From whose wide fields unbounded autumn pours | Will he not care for you, ye faithless, say?
A golden tide into his swelling stores:
Is he unwise? or are ye less than they?
Whose winter laughs; for whom the liberal gales
Stretch the big sheet, and toiling commerce sails;
When yielding crowds attend, and pleasure serves;
While youth, and health, and vigour string his
E'en not all these, in one rich lot combined,
Can make the happy man, without the mind;
Where judgment sits clear-sighted, and surveys
The chain of reason with unerring gaze;
Where fancy lives, and to the brightening eyes,
His fairer scenes, and bolder figures rise;
Where social love exerts her soft command,
And lays the passions with a tender hand,
Whence every virtue flows, in rival strife,
And all the moral harmony of life.
Nor canst thou, Dodington, this truth decline,
Thine is the fortune, and the mind is thine.
ON THE LATTER PART OF THE SIXTH CHAPTER OF
ST. MATTHEW.
WHEN my breast labours with oppressive care,
And o'er my cheek descends the falling tear;
While all my warring passions are at strife,
O, let me listen to the words of life!
Raptures deep-felt His doctrine did impart,
And thus He raised from earth the drooping heart.
"Think not, when all, your scanty stores afford;
Is spread at once upon the sparing board;
Think not, when worn the homely robe appears,
While, on the roof, the howling tempest bears;
What further shall this feeble life sustain,
And what shall clothe these shivering limbs again!
Say, does not life its nourishment exceed?
And the fair body its investing weed?
'Behold! and look away your low despair-
See the light tenants of the barren air:
To them, nor stores, nor granaries belong,
Nought, but the woodland, and the pleasing song;
Yet, your kind heavenly Father bends his eye
On the least wing that flits along the sky,
To him they sing, when Spring renews the plain,
To him they cry in Winter's pinching reign;
Nor is their music, nor their plaint in vain:
He hears the gay and the distressful call,
And with unsparing bounty fills them all.
'Observe the rising lily's snowy grace,
Observe the various vegetable race;
They neither toil nor spin, but careless grow,
Yet see how warm they blush, how bright they
glow!
What regal vestments can with them compare!
What king so shining, or what queen so fair!
If ceaseless thus the fowls of Heaven he feeds,
If o'er the fields such lucid robes he spreads:
ETHEREAL race, inhabitants of air,
Who hymn your God amid the secret grove; Ye unseen beings, to my harp repair,
And raise majestic strains, or melt in love.
Those tender notes, how kindly they upbraid,
With what soft wo they thrill the lover's heart!
Sure from the hand of some unhappy maid,
Who died for love, those sweet complainings part.
But hark! that strain was of a graver tone,
On the deep strings his hand some hermit throws,
Or he, the sacred Bard,* who sat alone
In the drear waste, and wept his people's woes.
Such was the song whien Zion's children sung, When by Euphrates' stream they made their plaint;
And to such sadly solemn notes are strung
Angelic harps to sooth a dying saint.
Methinks I hear the full celestial choir,
Through Heaven's high dome their awful an-
them raise;
Now chanting clear, and now they all conspire
To swell the lofty hymn from praise to praise.
Let me, ye wandering spirits of the wind,
Who, as wild fancy prompts you, touch the string, Smit with your theme, be in your chorus join'd, For, till you cease, my Muse forgets to sing.
HYMN ON SOLITUDE.
HAIL, mildly pleasing Solitude,
Companion of the wise and good;
But from whose holy piercing eye,
The herd of fools, and villains fly.
Oh! how I love with thee to walk,
And listen to thy whisper'd talk,
Which innocence and truth imparts,
And melts the most obdurate hearts.
A thousand shapes you wear with ease,
And still in every shape you please.
Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,
A lone philosopher you seem;
Now quick from hill to vale you fly,
And now you sweep the vaulted sky;
A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,
And warble forth your oaten strain.
A lover now, with all the grace
Of that sweet passion in your face:
Then calm'd to friendship, you assume
The gentle looking Hertford's bloom,
As, with her Musidora, she
(Her Musidora fond of thee)
Amid the long-withdrawing vale,
Awakes the rival'd nightingale.
Thine is the balmy breath of morn, Just as the dew-bent rose is born; And while meridian fervors beat, Thine is the woodland dumb retreat; But chief, when evening scenes decay, And the faint landscape swims away, Thine is the doubtful soft decline, And that best hour of musing thine.
Descending angels bless thy train, The virtues of the sage and swain; Plain Innocence in white array'd Before thee lifts her fearless head; Religion's beams around thee shine, And cheer thy glooms with light divine: About thee sports sweet Liberty: And wrapt Urania sings to thee.
Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell! And in thy deep recesses dwell; Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill, When meditation has her fill, I just may cast my careless eyes, Where London's spiry turrets rise, Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain, Then shield me in the woods again.
TO SERAPHINA.
THE wanton's charms, however bright,
Are like the false illusive light,
Whose flattering unauspicious blaze
To precipices oft betrays:
But that sweet ray your beauties dart,
Which clears the mind, and cleans the heart,
Is like the sacred queen of night,
W no pours a lovely gentle light
Wide o'er the dark, by wanderers blest,
Conducting them to peace and rest.
A vicious love depraves the mind,
'Tis anguish, guilt, and folly join`1;
But Seraphina's eyes dispense
A mild and gracious influence;
Such as in visions angels shed
Around the heaven-illumined head
To love thee, Seraphina, sure
is to be tender, happy, pure;
'Tis from low passions to escape, And woo bright virtue's fairest shape; 'Tis ecstasy with wisdom join'd; And heaven infused into the mind.
VERSES ADDRESSED TO AMANDA.
Ан, urged too late! from beauty's bondage free,
Why did I trust my liberty with thee?
And thou, why didst thou, with inhuman art,
If not resolved to take, seduce my heart?
Yes, yes, you said, for lovers' eyes speak true;
You must have seen how fast my passion grew:
And, when your glances chanced on me to shine
How my fond soul ecstatic sprung to thine!
But mark me, fair one-what I now declare
Thy deep attention claims and serious care:
It is no common passion fires my breast;
I must be wretched, or I must be blest'
My woes all other remedy deny;
Or, pitying, give me hope, or bid me die!
WITH A COPY OF THE SEASONS."
ACCEPT, loved Nymph, this tribute due
To tender friendship, love, and you:†
But with it take what breathed the whole,
O take to thine the poet's soul.
If Fancy here her power displays,
And if a heart exalts these lays-
You, fairest, in that fancy shine,
And all that heart is fondly thine.
A NUPTIAL SONG. COME, gentle Venus! and assuage A warring world, a bleeding age. For nature lives beneath thy ray, The wintry tempests haste away, A lucid calm invests the sea, Thy native deep is full of thee: The flowering earth where'er you fly, Is all o'er spring, all sun the sky. A genial spirit warms the breeze; Unseen among the blooming trees, The feather'd lovers tune their throat, The desert growls a soften'd note,
Amanda, as is stated in the Memoir, was a Miss Young who married Vice Admiral Campbell.
↑ In another MS. the two first lines read:
Accept, dear Nymph! a tribute due
To sacred friendship and to you.
|