What is this absorbs me quite, The world recedes; it disappears! Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! TWO CHORUSES ΤΟ THE TRAGEDY OF BRUTUS. CHORUS OF ATHENIANS. STROPHE 1. YE shades, where sacred truth is sought; In vain your guiltless laurels stood War, horrid war, your thoughtful walks invades, ANTISTROPHE 1. O heaven-born sisters! source of art! Who lead fair virtue's train along, To what new clime, what distant sky, Say, will ye bless the bleak Atlantic shore? STROPHE 11. When Athens sinks by fates unjust, When wild Barbarians spurn her dust; Perhaps ev❜n Britain's utmost shore Shall cease to blush with strangers' gore: See arts her savage sons control, And Athens rising near the pole! Till some new tyrant lifts his purple hand, And civil madness tears them from the laud. ANTISTROPHE II. Ye gods! what justice rules the ball? Fools grant whate'er ambition craves, Still, when the lust of tyrant power succeeds, CHORUS OF YOUTHS AND VIRGINS. SEMICHORUS. O tyrant Love; hast thou possess'd And arts but soften us to feel thy flame. Love, soft intruder, enters here, CHORUS. Love's purer flames the gods approve; Chaste as cold Cynthia's virgin light, SEMICHORUS. Oh, source of every social tie, United wish, and mutual joy! While thousand grateful thoughts arise; What tender passions take their turns, What home-felt raptures move! His heart now melts, now leaps, now burns, With reverence, hope, and love. CHORUS. Hence, guilty joys, distastes, surmises, Hence false tears, deceits, disguises, Dangers, doubts, delays, surprises, Fires that scorch, yet dare not shine. Purest love's unwasting treasure, Constant faith, fair hope, long leisure, Days of ease, and nights of pleasure; Sacred Hymen! these are thine. EPISTLES. ΤΟ ROBERT EARL OF OXFORD AND SUCH were the notes thy once-lov'd poet sung, For him thou oft hast bid the world attend, Fond to forget the statesman in the friend; For Swift and him despis'd the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great; Dextrous the craving, fawning crowd, to quit, And pleas'd to 'scape from flattery to wit. Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear, (A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear) Recal those nights that clos'd thy toilsome days, Still hear thy Parnell in his living lays ; Who, careless now of interest, fame, or fate, Perhaps forgets that Oxford e'er was great; Or deeming meanest what we greatest call, Beholds thee glorious only in thy fall. 1 Sent to the Earl of Oxford with Dr. Parnell's poems, published by our author after the Earl's imprisonment in the Tower and retreat into the country, in the year 1721. |