ELEGY

UN

The DEATII of Mr. PHILLIPS.*

Corrected from the old Edition, by a MS. in Chatterton's hand-writing.

Assist me, powers of Heaven! what do I hear?
Surprise and Horror check the burning tear.
Is Phillips dead, and is my friend no more!
Gone like the sand divested from the shore!

After the Elegy to Thomas Philips had been printed (page 22) a more correct copy came into the possession of the Editor (through the medium of T. Hill, Esq.) in the hand-writing of Chatterton. As this latter Elegy contained seven or eight new Stanzas, besides many verbal alterations, instead of cancelling the old, it was deemed proper to let it remain, and to print the corrected copy also, by which the Reader will be pleased in tracing Chatterton's various emendations.

And is he gone?-Can then the Nine refuse
To sing with gratitude a favor'd Muse.

ELEGY.

No more I hail the morning's golden gleam,
No more the wonders of the view I sing;
Friendship requires a melancholy theme,
At her command the awful lyre I string.

Now as I wander thro' this leafless grove,
Where tempests howl, and blasts eternal rise;
How shall I teach the chorded shell to move,
Or stay the gushing torrent from my eyes?

Phillips! great master of the boundless lyre,
Thee would my soul-rack'd Muse attempt to paint;
Give me a double portion of thy fire,

Or all the powers of language are too faint.

Say, soul unsullied by the filth of vice,

Say, meek-ey'd spirit, where's thy tuneful shell, Which when the silver stream was lock'd with ice,

Was wont to cheer the tempest-ravaged dell?

Oft as the filmy veil of evening drew

The thickning shade the vivid green;

upon

Thou, lost in transport, at the dying view,
Bid'st the ascending Muse display the scene.

When golden Autumn wreathed in rip'ned corn,
From purple clusters prest the foamy wine,
Thy Genius did his sallow brows adorn,
And made the beauties of the season thine.

With rustling sound the yellow foliage flies,
And wantons with the wind in rapid whirls,
The gurgling riv let to the vallies hies,
Whilst on its bank the spangled serpent curles.

The joyous charms of spring delighted saw
Their beauties doubly glaring in thy lay;
Nothing was spring which Phillips did not draw,
And every image of his Muse was May.

So rose the regal Hyacinthal star,

So shone the verdure of the daisied bed,
So seemed the forest glimmering from a-far;
You saw the real prospect as you read.

Majestic Summer's blooming flow'ry pride,
Next claim'd the honour of his nervous song;
He taught the stream in hollow trills to glide,
And led the glories of the year along.

Pale rugged Winter bending o'er his tread,
His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew;
His eyes, a dusky light congealed and dead,
His robe, a tinge of bright etherial blue.

His train a motley'd sanguine sable cloud,
He limps along the russet dreary Moor,
Whilst rising whirlwinds, blasting keen and loud,
Roll the white surges to the sounding shore.

Nor were his pleasures unimproved by thee;
Pleasures he has, tho' horridly deform'd;
The polished lake, the silver'd hill we see,
Is by thy genius fir'd, preserv'd and warm'd.

The rough October has his pleasures too;
But I'm insensible to every joy:

Farewell the Laurel! now I grasp

the Yew,

And all my little powers in grief employ.

Immortal shadow of my much-lov'd friend! Cloth'd in thy native Virtue meet my soul, When on the fatal bed, my passions bend, And curb my floods of anguish as they roll.

In thee each virtue found a pleasing cell,
Thy mind was honor and thy soul divine;
With thee did every God of Genius dwell,
Thou wast the Helicon of all the Nine.

Fancy, whose various figure-tinctur'd vest
Was ever changing to a different hue;
Her head with varied bays and flowrets drest,
Her eyes two spangles of the Morning dew.

With dancing attitude she swept thy string; And now she soars, and now again descends; And now reclining on the Zephyr's wing, Unto the velvet-vested Mead she bends.

Peace, deckt in all the softness of the dove,
Over thy passions spread her silver plume;
The rosy veil of harmony and love,
Hung on thy soul in one eternal bloom.