"Tis nature bids, and whilst the laws
Of nature we retain,
Our self-approving bosom draws
A pleasure from its pain.
Thus grief itself has comforts dear,
The sordid never know;
And ecstacy attends the tear,
When virtue bids it flow.
For, when it streams from that pure source,
No bribes the heart can win,
To check, or alter from its course
The luxury within.
Peace to the phlegm of sullen elves,
Who, if from labour eased,
Extend no care beyond themselves
Unpleasing and unpleased.
Let no low thought suggest the prayer
Oh! grant, kind heaven, to me
Long as I draw ethereal air,
Where'er the heavenly nymph is seen,
With lustre-beaming eye,
A train, attendant on their queen,
(Her rosy chorus) fly.
The jocund Loves in Hymen's band,
With torches ever bright,
And generous Friendship hand in hand
With Pity's watery sight.
The gentler virtues too are joined,
In youth immortal warm,
The soft relations, which, combined,
Give life her every charm.
The arts come smiling in the close,
And lend celestial fire,
The marble breathes, the canvass glows
The muses sweep the lyre.
"Still may my melting bosom cleave
To sufferings not my own,
And still the sigh responsive heave
Where'er is heard a groan.
"So pity shall take Virtue's part,
Her natural ally,
And fashioning my softened heart,
Prepare it for the sky."
This artless vow may heaven receive,
And you, fond maid, approve;
So may your guiding angel give
Whate'er you wish or love:
So may the rosy fingered hours
Lead on the various year,
And every joy, which now is yours,
Extend a larger sphere;
And suns to come, as round they wheel.
Your golden moments bless,
With all a tender heart can feel,
Or lively fancy guess.
FOUNDED ON A FACT WHICH HAPPENED IN JANUARY, 1779. WHERE Humber pours his rich commercial stream, There dwelt a wretch, who breathed but to blas pheme.
In subterraneous caves his life he led,
Black as the mine in which he wrought for bread. When on a day, emerging from the deep,
A sabbath-day, (such sabbaths thousands keep !)
The wages of his weekly toil he bore
To buy a cock-whose blood might win him more;
As if the noblest of the feathered kind
Were but for battle and for death designed;
As if the consecrated hours were meant
For sport, to minds on cruelty intent;
It chanced (such chances Providence obey)
He met a fellow-labourer on the way,
Whose heart the same desires had once inflamed;
But now the savage temper was reclaimed.
Persuasion on his lips had taken place;
For all plead well who plead the cause of grace:
His iron-heart with scripture he assailed,
Wooed him to hear a sermon, and prevailed.
His faithful bow the mighty preacher drew,
Swift, as the lightning-glance, the arrow flew.
He wept; he trembled; cast his eyes around,
To find a worse than he; but none he found.
He felt his sins, and wondered he should feel.
Grace made the wound, and grace alone could heal.
Now farewell oaths, and blasphemies, and lies!
He quits the sinner's for the martyr's prize.
That holy day which washed with many a tear,
Gilded with hope, yet shaded too by fear.
The next, his swarthy brethren of the mine
Learned, by his altered speech-the change divine,
Laughed when they should have wept, and swore
the day
Was nigh, when he would swear as fast as they.
"No, (said the penitent,) such words shall share
This breath no more; devoted now to prayer.
O! if Thou see'st (thine eye the future sees)
That I shall yet again blaspheme, like these:
Now strike me to the ground, on which I kneel,
Ere yet this heart relapses into steel;
Now take me to that Heaven I once defied,
Thy presence, thy embrace !"—He spoke and died
ON HIS RETURN FROM RAMSGATE.
THAT Ocean you have late surveyed,
Those rocks I too have seen,
But I, afflicted and dismayed,
You tranquil and serene.
You from the flood controlling steep
Saw stretched before your view,
With conscious joy, the threatening deep,
No longer such to you.
To me, the waves that ceaseless broke
Upon the dangerous coast,
Hoarsely and ominously spoke
Of all my treasure lost.
Your sea of troubles you have past,
And found the peaceful shore;
1. tempest-tossed, and wrecked at last,
Come home to port no more.
A POETICAL EPISTLE TO LADY AUSTEN
DEAR ANNA-between friend and friend,
Prose answers every common end;
Serves, in a plain and homely way,
T'express th' occurrence of the day;
Our health, the weather, and the news;
What walks we take, what books we choose,
And all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind.
But when a poet takes the pen,
Far more alive than other men,
He feels a gentle tingling come
Down to his finger and his thumb,
Derived from Nature's noblest part
The centre of a glowing heart:
And this is what the world, who knows
No flights above the pitch of prose,
His more sublime vagaries slighting,
Denominates an itch for writing.
No wonder I, who scribble rhyme
To catch the triflers of the time,
And tell them truths divine and clear,
Which, couched in prose, they will not hear;
Who labour hard t' allure and draw
The loiterers I never saw,
Should feel that itching, and that tingling,
With all my purpose intermingling,
To your intrinsic merit true,
When called t' address myself to you.
Mysterious are his ways, whose power
Brings forth that unexpected hour,
When minds, that never met before,
Shall meet, unite, and part no more:
It is th' allotment of the skies,
The hand of the Supremely Wise,
That guides and governs our affections
And plans and orders our connexions.
Directs us in our distant road,
And marks the bounds of our abode.
Thus we were settled when you found us,
Peasants and children all around us,
Not dreaming of so dear a friend,
Deep in the abyss of Silver-End.*
Thus Martha, e'en against her will,
Perched on the top of yonder hill;
And you, though you must needs prefer
The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre,t
Are come from distant Loire, to choose
An obscure part of Olney, adjoining to the residence of Cowner which faced the market-place.
+ Lady Austen's residence in France
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