PER certo i bei vostr' occhi, Donna mia
Esser non puo che non sian lo mio sole
Si mi percuoton forte, come ei suole
Per l'arene di Libia chi s'invia,
Mentre un caldo vapor (ne sentì pria)
Da quel lato si spinge ove mi duole,
Che forse amanti nelle lor parole
Chiaman sospir; io non so che si sia :
Parte rinchiusa, e turbida si cela
Scosso mi il petto, e poi n'uscendo poco
Quivi d'attorno o s'agghiaccia, o s'ingiela; Ma quanto a gli occhi giunge a trovar loco Tutte le notti a me suol far piovose Finche mia alba rivien colma dì rose.
WHEN pensive on that portraiture I gaze,
Where my four brothers round about me stand,
And four fair sisters smile with graces bland,
The goodly monument of happier days;
And think how soon insatiate Death, who preys
On all, has cropped the rest with ruthless hand,
While only I survive of all that band
Which one chaste bed did to my father raise;
It seems, that like a column left alone,
The tottering remnant of some splendid fane,
'Scaped from the fury of the barbarous Gaul,
And wasting Time, which has the rest o'erthrown,
Amidst our house's ruins I remain,
Single, unpropped, and nodding to my fall.
AND APOSTLESHIP OF ST. PAUL.
O LYTTELTON, great meed shalt thou receive,
Great meed of fame, thou and thy learned compeer,
Who, 'gainst the sceptic's doubt, and scorner's sneer,
Assert those heaven-born truths, which you believe!
In elder time thus heroes wont t'atchieve
Renown; they held the faith of Jesus dear,
And round their ivy crown or laurelled spear,
Blushed not Religion's olive branch to weave:
Thus Raleigh, thus immortal Sidney shone,
(Illustrious names!) in great Eliza's days.
Nor doubt His promise firm, that such who own
In evil times, undaunted though alone,
His glorious truth, such He will crown with praise,
And glad agnize before his Father's throne.
born in 1728, was educated at St. Mary's College, Winchester, and afterwards at Trinity, Oxford, where he passed his days in retirement, though as a scholar and critic well known to the literary world; in that retirement he cultivated his poetic taste. He beautifully expresses his love of poesie in his "Ode to Summer."
"O ever to sweet poesie
Let me live true votary!
She shall lead me by the hand,
Queen of sweet smiles, and solace bland!
She from her precious stores shall shed
Ambrosial flow'rets o'er my head:
She, from my tender youthful cheek
Can wipe, with lenient finger meek,
The secret and unpitied tear,
Which still I drop in darkness drear."
His Sonnets are considered to possess much beauty of diction, and are polished and elegantly turned. Warton was some time Poet Laureate to George the Third. He died, aged sixty-two, in 1790.
WRITTEN AT WINSLADE, IN HAMPSHIRE.
WINSLADE, thy beech-capt hills, with waving grain
Mantled, thy chequered views of wood and lawn,
Whilom could charm, or when the gradual dawn
'Gan the grey mist with orient purple stain,
Or evening glimmered o'er the folded train:
Her fairest landscapes whence my Muse has drawn,
Too free with servile courtly phrase to fawn,
Too weak to try the buskin's stately strain:
Yet now no more thy slopes of beech and corn,
Nor views invite, since He far distant strays,
With whom I traced their sweets at eve and morn,
From Albion far, to cull Hesperian bays;
In this alone they please, howe'er forlorn,
That still they can recall those happier days.
WHEN late the trees were stript by winter pale,
Young Health, a dryad-maid in vesture green,
Or like the forest's silver-quivered queen,
On airy uplands met the piercing gale;
And, ere its earliest echo shook the vale,
Watching the hunter's joyous horn was seen.
But since, gay-throned in fiery chariot sheen,
Summer has smote each daisy-dappled dale,
She to the cave retires, high-arched beneath
The fount that laves proud Isis' towery brim :
And now all glad the temperate air to breathe,
While cooling drops distil from arches dim,
Binding her dewy locks with sedgy wreath,
She sits amid the quire of Naiads trim.
WRITTEN AFTER SEEING WILTON HOUSE.
FROM Pembroke's princely dome, where mimic Art
Decks with a magic hand the dazzling bowers,
Its living hues where the warm pencil pours,
And breathing forms from the rude marble start,
How to life's humbler scene can I depart!
My breast all glowing from those gorgeous towers,
In my
low cell how cheat the sullen hours!
Vain the complaint: for Fancy can impart
(To Fate superior and to Fortune's doom)
Whate'er adorns the stately-storied hall:
She, 'mid the dungeon's solitary gloom,
Can dress the Graces in their Attic pall;
Bid the green landscape's vernal beauty bloom,
And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall.
AH! what a weary race my feet have run,
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crowned,
And thought my way was all through fairy ground,
Beneath thy azure sky and golden sun:
Where first my Muse to lisp her notes begun!
While pensive Memory traces back the round,
Which fills the varied interval between ;
Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene.
Sweet native stream, those skies and suns so pure
No more return, to cheer my evening road!
Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure,
Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed,
From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature;
Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestowed.
ON KING ARTHUR'S ROUND-TABLE AT WINCHESTER.
WHERE Venta's Norman castle still uprears
Its raftered hall, that o'er the grassy foss,
And scattered flinty fragments clad in moss,
On yonder steep in naked state appears,
High-hung remains, the pride of warlike years,
Old Arthur's Board: on the capacious round
Some British pen has sketched the names renowned,
In marks obscure, of his immortal peers.
Though joined by magic skill, with many a rhyme,
The Druid frame, unhonoured, falls a prey
To the slow vengeance of the wizard Time,
And fade the British characters away;
Yet Spenser's page, that chaunts in verse sublime
Those chiefs, shall live, unconscious of decay.
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