The man to solitude accustom'd long Perceives in every thing that lives a tongue, Not animals alone, but shrubs and trees, Have speech for him, and understood with ease; After long drought when rains abundant fall, Ile hears the herbs and flow'rs rejoicing all; Knows what the freshness of their hue implies, How glad they catch the largess of the skies; But, with precision nice still, the mind He scans of ev'ry locomotive kind; Birds of all feather, beasts of ev'ry name, That serve mankind, or shun them, wild or tame; Ile spells them true by intuition's light, This truth premis'd was needful as a text, To win due credence to what follows next. Awhile they mus'd; surveying ev'ry face, Sure ne'er to want them, mathematick truths; Friends! we have liv'd too long. I never heard In Earth's dark womb have found at last a vent, Yourselves have seen, what time the thunders ro.l'd Him answer'd then his loving mate and true, How! leap into the pit our life to save? Of peace or case to creatures clad as we. And rush those other sounds, that seem by tongues While thus she spake, I fainter heard the peals, For Reynard, close attended at his heels By panting dog, tir'd man, and spatter'd horse, Through mere good fortune, took a diff'rent course The flock grew calm again, and I tae road MORAL. Beware of desp'rate steps. The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have pass'd away. ༅་་་ BOADICEA AN ODE. 1. WHEN the British warriour queen, Bleeding from the Roman rods, II. Sage beneath the spreading oak Ev'ry burning word he spoke III. Princess! if our aged eyes Weep upon thy matchless wrongs 'Tis because resentment ties All the terrours of our tongues. Rome shal. perish--write that word V. Rome, for empire far renown'd, Soon her pride shall kiss the ground- VI. Other Romans shall arise, Heedless of a soldier's name; Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize Harmony the path to fame. VII. Then the progeny that springs Such the bard's prophetick words, X. She, with all a monarch's pride, XI. Ruffians, pitiless as proud, Heav'n awards the vengeance due· Shame and ruin wait for you. HEROISM. THERE was a time when Etna's silent fire Slept unperceiv'd, the mountain yet entire ; When, conscious of no danger from below, She tower'd a cloudcapt pyramid of snow. No thunders shook with deep intestine sound The blooming groves that girdled her around. Her unctuous olives, and her purple vines, (Unfelt the fury of those bursting mines,) The peasant's hopes, and not in vain, assur'd, In peace upon her sloping sides matur'd. When on a day, like that of the last doom, A conflagration lab'ring in her womb, She teem'd and heav'd with an infernal birth, That shook the circling seas and solid earth. Dark and voluminous the vapours rise, And hang their horrours in the neighb'ring skies, While through the stygian veil that blots the day, In dazzling streaks the vivid lightnings play. But O! what muse, and in what pow'rs of song, Can trace the torrent. as it burns along? Havock and devastation n the van, It marches o'er the prostrate works of man, Vines, olives, herbage, forests, disappear, And all the charms of a Sicilias year |