While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, "it whispers through the trees."
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep";
Then, at the last and only couplet, fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line,

Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense;
Soft is the strain when Zyphr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar ;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so, when soft Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er the unbending corn and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While, at each change, the son of Lybian Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow;
Now sighs steal out and tears begin to flow,
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdued by sound.
4. THE MAN OF ROSS.

All our praises why should lords engross ?
Rise, honest muse, and sing the man of Ross:
Pleas'd Vaga echoes through her winding bounds
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.

Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?
From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?
Not to the skies in useless columns tost,

Or in proud falls magnificently lost,

But clear and artless, pouring through the plain
Health to the sick and solace to the swain.
Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose ?
Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?
'The man of Ross,' each lisping babe replies.

Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread,
The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread:
He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
Where age and want sit smiling at the gate:
Him portion'd maids, apprenticed orphans blest,
The young who labour, and the old who rest.
Is any sick? the Man of Ross relieves,

Prescribes, attends, the med'cine makes and gives.
Is there a variance? Enter but his door,
Balk'd are the courts, and contest is no more.
Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now an useless race.
Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue
What all so wish but want the power to do!
Oh, say, what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines to swell that boundless charity?
Of debts and taxes, wife, and children, clear,
This man possess'd-five hundred pounds a year.
Blush, Grandeur, blush! proud Courts, withdraw your
Ye little stars! hide your diminish'd rays. [blaze!

And what! no monument, inscription, stone!
His race, his form, his name almost unknown?
Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name;
Go, search it there, where to be born and die,
Of rich and poor, makes all the history;
Enough that virtue filled the space between,
Proved by the ends of being to have been.

5. ELEGY ON AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. What beck'ning ghost along the moonlight shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade ?

"Tis she! but why that bleeding bosom gor'd,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it in heaven a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
Why bade ye else, ye powers! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung
blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods:
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen prisoners in the body's cage:

from your

Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres;
Like eastern kings, a lazy state they keep,
And, close confin'd to their own palace, sleep.
From these, perhaps, (ere nature bade her die)
Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow,
And separate from their kindred dregs below;
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.

But thou, false guardian of a charge too good,
Thou mean deserter of thy brother's blood!
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,
These cheeks now fading at the blast of death:
Cold is that breath which warmed the world before,
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if Eternal Justice rules the ball,

Thus shall your wives, and thus your ci.dren fall:
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say,
(While the long funerals blacken all the way)
Lo! these were they, whose souls the Furies steeled,
And cursed with hearts unknowing how to vield.

Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!

So perish all, whose breasts ne'er learned to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.

What can atone, (oh, ever, injured shade!)
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed;
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned.
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe

To midnight dances, and the public show?
What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow the room,
Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground now sacred by thy reliques made.

So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot:

A heap of dust alone remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Poets themselves must fall like those they sung,
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.
E'en he whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the generous tear he pays:
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart :
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The muse forgot and thou beloved no more!

6. ODE ON SAINT CECILIA'S DAY.

Descend, ye Nine! descend and sing:
The breathing instruments inspire,
Wake into voice each silent string,
And sweep the sounding lyre!
In a sadly pleasing strain
Let the warbling lute complain:
Let the loud trumpet sound,
Till the roofs all around
The shrill echoes rebound:

While in more lengthen'd notes and slow,
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.
Hark! the numbers soft and clear
Gently steal upon the ear;

Now louder and yet louder rise,

And fill with spreading sound the skies:
Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,
In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats:
Till by degrees, remote and small,
The strains decay,

And melt away,

In a dying, dying fall.

By music, minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,
Music her soft, assuasive voice applies:

Or, when the soul is press'd with cares,
Exalts her in enlivening airs:

Warriors she fires with animating sounds:
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds:
Melancholy lifts her head,

Morpheus rouses from his bed,
Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes,
Listening Envy drops her snakes:

Intestine war no more our passions wage,
And giddy factions hear away their rage.
But when our country's cause provokes to arms,
How martial music every bosom warms!
So when the first bold vessel dared the seas,

High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain,