A mighty spring works in its root, and cleaves
The sprouting stalk, and shows itself in leaves :
The flower itself is of a golden hue,
The leaves inclining to a darker blue;
The leaves shoot thick about the flower, and
Into a bush, and shade the turf below:
The plant in holy garlands often twines
The altars' posts, and beautifies the shrines;
Its taste is sharp, in vales new-shorn it grows,
Where Mella's stream in watery mazes flows.
Take plenty of its roots, and boil 'em well
In wine, and heap 'em up before the cell.
But if the whole stock fail, and none survive;
To raise new people, and recruit the hive,
I'll here the great experiment declare,
That spread the Arcadian shepherd's name so far.
How bees from blood of slaughtered bulls have fled,
And swarms amidst the red corruption bred.
For where the Egyptians yearly see their bounds Refreshed with floods, and sail about their grounds, Where Persia borders, and the rolling Nile Drives swiftly down the swarthy Indians' soil, Till into seven it multiplies its stream, And fattens Egypt with a fruitful slime: In this last practice all their hope remains, And long experience justifies their pains.
First then a close contracted space of ground, With straitened walls and low-built roof, they found; A narrow shelving light is next assigned.
To all the quarters, one to every wind;
Through these the glancing rays obliquely pierce;
Hither they lead a bull that's young and fierce,
When two years' growth of horn he proudly shows,
And shakes the comely terrors of his brows:
His nose and mouth, the avenues of breath,
They muzzle up, and beat his limbs to death;
With violence to life and stifling pain
He flings and spurns, and tries to snort in vain,
Loud heavy mows fall thick on every side,
Till his bruised bowels burst within the hide;
When dead, they leave him rotting on the ground,
With branches, thyme and cassia, strowed around.
All this is done, when first the western breeze
Becalms the year, and smooths the troubled seas;
Before the chattering swallow builds her nest,
Or fields in spring's embroidery are drest.
Meanwhile the tainted juice ferments within,
And quickens as it works: and now are seen
A wondrous swarm, that o'er the carcass crawls,
Of shapeless, rude, unfinished animals.
No legs at first the insect's weight sustain,
At length it moves its new-made limbs with pain;
Now strikes the air with quivering wings, and tries
To lift its body up, and learns to rise;
Now bending thighs and gilded wings it wears
Full grown, and all the bee at length appears;
From
side the fruitful carcass pours
every
Its swarming brood, as thick as summer showers,
Or flights of arrows from the Parthian bows,
When twanging strings first shoot 'em on the foes.
Thus have I sung the nature of the bee.
While Cæsar, towering to divinity,
The frighted Indians with his thunder awed,
And claimed their homage, and commenced a god ·
I flourished all the while in arts of peace,
Retired and sheltered in inglorious ease;
I who before the songs of shepherds made,
When gay and young my rural lays I played,
And set my Tityrus beneath his shade.
A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY,
CECILIA, whose exalted hymns
With joy and wonder fill the blest,
In choirs of warbling seraphims,
Known and distinguished from the rest,
The success of Alexander's Feast made it fashionable for succeeding poets to try their hand at a musical ode; but they mistook the matter, when they thought it enough to contend with Mr. Dryden.-It was reserved for one or two of our days to give us a true idea of lyric poetry in English.
Attend, harmonious saint, and see
Thy vocal sons of harmony;
Attend, harmonious saint, and hear our prayers;
Enliven all our earthly airs,
And, as thou sing'st thy God, teach us to sing of thee:
Tune every string and every tongue,
Be thou the muse and subject of our song.
Let all Cecilia's praise proclaim,
Employ the echo in her name.
Hark how the flutes and trumpets raise,
At bright Cecilia's name, their lays;
The organ labours in her praise.
Cecilia's name does all our numbers grace,
From every voice the tuneful accents fly,
In soaring trebles now it rises high,
And now it sinks, and dwells upon the base.
Cecilia's name through all the notes we sing,
The work of every skilful tongue,
The sound of every trembling string,
The sound and triumph of our song.
For ever consecrate the day,
To music and Cecilia;
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love;
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre,
The streams stand still, the stones admire;
The listening savages advance,
The wolf and lamb around him trip,
The bears in awkward measures leap,
And tigers mingle in the dance.
The moving woods attended, as he played,
And Rhodope was left without a shade.
Music religious heats inspires,
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
The Almighty listens to a tuneful tongue,
And seems well pleased and courted with a song.
Soft moving sounds and heavenly airs
Give force to every word, and recommend our prayers.
When time itself shall be no more,
And all things in confusion hurled,
Music shall then exert its power,
And sound survive the ruins of the world:
Then saints and angels shall
In one eternal jubilee :
All heaven shall echo with their hymns divine,
And God himself with pleasure see
The whole creation in a chorus join.
Consecrate the place and day,
To music and Cecilia.
Let no rough winds approach, nor dare
Invade the hallowed bounds,
Nor rudely shake the tuneful air,
Nor spoil the fleeting sounds.
Nor mournful sigh nor groan be heard,
But gladness dwell on every tongue;
Whilst all, with voice and strings prepared,
Keep up the loud harmonious song,
And imitate the blest above,
In joy, and harmony, and love.
GREATEST ENGLISH POETS.
To MR. H. S. APRIL 3, 1694.
SINCE, dearest Harry, you will needs request
A short account of all the muse-possest,
1 Henry Sacheverell, whose story is well known.-Yet with all his follies, some respect may seem due to the memory of a man, who had merit in his youth, as appears from a paper of verses under his name, in Dryden's Miscellanies; and who lived in the early friendship of Mr. Addison. 2 The introductory and concluding lines of this poem are a bad imita
That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times,
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes;
Without more preface, writ in formal length,
To speak the undertaker's want of strength,
I'll try to make their several beauties known,
And show their verses' worth, though not my own.
Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine;
Till Chaucer first, the merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and prose.
But age has rusted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscured his wit;
In vain he jests in his unpolished strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amused a barbarous age;
that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued
Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleased at distance all the sights
Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights;
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote,
O'er-run with wit, and lavish of his thought:
His turns too closely on the reader press;
He more had pleased us, had he pleased us less.
One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes
With silent wonder, but new wonders rise.
As in the milky-way a shining white
O'er-flows the heavens with one continued light;
tion of Horace's manner- -Sermoni propiora. In the rest, the poetry is better than the criticism, which is right or wrong, as it chances; being echoed from the common voice.
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