiling commerce sails;
When yielding crowds attend, and pleasure serves,
While youth, and health, and vigor string his nerves
Ev'n not at all these, in one rich lot combin'd,
Can make the Happy Man, without the mind; -
Where Judgment sits clear-sighted, and surveys
The chain of Reason with unerring gaze;
Where Fancy lives, and to the brightening eyes
His fairer scenes, and bolder figures rise;
Where social Love exerts her soft command,
And plays the passions with a tender hand,
Whence every virtue flows, in rival strife,
And all the moral harmony of life.
* A creature which, of all brutes, most resembles man. -See Dr. Tyson's treatise on this animal.
Okely woods, near Cirencester.
SONG.
HARD is the fate of him who loves,
Yet dares not tell his trembling pain, But to the sympathetic groves,
But to the lonely listening plain.
Oh! when she blesses next your shade,
Oh! when her footsteps next are seen
In flowery tracts along the mead,
In fresher mazes o'er the green,
Ye gentle spirits of the vale,
To whom the tears of love are dear, From dying lilies waft a gale,
And sigh my sorrows in her ear.
O, tell her what she cannot blame,
Though fear my tongue must ever bind O, tell her that my virtuous flame Is as her spotless soul refin'd.
Not her own guardian angel eyes
With chaster tenderness his care, Not purer her own wishes rise,
Not holier her own sighs in prayer.
But if, at first, her virgin fear
Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship soothe her earTrue love and friendship are the same.
SONG.
FOR ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove An unrelenting foe to love,
And when we meet a mutual heart, Come in between, and bid us part?
Bid us sigh on from day to day,
And wish, and wish the soul away;
Till youth and genial years are flown,
And all the life of life is gone?
But busy, busy, still art thou,
To bind the loveless joyless vow,
The heart from pleasure to delude,
To join the gentle to the rude.
For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer,
And I absolve thy future care;
All other blessings I resign,
Make but the dear Amanda mine.
ODE.
O NIGHTINGALE, best poet of the grove,
That plaintive strain can ne'er belong to thee Blest in the full possession of thy love:
O lend that strain, sweet nightingale, to me!
"Tis mine, alas! to mourn my wretched fate: I love a maid, who all my bosom charms, Yet lose my days without this lovely mate;
Inhuman Fortune keeps her from my arms.
You, happy birds! by Nature's simple laws
Lead your soft lives, sustain'd by Nature's fare; You dwell wherever roving fancy draws,
And love and song is all your pleasing care:
But we, vain slaves of interest and of pride,
Dare not be blest lest envious tongues should blame :
And hence, in vain I languish for my bride;
O mourn with me, sweet bird, my hapless flame.
HYMN ON SOLITUDE.
HAIL, mildly-pleasing Solitude, Companion of the wise and good, But, from whose holy, piercing eye, The herd of fools and villains fly.
Oh! how I love with thee to walk, And listen to thy whisper'd talk, Which innocence and truth imparts, And melts the most obdurate hearts.
A thousand shapes you wear with ease,
And still in every shape you please.
Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,
A lone philosopher you seem;
Now quick from hill to vale you fly,
And now you sweep the vaulted sky;
A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,
And warble forth your oaten strain.
A lover now, with all the grace
Of that sweet passion in your face;
Then, calm'd to friendship, you assume
The gentle-looking Hartford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she
(Her Musidora fond of thee)
Amid the long withdrawing vale,
Awakes the rival'd nightingale.
Thine is the balmy breath of morn,
Just as the dew-bent rose is born;
And while meridian fervors beat,
Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;
But chief, when evening scenes decay,
And the faint landscape swims away,
Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
And that best hour of musing thine.
Descending angels bless thy train,
The virtues of the sage, and swain;
Plain Innocence, in white array'd,
Before thee lifts her fearless head:
Religion's beams around thee shine,
And cheer thy glooms with light divine:
About thee sports sweet Liberty;
And rapt Urania sings to thee.
Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell! And in thy deep recesses dwell; Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill, When Meditation has her fill,
I just may cast my careless eyes Where London's spiry turrets rise, Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain, Then shield me in the woods again.
TO THE
REV. MR. MURDOCH,
RECTOR OF STRADDISHALL, IN SUFFOLK, 1738. THUS safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall : Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all; No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife; Men, woods, and fields, all breathe untroubled life Then keep each passion down, however dear; Trust me the tender are the most severe. Guard, while 'tis thine, thy philosophic ease, And ask no joy but that of virtuous peace; That bids defiance to the storms of Fate, High bliss is only for a higher state.
AMBROSE PHILIPS, a poet and miscellaneous | who found his own juvenile pastorals undervalued, writer, was born in 1671, claiming his descent from sent to the same paper a comparison between his an ancient Leicestershire family. He received his and those of Philips, in which he ironically gave education at St. John's College, Cambridge; and, the preference to the latter. The irony was not attaching himself to the Whig party, he published, detected till it encountered the critical eye of Adin 1700, an epitome of Hacket's life of Archbishop dison; and the consequence was, that it ruined the Williams, by which he obtained an introduction to reputation of Philips as a composer of pastoral. Addison and Steele. Soon after, he made an at- When the accession of George I. brought the tempt in pastoral poetry, which, for a time, brought Whigs again into power, Philips was made a Westhim into celebrity. In 1709, being then at Copen-minster justice, and, soon after, a commissioner for hagen, he addressed to the earl of Dorset some the lottery. In 1718, he was the editor of a periverses, descriptive of that capital, which are re- odical paper, called "The Freethinker." In 1724, garded as his best performance; and these, together he accompanied to Ireland his friend Dr. Boulter, with two translations from Sappho's writings, created archbishop of Armagh, to whom he acted stand pre-eminent in his works of this class. In as secretary. He afterwards represented the county 1712 he made his appearance as a dramatic writer, of Armagh in parliament; and the places of secrein the tragedy of "The Distrest Mother," acted at tary to the Lord Chancellor, and Judge of the PreDrury-lane with great applause, and still considered rogative Court, were also conferred upon him. He as a stock play. It cannot, indeed, claim the merit returned to England in 1748, and died in the fol of originality, being closely copied from Racine's lowing year, at the age of seventy-eight. Andromacque;" but it is well written, and skilfully adapted to the English stage.
"6
The verses which he composed, not only to young ladies in the nursery, but to Walpole when A storm now fell upon him relatively to his pas- Minister of State, and which became known by the torals, owing to an exaggerated compliment from ludicrous appellation of namby-pamby, are easy and Tickell, who, in a paper of the Guardian, had made sprightly, but with a kind of infantile air, which the true pastoral pipe descend in succession from fixed upon them the above name. Theocritus to Virgil, Spenser, and Philips. Pope,
TO THE EARL OF DORSET.
Copenhagen, March 9, 1709.
FROM frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow,
From streams which northern winds forbid to flow,
What present shall the Muse to Dorset bring,
Or how, so near the Pole, attempt to sing?
The hoary winter here conceals from sight
All pleasing objects which to verse invite.
The hills and dales, and the delightful woods,
The flowery plains, and silver-streaming floods,
By snow disguis'd, in bright confusion lie,
And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye.
No gentle breathing breeze prepares the spring,
No birds within the desert region sing.
The ships, unmov'd, the boisterous winds defy,
While rattling chariots o'er the ocean fly.
The vast Leviathan wants room to play,
And spout his waters in the face of day.
The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
And to the Moon in icy valleys howl.
O'er many a shining league the level main
Here spreads itself into a glassy plain:
There solid billows of enormous size,
Alps of green ice, in wild disorder rise.
And yet but lately have I seen, ev'n here,
The winter in a lovely dress appear.
Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasur'd snow,
Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow,
At evening a keen eastern breeze arose,
And the descending rain unsullied froze.
Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew
The ruddy morn disclos'd at once to view
The face of Nature in a rich disguise,
And brighten'd every object to my eyes:
For every shrub, and every blade of grass,
And every pointed thorn, seem'd wrought in glass;
In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,
While through the ice the crimson berries glow.
|