Fierce and unbroken yet,

Impatient of the fpur or bit;

Now prances stately, and anon flies o'er the place;
Difdains the fervile law of any fettled pace,
Confcious and proud of his own natural force.
'Twill no unskilful touch endure,

But flings writer and reader too, that fits not sure.

THE

MUSE.

The Queen, my Mufe, will take the air: Unruly Fancy with ftrong Judgment trace; Put in nimble-footed Wit,

Smooth-pac'd Eloquence join with it; Sound Memory with young Invention place; Harness all the winged race.

Let the postillion Nature mount, and let

The coachman Art be fet;

And let the airy footmen, running all befide,
Make a long row of goodly pride,

Figures, Conceits, Raptures, and Sentences,

In a well-worded dress ;

[Lyes,

And innocent Loves, and pleasant Truths, and useful

In all their gaudy liveries.

Mount, glorious Queen! thy travelling throne,

And bid it to put on;

For long, though chearful, is the way,

And life, alas! allows but one ill winter's day.

Where

Where never foot of man, or hoof of beast,.

The paffage prefs'd;

Where never fish did fly,

And with short filver wings cut the low liquid fky;
Where bird with painted oars did. ne'er
Row through the trackless ocean of the air;
Where never yet did pry

The bufy morning's curious eye;

The wheels of thy bold coach pafs quick and free,
And all 's an open road to thee !
Whatever God did Say,

Is all thy plain and fmooth uninterrupted way!
Nay, ev'n beyond his works thy voyages are known,
Thou 'haft thousand worlds too of thine own.
Thou speak'ft, great Queen ! in the fame ftyle as He;
And a new world leaps forth when thou fay'ft,
"it be."

Thou fathom'ft the deep gulf of ages paft,
And canft pluck up with eafe

The

years which thou doft plcafe;

Like shipwreck'd treasures, by rude tempefts caft
Long fince into the fea,

"Let

Brought up again to light and public ufe by thee.
Nor doft thou only dive fo low,

But fly

With an unwearied wing the other way on high,
Where Fates among the ftars do grow;

There

There into the close nefts of Time doft peep,

And there, with piercing eye,

Through the firm shell and the thick white, doft spy Years to come a-forming lie,

Clofe in their facred fecundine asleep,

Till, Hatch'd by the fun's vital heat,
Which o'er them yet does brooding fet,
They life and motion get,

And, ripe at laft, with vigorous might
Break through the fhell, and take their everlafting flight!

And fure we may

The fame too of the present say, If paft and future times do thee obey.

Thou stop'ft this current, and doft make
This running river fettle like a lake e;

Thy certain hand holds fast this flippery fnake!
The fruit which does fo quickly wafte,

Men scarce can fee it, much less tafte,

Thou comfiteft in fweets to make it last.
This fhining piece of ice,

Which melts fo foon away

With the fun's ray,

Thy verfe does folidate and cryftallize,

Till it a lafting mirror be!

Nay, thy immortal rhyme

Makes this one fhort point of time

To fill up half the orb of round eternity.

то

V

то M R. HOBBE S.

AST bodies of philofophy

I oft have seen and read;

But all are bodies dead,

Or bodies by art fashioned;

I never yet the living foul could fee,
But in thy books and thee!

'Tis only God can know

Whether the fair idea thou doft show

Agree intirely with his own or no.
This I dare boldly tell,

'Tis fo like truth, 'twill ferve our turn as well.
Juft, as in Nature, thy proportions be,
As full of concord their variety,

As firm the parts upon their centre reft,
And all fo folid are, that they, at least
As much as Nature, emptiness deteft.

Long did the mighty Stagyrite retain
The univerfal intellectual reign,

Saw his own country's fhort-liv'd leopard flain ;
The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly,
Oftener renew'd his age, and faw that die.
Mecca itself, in fpite of Mahomet, poffeft,
And, chac'd by a wild deluge from the East,
His monarchy new planted in the West.
But, as in time each great imperial race
Degenerates, and gives fome new one place :

So did this noble empire waste,

Sunk by degrees from glories paft,

And in the school-men's hands it perifh'd quite at laft:
Then nought but words it grew,
And thofe all barbarous too :

It perifh'd, and it vanish'd there,

The life and foul, breath'd out, became but empty air!

The fields, which answer'd well the ancients' plough,
Spent and out-worn, return no harvest now;
In barren age wild and unglorious lie,
And boast of past fertility,

The

poor relief of present poverty. Food and fruit we now muft want,

Unless new lands we plant.

We break-up tombs with facrilegious hands
Old rubbish we remove;

To walk in ruins, like vain ghosts, we love,
And with fond divining wands

We fearch among the deal

For treasures buried;

Whilft ftill the liberal earth does hold

So many virgin-mines of undiscover'd gold.

The Baltic, Euxine, and the Cafpian,
And flender-limb'd Mediterranean,
Seem narrow creeks to thee, and only fit
For the poor wretched fisher-boats of wit:
Thy nobler veffel the vaft ocean tries,

And nothing fees but feas and skies,