Then shall thy form the marble grace,
(Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend the face: His house, embosom'd in the grove,
Sacred to social life and social love, Shall glitter o'er the pendant green,
Where Thames reflects the visionary scene: Thither, the silver-sounding lyres
Shall call the smiling Loves, and young There, every Grace and Muse shall throng, Exalt the dance, or animate the song; There, youths and nymphs, in consort gay, Shall hail the rising, close the parting day. With me, alas! those joys are o'er ;
For me, the vernal garlands bloom no more. Adieu!1 fond hope of mutual fire,
The still believing, still-renew'd desire ; Adieu! the heart-expanding bowl,
And all the kind deceivers of the soul!
But why? ah, tell me, ah, too dear!
Steals down my cheek th' involuntary tear? Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,
Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee? Thee, dress'd in fancy's airy beam,
Absent I follow through th' extended dream ;
Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,
And now you burst (ah, cruel!) from my arms; And swiftly shoot along the Mall,
Or softly glide by the canal,
Now shown by Cynthia's silver ray,
And now on rolling waters snatch'd away.
Adieu!' how like Burns's lines, beginning
"But when life's day draws near the gloaming,
Farewell to vacant, careless roaming!" &c.
PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK.
1 LEST you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught, on the wings of truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;
2 Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser, native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay.
3 Sages and chiefs long since had birth Ere Cæsar was, or Newton named;
These raised new empires o'er the earth,
And those, new heavens and systems framed.
4 Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.
YES; thank my stars! as early as I knew
This town, I had the sense to hate it too:
Yet here, as ev'n in Hell, there must be still
One giant-vice, so excellently ill,
That all beside, one pities, not abhors;
As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.
I grant that poetry's a crying sin ;
It brought (no doubt) the Excise and Army in:
Catch'd like the plague, or love, the Lord knows how,
But that the cure is starving, all allow.
Yet like the papist's is the poet's state,
Poor and disarm'd, and hardly worth your hate!
Here a lean bard, whose wit could never give
Himself a dinner, makes an actor live;
The thief condemn'd, in law already dead,
So prompts, and saves a rogue who cannot read.
Thus as the pipes of some carved organ move,
The gilded puppets dance and mount above.
''Donne:' Pope, it is said, imitated Donne's 'Satires' to show that celebrated men before him had been as severe as he. Donne was an extraordinary man-first a Roman Catholic, then a barrister, then a clergyman in the Church of England, and Dean of St Paul's,―a vigorous although rude satirist, a fine Latin versifier, the author of many powerful sermons, and of a strange book defending suicide; altogether a strong, eccentric, extravagant genius.
Heaved by the breath th' inspiring bellows blow:
Th' inspiring bellows lie and pant below.
One sings the fair; but songs no longer move;
No rat is rhymed to death, nor maid to love:
In love's, in nature's spite, the siege they hold,
And scorn the flesh, the devil, and all-but gold.
These write to lords, some mean reward to get,
As needy beggars sing at doors for meat.
Those write because all write, and so have still.
Excuse for writing, and for writing ill.
Wretched indeed! but far more wretched yet
Is he who makes his meal on others' wit:
"Tis changed, no doubt, from what it was before,
His rank digestion makes it wit no more:
Sense, pass'd through him, no longer is the same;
For food digested takes another name.
o'er all those confessors and martyrs,
Who live like Sutton, or who die like Chartres,
Out-cant old Esdras, or out-drink his heir,
Out-usure Jews, or Irishmen out-swear;
Wicked as pages, who in early years
Act sins which Prisca's confessor scarce hears.
Ev'n those I pardon, for whose sinful sake
Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make ;
Of whose strange crimes no canonist can tell
In what commandment's large contents they dwell.
One, one man only breeds my just offence;
Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impudence:
Time, that at last matures a clap to pox,
Whose gentle progress makes a calf an ox,
And brings all natural events to pass,
Hath made him an attorney of an ass.
No young divine, new-beneficed, can be
More pert, more proud, more positive than he.
What farther could I wish the fop to do,
But turn a wit, and scribble verses too;
Pierce the soft labyrinth of a lady's ear
With rhymes of this per cent, and that per year?
Or court a wife, spread out his wily parts,
Like nets or lime-twigs, for rich widows' hearts:
Call himself barrister to every wench,
And woo in language of the Pleas and Bench?
Language, which Boreas might to Auster hold
More rough than forty Germans when they scold.
Curs'd be the wretch, so venal and so vain :
Paltry and proud, as drabs in Drury-lane.
"Tis such a bounty as was never known,
If Peter deigns to help you to your own:
What thanks, what praise, if Peter but supplies,
And what a solemn face, if he denies!
Grave, as when prisoners shake the head and swear
'Twas only suretyship that brought 'em there.
His office keeps your parchment fates entire,
He starves with cold to save them from the fire;
For you he walks the streets through rain or dust,
For not in chariots Peter puts his trust;
For you he sweats and labours at the laws,
Takes God to witness he affects your cause,
And lies to every lord in every thing,
Like a king's favourite, or like a king.
These are the talents that adorn them all,
From wicked Waters ev'n to godly Paul.1
Not more of simony beneath black gowns,
Not more of bastardy in heirs to crowns.
In shillings and in pence at first they deal;
And steal so little, few perceive they steal;
16 "Paul: supposed to be Paul Benfield, Esq., M.P., who was engaged in the jobbing transactions of that period; others fill up the blank in the original copy with Hall-as, for instance, Croly in his excellent edition.
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