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Indifference may repel

armour | The jocund Loves in Hymen's band, With torches ever bright,

The shafts of woe, in such a breast
No joy can ever dwell.

"Tis woven in the world's great plan,

And fix'd by Heaven's decree,
That all the true delights of man
Should spring from sympathy.

Tis nature bids, and whilst the laws
Of nature we retain,
Our self-approving bosom draws
A pleasure from its pain.

Thus grief itself has comforts dear,
The sordid never know;
And ecstasy attends the tear,
When virtue bids it flow.

For when it streams from that pure

source,

No bribes the heart can win, To check, or alter from its course The luxury within.

Peace to the phlegm of sullen elves,

Who, if from labour eased, Extend no care beyond themselves, Unpleasing and unpleased.

Let no low thought suggest the
prayer!

Oh! grant, kind Heaven, to me,
Long as I draw ethereal air,
Sweet Sensibility!

And generous Friendship hand in hand,

With Pity's watery sight.

The gentler Virtues too are join'd
In youth immortal warm,
The soft relations which combined
Give life her every charm.

The Arts come smiling in the close,
And lend celestial fire;

The marble breathes, the canvass
glows,

The Muses sweep the lyre.

"Still may my melting bosom
cleave

To sufferings not my own;
And still the sigh responsive heave,
Where'er is heard a groan.

"So Pity shall take Virtue's part,
Her natural ally,

And fashioning my soften'd heart,
Prepare it for the sky."

This artless vow may Heaven rece

And you, fond maid, approve;
So may your guiding angel give
Whate'er you wish or love.

So may the rosy-finger'd hours
Lead on the various year,
And every joy, which now is yours,
Extend a larger sphere.

Where'er the heavenly nymph is And suns to come, as round they

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wheel,

Your golden moments bless,
With all a tender heart can feel,
Or lively fancy guess.

AN ODE.*

SECUNDUM ARTEM.

I.

SHALL I begin with Ah, or Oh?

Be sad ? Oh yes. Be glad? Ah! no. Light subjects suit not grave Pindaric ode, Which walks in metre down the Strophic road. But let the sober matron wear

Her own mechanic sober air:

Ah me! ill suits, alas! the sprightly jig,
Long robes of ermine, or Sir Cloudesley's wig.
Come, placid Dulness, gently come,
And all my faculties benumb;

Let thought turn exile, while the vacant mind
To trickie words and pretty phrase confined,
Pumping for trim description's art,

To win the ear, neglects the heart.
So shall thy sister Taste's peculiar sons,
Lineal descendants from the Goths and Huns,
Struck with the true and grand sublime
Of rhythm converted into rime,

Court the quaint muse, and con her lessons o'er,
When sleep the sluggish waves by Granta's shore:
There shall each poet share and trim,

Stretch, cramp, or lop the verse's limb, While rebel Wit beholds them with disdain, And Fancy flies aloft, nor heeds their servile chain.

II.

O Fancy, bright aërial maid!

Where have thy vagrant footsteps stray'd! For, ah! I miss thee 'midst thy wonted haunt, Since silent now the enthusiastic chaunt, Which erst like frenzy roll'd along,

Driven by the impetuous tide of song;
Rushing secure where native genius bore,
Not cautious coasting by the shelving shore.
Hail to the sons of modern Rime,
Mechanic dealers in sublime,

Whose lady Muse full wantonly is drest,
In light expression quaint, and tinsel vest,
Where swelling epithets are laid
(Art's ineffectual parade)

* Written in ridicule of the Pindarics of Mason.

LINES WRITTEN DURING A PERIOD OF INSANITY. 27

As varnish on the cheek of harlot light;
The rest thin sown with profit or delight,
But ill compares with ancient song,
Where Genius pour'd its flood along;
Yet such is Art's presumptuous idle claim,
She marshals out the way to modern fame;
From Grecian fable's pompous lore
Description's studied, glittering store,

Smooth, soothing sounds, and sweet alternate rime,
Clinking, like change of bells, in tingle tangle chime.

III.

The lark shall soar in every Ode,

With flowers of light description strew'd;
And sweetly, warbling Philomel, shall flow
Thy soothing sadness in mechanic woe.
Trim epithets shall spread their gloss,
While every cell's o'ergrown with moss:
Here oaks shall rise in chains of ivy bound,

There smouldering stones o'erspread the rugged ground.
Here forests brown, and azure hills,

There babbling fonts, and prattling rills;
Here some gay river floats in crispèd streams,
While the bright sun now gilds his morning beams,
Or sinking on his Thetis' breast,
Drives in description down the west.

Oh let me boast, with pride becoming skill,
I crown the summit of Parnassus' hill:

While Taste and Genius shall dispense,
And sound shall triumph over sense;
O'er the gay mead with curious steps I'll stray,
And, like the bee, steal all the sweets away;
Extract its beauty, and its power,

From every new poetic flower,

And sweets collected may a wreath compose,

To bind the poet's brow, or please the critic's nose.

LINES WRITTEN DURING A PERIOD OF INSANITY,

HATRED and vengeance,-my eternal portion

Scarce can endure delay of execution,

Wait with impatient readiness to seize my

Soul in a moment.

28

LINES WRITTEN DURING A PERIOD OF INSANITY.

Damn'd below Judas; more abhorr'd than he was,

Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice betray'd, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me,
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore, Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.

Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
I'm call'd, if vanquish'd! to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram's.

Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice
Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb, am

Buried above ground.

LINES WRITTEN DURING THE AUTHOR'S SECOND

PERIOD OF INSANITY.

1774.

HEU! quam remotus vescor ab omnibus
Quibus fruebar sub lare patrio,

Quam nescius jucunda quondam
Arva, domum, socios, reliqui,

Et præter omnes te mihi flebilem,
Te chariorem luce vel artubus,
Te vinculo nostram jugali
Deserui tremulam sub ense.

Sed nec ferocem me genuit pater,
Nec vagientem nutriit ubere

Leæna dumoso sub antro,

Fata sed hoc voluere nostra.
Et fluctuosum ceu mare volvitur,
Dum commovebar mille timoribus,
Coactus, in fauces Averni,
Totus atro perii sub amne.

ON OBSERVING SOME NAMES OF LITTLE NOTE
RECORDED IN THE BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA.*

Он, fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot!
In vain recorded in historic page,
They court the notice of a future age:
Those twinkling, tiny lustres of the land
Drop one by one from Fame's neglecting hand;
Lethæan gulfs receive them as they fall,
And dark oblivion soon absorbs them all.

So when a child, as playful children use,
Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news,
The flame extinct, he views the roving fire-
There goes my lady, and there goes the squire,
There goes the parson-O illustrious spark!
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.

* Written in 1780, and sent to the Rev. W. Unwin in a letter dated Sept. 3, in that year,

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