I ne'er for trinkets rack my pericranium,
They furnish not my room from Herculaneum.
But hush
Should it be known that English are employ'd,
Our manufacture is at once destroy'd;
No matter what our countrymen deserve, They'll thrive as antients, but as moderns starve. If we should fail, to you it will be owing; Farewel to Arts-they're going, going, going; The fatal hammers' in your hand, oh Town! Then set Us up-and knock the Poet down.
Dr. Langhorne was Rector of Blagden, in Somersetshire, and is well known as the translator of Plutarch's Lives. He was also author of several other literary productions,
PARENT of virtue, if thine ear
Attend not now to sorrow's cry;
If now the pity-streaming tear
Should haply on thy cheeks be dry;
Indulge my votive strain, O sweet Humanity,
Come, ever welcome to my breast!
A tender, but a cheerful guest;
Nor always in the gloomy cell
Of life-consuming Sorrow dwell;
For Sorrow, long-indulged and slow,
Is to Humanity a foe;
And Grief, that makes the heart its prey,
Wears Sensibility away,
Why comes sweet nymph, instead of thee, The gloomy fiend, Stupidity?
O may that fiend be banish'd far,
Though passions hold eternal war!
Nor ever let me cease to know,
The pulse that throbs at joy, or woe;
Nor let my vacant cheek be dry,
When sorrow fills a brother's eye;
Nor may the tear that frequent flows.
From private, or from social woes,
E'er make this pleasing sense depart,
Ye Cares, O harden not my heart.
If the fair star of Fortune smile,
Let not its flattering power beguile;
Nor borne along the favouring tide,
My full sails swell with bloating pride.
Let me from wealth but hope conten,
Remembering still it was but lent;
To modest merit spread my store,
Unbar my hospitable door;
Nor feed, for pomp, an idle train,
While want unpitied pines in vain.
If heaven, in every purpose wise,
The envied lot of wealth denies ;
If doom'd to drag life's painful load
Through poverty's uneven road,
And, for the due bread of the day,
Destined to toil as well as pray ;
To thee, Humanity, still true,
I'll wish the good I cannot do;
And give the wretch, that passes by,
A soothing word—a tear- -a sigh.
Howe'er extracted, or deprest,
Be ever mine the feeling breast,
From me remove the stagnant mind
Of languid indolence, reclined;
The soul that one long Sabbath keeps,
And through the sun's whole circle sleeps;
Dull peace, that dwells in Folly's eye,
And self-attending vanity.
Alike, the foolish, and the vain,
Are strangers to the sense humane.
O for that sympathetick glow
Which taught the holy tear to flow,
When the prophetick eye survey'd
Sion in future ages laid;
Or, raised to heaven, implored the bread
That thousands in the desert fed!
Or, when the heart o'er friendship's grave, Sigh'd; and forgot its power to saveO for that sympathetick glow
Which taught the holy tear to flow!
It comes: It fills my labouring breast!
I feel my beating heart opprest.
Oh! hear that lonely widow's wail!
See her dim eye, her aspect pale!
To heaven she turns in deep despair,
Her infants wonder at her prayer,
And mingling tears they know not why,
Lift
up their little hands, and cry,
O God! their moving sorrow see!
Support them, sweet Humanity!
Life, fill'd with griefs' distressful train,
For ever asks the tear humane.
|