Thy cares and comforts, sovereign love,
Vastly outweigh the sand below,

And to a larger audit grow

Than all the stars above.

Thy mighty losses and thy gains

Are their own mutual measures; Only the man that knows thy pains Can reckon up thy pleasures.

Say, Damon, say, how bright the scene,
Damon is half-divinely bless'd,

Leaning his head on his Florella's breast,

Without a jealous thought, or busy care between: Then the sweet passions mix and share: Florella tells thee all her heart,

Nor can thy soul's remotest part

Conceal a thought or wish from the beloved fair.
Say, what a pitch thy pleasures fly,

When friendship all-sincere, grows up to ecstasy,
Nor self contracts the bliss, nor vice pollutes the joy,
While thy dear offspring round thee sit,
Or, sporting innocently at thy feet,

Thy kindest thoughts engage:

Those little images of thee,

What pretty toys of youth they be,
And growing props of age!

But short is earthly bliss! The changing wind
Blows from the sickly south, and brings

Malignant fevers on its sultry wings,

Relentless death sits close behind:

Now gasping infants, and a wife in tears, With piercing groans salute his ears, Through every vein the thrilling torments roll; While sweet and bitter are at strife

In those dear miseries of life,

Those tenderest pieces of his bleeding soul.
The pleasing sense of love awhile

Mix'd with the heartache may the pain beguile,
And make a feeble fight:

Till sorrows, like a gloomy deluge, rise,
Then every smiling passion dies,

And hope alone, with wakeful eyes,

[light.

Darkling and solitary waits, the slow-returning

Here then let my ambition rest,

May I be moderately bless'd
When I the laws of love obey';
Let but my pleasure and my pain
In equal balance ever reign,

Or mount by turns and sink again,

And share just measures of alternate sway.
So Damon lives, and ne'er complains ;
Scarce can we hope diviner scenes

On this dull stage of clay:

The tribes beneath the northern Bear
Submit to darkness half the year,

Since half the year is day.

AN EPIGRAM OF MARTIAL TO CIRINIUS.

"Sic tua, Cirini, promas Epigrammata vulgo
"Ut mecum possis," &c.

INSCRIBED TO MR. JOSIAH HORTE, LORD BISHOP OF KILMORE,1 IN IRELAND.

1

So smooth your numbers, friend, your verse so sweet,

So sharp the jest, and yet the turn so neat,
That with her Martial Rome would place Cirine,
Rome would prefer your sense and thought to mine.
Yet modest you decline the public stage.

To fix your friend alone amidst the applauding age.
So Maro did; the mighty Maro sings

In vast heroic notes, of vast heroic things,

And leaves the ode, to dance upon his Flaccus'

strings.

He scorn'd to daunt the dear Horatian lyre,
Though his brave genius flash'd Pindaric fire,
And at his will could silence all the lyric choir.
So to his Varius he resign'd the praise
Of the proud buskin and the tragic bays,

1 Afterwards Archbishop of Tuam.

When he could thunder with a loftier vein
And sing of gods and heroes in a bolder strain.

A handsome treat, a piece of gold, or so,
And compliments, will every friend bestow;
Rarely a Virgil, a Cirine, we meet,

Who lays his laurels at inferior feet,

And yields the tenderest point of honour, wit.

AN EPIGRAM,

ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, JUST AFTER MR. DRYDEN.

DRYDEN is dead; Dryden alone could sing
The full-grown glories of a future king. . . .
Now Glo'ster dies! . . . . Thus lesser heroes live
By that immortal breath that poets give ;

And scarce revive the muse: But William stands,
Nor asks his honours from the poet's hands.
William shall shine without a Dryden's praise,
His laurels are not grafted on the bays.

TO MRS. SINGER,

AFTERWARDS MRS. ROWE.

ON THE SIGHT OF SOME OF HER DIVINE

POEMS, NEVER PRINTED.

On the fair banks of gentle Thames
I tun'd my harp; nor did celestial themes
Refuse to dance upon my strings:

There beneath the evening sky

I sung my cares asleep, and raised my wishes high
To everlasting things.

Sudden from Albion's western coast
Harmonious notes come gliding by,

The neighb'ring shepherds knew the silver sound; ""Tis Philomela's voice," the neighbouring shepherds cry;

At once my strings all silent lie,

At once my fainting muse was lost,
In the superior sweetness drown'd.
In vain I bid my tuneful powers unite;
My soul retir'd and left my tongue,
I was all ear, and Philomela's song
Was all divine delight.