Nec imbres nimii,
Confecêre:
Tamen mortuus est-
Et moriar ego.
ON THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF SIR CHARLES
GRANDISON, IN 1753.
To rescue from the tyrant's sword
Th' oppressed;-
;-unseen and unimplored,
To cheer the face of wo;
From lawless insult to defend
An orphan's right—a fallen friend,
And a forgiven foe;
These, these distinguish from the crowd,
And these alone, the great and good,
The guardians of mankind;
Whose bosoms with these virtues heave
O, with what matchless speed, they leave
The multitude behind!
Then ask ye, from what cause on earth
Virtues like these derive their birth,
Derived from heaven alone,
Full on that favoured breast they shine,
Where faith and resignation join
To call the blessing down.
Such is that heart:-but while the Muse
Thy theme, O RICHARDSON, pursues,
Her feeble spirits faint:
She can not reach, and would not wrong,
That subject for an angel's song,
The hero, and the saint!
ON READING THE PRAYER FOR INDIFFERENCE.
AND dwells there in a female heart,
By bounteous heaven designed The choicest raptures to impart, To feel the most refined
Dwells there a wish in such a breast
Its nature to forego,
To smother in ignoble rest
At once both bliss and wo?
Far be the thought, and far the strain,
Which breathes the low desire,
How sweet soe'er the verse complain,
Though Phoebus string the lyre.
Come then, fair maid, (in nature wise)
Who, knowing them, can tell
From generous sympathy what joys
The glowing bosom swell.
In justice to the various powers
Of pleasing, which you share,
Join me, amid your silent hours,
To form the better prayer.
With lenient balm, may Ob'ron hence
To fairy-land be driven;
With every herb that blunts the sense Mankind received from heaven.
"Oh! if my Sovereign Author please, Far be it from my fate, To live, unblest in torpid ease
And slumber on in state.
"Each tender tie of life defied
Whence social pleasures spring,
Unmoved with all the world beside,
A solitary thing-"
Some alpine mountain, wrapt in snow,
Thus braves the whirling blast,
Eternal winter doomed to know,
No genial spring to taste.
In vain warm suns their influence shed
The zephyrs sport in vain,
He rears, unchanged, his barren head,
Whilst beauty decks the plain.
What though in scaly armour drest,
Indifference may repel
The shafts of wo-in such a breast
No joy can ever dwell.
'Tis woven in the world's great plan,
And fixed by heaven's decree,
That all the true delights of man
Should spring from Sympathy.
'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,
Sweet Sensibility.
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,
WHERE Humber pours his rich commercial stream, There dwelt a wretch, who breathed but to blaspheme.
In subterraneous caves his life he led,
Black as the mine in which he wrought for bread.
When on a day, energing 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;
I, tempest-tossed, and wrecked at last,
Come home to port no more.
A POETICAL EPISTLE TO LADY
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,†
Are come from distant Loire, to choose
A cottage on the banks of Ouse.
This page of Providence quite new,
And now just opening to our view,
An obscure part of Olney, adjoining to the residence of
Cowper, which faced the market-place.
Lady Austen's residence in France.
Employs our present thoughts and pains
To guess, and spell, what it contains;
But day by day, and year by year,
Will make the dark enigma clear;
And furnish us, perhaps, at last,
Like other scenes already past,
With proof, that we, and our affairs,
Are part of a Jehovah's cares:
For God unfolds, by slow degrees,
The purport of his deep decrees;
Sheds every hour a clearer light
In aid of our defective sight;
And spreads, at length, before the soul,
A beautiful and perfect whole,
Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate in vain.
Say, Anna, had you never known
The beauties of a rose full blown,
Could you, though luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud, descry,
Or guess, with a prophetic power,
The future splendour of the flower?
Just so, th' Omnipotent, who turns
The system of a world's concerns,
From mere minutia can educe
Events of most important use;
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.
The works of man tend, one and all,
As needs they must, from great so small;
And vanity absorbs at length
The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan
Which this day's incident began?
Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion,
For our dim-sighted observation;
It passed unnoticed, as the bird
That cleaves the yielding air unheard,
And yet may prove, when understood,
A harbinger of endless good.
Not that I deem, or mean to call Friendship a blessing cheap or small. But merely to remark, that ours, Like some of nature's sweetest flowers, Rose from a seed of tiny size, That seemed to promise no such prize; A transient visit intervening, And made almost without a meaning, (Hardly the effect of inclination, Much less of pleasing expectation,) Produced a friendship, then begun, That has cemented us in one; And placed it in our power to prove, By long fidelity and love,
That Solomon has wisely spoken,
66 A threefold cord is not soon broken."
Air-The Lass of Patie's Mill.
WHEN all within is peace,
How Nature seems to smile!
Delights that never cease,
The live-long day beguile.
From morn to dewy eve,
With open hand she showers
Fresh blessings to deceive,
And sooth the silent hours.
It is content of heart
Gives nature power to please;
The mind that feels no smart,
Enlivens all it sees:
Can make a wintry sky
Seem bright as smiling May,
And evening's closing eye
As peep of early day.
The vast majestic globe,
So beauteously arrayed
In Nature's various robe
With wondrous skill displayed,
Is to a mourner's heart
A dreary wild at best;
It flutters to depart,
And longs to be at rest.
And, summoned to partake its fellow's wo,
Starts from its office, like a broken bow.
Votaries of business, and of pleasure prove
Faithless alike in friendship and in love.
Retired from all the circles of the gay,
And all the crowds, that bustle life away,
To scenes, where competition, envy, strife,
Beget no thunder-clouds to trouble life,
Let me, the charge of some good angel, find
One, who has known, and has escaped mankind;
Polite, yet virtuous, who has brought away
The manners, not the morals, of the day:
With him, perhaps with her, (for men have known
No firmer friendships than the fair have shown,)
Let me enjoy, in some unthought-of spot,
All former friends forgiven, and forgot,
Down to the close of life's fast fading scene,
Union of hearts, without a flaw between.
'Tis grace, 'tis bounty, and it calls for praise,
If God give health, that sunshine of our days!
And if he add, a blessing shared by few,
Content of heart, more praises still are due-
But if he grant a friend, that boon possessed,
Indeed is treasure, and crowns all the rest;
And giving one, whose heart is in the skies,
Born from above, and made divinely wise,
He gives, what bankrupt nature never can,
Whose noblest coin is light and brittle man,
Gold, purer far than Ophir ever knew,
A soul, an image of himself, and therefore true.
SELECTED FROM AN OCCASIONAL POEM, ENTITLED
VALEDICTION.
On Friendship! Cordial of the human breast
So little felt, so fervently professed!
Thy blossoms deck our unsuspecting years;
The promise of delicious fruit appears:
We hug the hopes of constancy and truth,
Such is the folly of our dreaming youth;
But soon, alas! detect the rash mistake
That sanguine inexperience loves to make;
And view with tears th' expected harvest lost,
Decayed by time, or withered by a frost,
Whoever undertakes a friend's great part
Should be renewed in nature, pure in heart,
Prepared for martyrdom, and strong to prove
A thousand ways the force of genuine love.
He may be called to give up health and gain,
T'exchange content for trouble, ease for pain,
To echo sigh for sigh, and groan for groan,
And wet his cheeks with sorrows not his own.
The heart of man, for such a task too frail,
When most relied on, is most sure to fail;
•Written at the request of Lady Austen.
HERE Johnson lies-a sage by all allowed,
Whom to have bred, may well make England proud;
Whose prose was eloquence, by wisdom taught,
The graceful vehicle of virtuous thought;
Whose verse may claim-grave, masculine, and
strong,
Superior praise to the mere poet's song;
Who many a noble gift from Heaven possessed,
And faith at last, alone worth all the rest.
O man, immortal by a double prize,
By fame on earth-by glory in the skies!
TO MISS C—, ON HER BIRTH-DAY
How many between east and west,
Disgrace their parent earth,
Whose deeds constrain us to detest
The day that gave them birth!
Not so when Stella's natal morn
Revolving months restore,
We can rejoice that she was born,
And wish her born once more.
ADDRESSED TO LADY HESKETH.
THIS cap, that so stately appears, With ribbon-bound tassel on high, Which seems by the crest that it rears Ambitious of brushing the sky: This cap to my cousin I owe,
She gave it, and gave me beside, Wreathed into an elegant bow,
The ribbon with which it is tied.
This wheel-footed studying chair,
Contrived both for toil and repose,
Wide elbowed and wadded with hair,
In which I both scribble and dose,
Bright studded to dazzle the eyes,
And rival in lustre of that
In which, or astronomy lies,
Fair Cassiopeia sat:
These carpets, so soft to the foot,
Caledonia's traffic and pride,
O spare them ye knights of the boot,
Escaped from a cross-country ride.
This table and mirror within,
Secure from collision and dust,
At which I oft shave cheek and chin,
And periwig nicely adjust:
This moveable structure of shelves,
For its beauty admired and its use,
And charged with octavos and twelves,
The gayest I had to produce;
Where, flaming in scarlet and gold,
My poems enchanted I view,
And hope, in due time, to behold
My Iliad and Odyssey too;
This china, that decks the alcove,
Which here people call a buffet,
But what the gods call it above,
Has ne'er been revealed to us yet;
These curtains, that keep the room warm
Or cool, as the season demands,
These stoves that for pattern and form,
Seem the labour of Mulciber's hands:
All these are not half that I owe
To one from her earliest youth To me ever ready to show Benignity, friendship, and truth: For time the destroyer declared
And foe of our perishing kind, It even her face he has spared,
Much less could he alter her mind. Thus compassed about with the goods And chattels of leisure and ease,
I indulge my poetical moods
In many such fancies as these;
And fancies I fear they will seem-
Poet's goods are not often so fine;
The poets will swear that I dream,
When I sing of the splendour of mine.
WHEN a bar of pure silver, or ingot of gold,
Is sent to be flatted or wrought into length,
It is passed between cylinders often and rolled
In an engine of utmost mechanical strength.
Thus tortured and squeezed, at last it appears
Like a loose heap of ribbon, a glittering show, Like music it tinkles and rings in your ears,
And, warmed by the pressure, is all in a glow, This process achieved, it is doomed to sustain The thump-after-thump of a goldbeater's mallet, And at last is of service in sickness or pain
To cover a pill for a delicate palate.
Alas for the poet! who dares undertake
To urge reformation of national ill— His head and his heart are both likely to ache With the double employment of mallet and mill. If he wish to instruct, he must learn to delight, Smooth, ductile, and even, his fancy must flow, Must tinkle and glitter like gold to the sight,
And catch in its progress a sensible glow.
After all, he must beat it as thin and as fine
As the leaf that unfolds what an invalid swal-
lows,
For truth is unwelcome, however divine,
And unless you adorn it a nausea follows.
TO MRS. THROCKMORTON, ON HER BEAUTIFUL TRANSCRIPT OF HORACE'S ODE,
MARIA, Could Horace have guessed
What honour awaited his ode,
To his own little volume addressed,
The honour which you have bestowed,
Who have traced it in characters here
So elegant, even and neat,
He had laughed at the critical sneer,
Which he seems to have trembled to meet.
And sneer if you please he had said,
A nymph shall hereafter arise, Who shall give me, when you are all dead, The glory your malice denies. Shall dignity give to my lay,
Although but a mere bagatelle; And even a poet shall say,
Nothing ever was written so well.
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