You, with the tragic muse retired,
The wise Euripides inspired;
You taught the sadly-pleasing air
That Athens saved from ruins bare.
You gave the Cean's tears to flow,
And unlocked the springs of woe;
You penned what exiled Naso thought,
And poured the melancholy note.
With Petrarch o'er Vaucluse you strayed,
When death snatched his long-loved maid;
You taught the rocks her loss to mourn,
You strewed with flowers her virgin urn.
And late in Hagley you were seen,
With bloodshot eyes, and sombre mien ;
Hymen his yellow vestment tore,
And Dirge a wreath of cypress wore.
But chief your own the solemn lay
That wept Narcissa young and gay;
Darkness clapped her sable wing,
While you touched the mournful string;
Anguish left the pathless wild,
Grim-faced Melancholy smiled,
Drowsy Midnight ceased to yawn,
The starry host put back the dawn;
Aside their harps e'en seraphs flung
To hear thy sweet Complaint, O Young!
When all nature's hushed asleep,
Nor Love nor Guilt their vigils keep,
Soft you leave your caverned den,
And wander o'er the works of men ;
But when Phosphor brings the dawn
By her dappled coursers drawn,
Again you to the wild retreat,
And the early huntsman meet,
Where, as you pensive pace along,
You catch the distant shepherd's song,
Or brush from herbs the pearly dew,
Or the rising primrose view.
Devotion lends her heaven-plumed wings,
You mount, and nature with you sings.
But when mid-day fervours glow,
To upland airy shades you go,
Where never sunburnt woodman came,
Nor sportsman chased the timid game;
And there beneath an oak reclined,
With drowsy waterfalls behind,
You sink to rest.
Till the tuneful bird of night
From the neighbouring poplar's height
Wake you with her solemn strain,
And teach pleased Echo to complain.
With you roses brighter bloom,
Sweeter every sweet perfume;
Purer every fountain flows,
Stronger every wildling grows.
Let those toil for gold who please,
Or for fame renounce their ease.
What is fame ? an empty bubble.
Gold? a transient shining trouble.
Let them for their country bleed,
What was Sidney's, Raleigh's meed ?
Man's not worth a moment's pain,
Base, ungrateful, fickle, vain.
Then let me, sequestered fair,
To your sybil grot repair;
On yon hanging cliff it stands,
Scooped by nature's salvage hands,
Bosomed in the gloomy shade
Of cypress not with age decayed.
Where the owl still-hooting sits,
Where the bat incessant flits,
There in loftier strains I'll sing
Whence the changing seasons spring;
Tell how storms deform the skies,
Whence the waves subside and rise,
Trace the comet's blazing tail,
Weigh the planets in a scale;
Bend, great God, before thy shrine,
The bournless macrocosm's thine.
CXCIX. SAMUEL FOOTE, 1721-1777.
Shall my words tipt with flattery prepare
A kind exertion of your tenderest care?
Shall I present our author to your sight
All pale and trembling for his fate this night?
Shall I solicit the most powerful arms
To aid his cause the force of beauty's charmsí
Or tell each critic, his approving taste
Must give the sterling stamp, wherever placed?
This might be done-but so to seek applause
Argues a conscious weakness in the cause.
No-let the muse in simple truth appear;
Reason and Nature are the judges here:
If by their strict and self describing laws,
The several characters to-night she draws;
If from the whole a pleasing piece is made,
On the true principles of light and shade;
Struck with the harmony of just design,
Your eyes, your ears, your hearts will all combine
To great applause: but if an erring hand
Gross disproportion marks in motley band,
If the grouped figures false connections show,
And glaring colours without meaning glow ;
Your wounded feelings, turn'd a different way,
Will justly damn the abortion of a play.
CC. LORD CHESTERFIELD, 1694-1773. 1. ON SEEING A FULL-LENGTH PORTRAIT OF BEAU NASH BETWEEN THE BUSTS OF POPE AND NEWTON
The picture placed the busts between
Adds to the thought much strength;
Wisdom and wit are little seen,
But folly's at full length.
The dews of the evening most carefully shun,
They are tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.
COI. WILLIAM WILKIE, 1721—1772.
The night itself, which you would blame
As something wrong in nature's frame,
Is but a curtain to invest
Her weary children when at rest.
CCII. JOSEPH WARTON, 1722-1800.
TO FANCY.
O parent of each lovely muse!
Thy spirit o'er my soul diffuse,
O'er all my artless songs preside,
My footsteps to thy temple guide,
To offer at thy turf-built shrine
In golden cups no costly wine,
No murdered fatling of the flock,
But flowers and honey from the rock.
O nymph, with loosely flowing hair,
With buskin'd leg, and bosom bare,
Thy waist with myrtle-girdle bound,
Thy brow with Indian feathers crowned
Waving in thy snowy hand
An all-commanding magic wand,
Of power to bid fresh gardens grow
'Mid cheerless Lapland's barren snow,
Whose rapid wings thy flight convey
Through air, and over earth and sea,
While the various landscape lies
Conspicuous to thy piercing eyes!
O lover of the desert, hail!
Say in what deep and pathless vale,
Or on what hoary mountain's side,
'Midst falls of water, you reside;
'Midst broken rocks, a rugged scene,
With green and grassy dales between;
'Midst forests dark of aged oak,
Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke,
Where never human heart appeared,
Nor e'er one straw-roofed cot was reared,
Where nature seemed to sit alone,
Majestic on a craggy throne;
Tell me the path, sweet wanderer tell,
To thy unknown sequestered cell,
Where woodbines cluster round the door,
Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor,
And on whose top a hawthorn blows,
Amid whose thickly-woven boughs
Some nightingale still builds her nest,
Each evening warbling thee to rest;
Then lay me by the haunted stream,
Wrapt in some wild poetic dream,
In converse while methinks I rove
With Spenser through a fairy grove;
Till suddenly awaked, I hear
Strange whispered music in my ear,
And my glad soul in bliss is drowned
By the sweetly-soothing sound!
CCIII. CHRISTOPHER SMART, 1722-177′
1. A SIMILE.
Thus when a barber and a collier fight,
The barber beats the luckless collier white;
The dusty collier heaves his ponderous sack,
And, big with vengeance, beats the barber black.
In comes the brick-dust man, with grime o'ersprea
And beats the collier and the barber red;
Black, red, and white, in various clouds are tossed
And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost
2. ON RECOVERING FROM ILLNESS
When Israel's ruler on the royal bed
In anguish and in perturbation lay,
The down reliev'd not his anointed head,
And rest gave place to horror and dismay :
Fast flow'd the tears, high heav'd each gasping sigh,
When God's own prophet thunder'd-Monarch, thou
But, O immortals, what had I to plead,
When death stood o'er me with his threat'ning
When reason left me in the time of need,
And sense was lost in terror or in trance;
My sinking soul was with my blood inflam'd,
And the celestial image sunk, defac'd and maim'd.
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