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A POETICAL EPISTLE TO LADY AUSTEN.

For God unfolds, by slow degrees,

The purport of His deep decrees;
Sheds, every hour, a clearer light
In aid of our defective sight;

And spreads, at length, before the soul,
A beautiful and perfect whole,
Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate, in vain.

Say, Anna, had you never known
The beauties of a rose full blown,
Could you, though luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud, descry,
Or guess, with a prophetic power,
The future splendour of the flower?
Just so, the Omnipotent, who turns
The system of a world's concerns,
From mere minutiæ can educe
Events of most important use;
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.

The works of man tend, one and all,

As needs they must, from great to small;

And vanity absorbs at length

The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan
Which this day's incident began?
Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion
For our dim-sighted observation;
It pass'd unnoticed, as the bird
That cleaves the yielding air unheard,
And yet may prove, when understood,
An harbinger of endless good.

Not that I deem, or mean to call
Friendship a blessing cheap or small :

But merely to remark, that ours,

Like some of Nature's sweetest flowers,
Rose from a seed of tiny size,

That seem'd to promise no such prize;
A transient visit intervening,

And made almost without a meaning
(Hardly the effect of inclination,
Much less of pleasing expectation),
Produced a friendship, then begun,
That has cemented us in one;

And placed it in our power to prove,
By long fidelity and love,

That Solomon has wisely spoken;

"A three-fold cord is not soon broken."

TO MRS. KING,

ON HER KIND PRESENT TO THE AUTHOR; A PATCHWORK COUNTERPANE OF HER OWN MAKING.

[August 14, 1790.]

THE Bard, if e'er he feel at all,
Must sure be quicken'd by a call
Both on his heart and head,
To pay with tuneful thanks the care
And kindness of a Lady fair

Who deigns to deck his bed.

A bed like this, in ancient time,
On Ida's barren top sublime

(As Homer's Epic shows),

Composed of sweetest vernal flowers,
Without the aid of sun or showers,
For Jove and Juno rose.

Less beautiful, however gay,

Is that which, in the scorching day,
Receives the weary swain

Who, laying his long scythe aside,
Sleeps on some bank with daisies pied,
'Till roused to toil again.

What labours of the loom I see!
Looms numberless have groan'd for me!
Should every maiden come

To scramble for the patch that bears
The impress of the robe she wears,
The bell would toll for some.

And oh, what havoc would ensue !
This bright display of every hue

All in a moment fled !

As if a storm should strip the bowers
Of all their tendrils, leaves, and flowers-
Each pocketing a shred.

Thanks, then, to every gentle fair
Who will not come to peck me bare
As bird of borrow'd feather;

And thanks to One above them all,
The gentle Fair of Pertenhall,

Who put the whole together.

SONNET,

TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, ESQ.

[April 16, 1792.]

THY Country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,
Hears thee, by cruel men and impious, call'd
Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose the enthrall'd
From exile, public sale, and Slavery's chain.
Friend of the poor, the wrong'd, the fetter-gall'd,
Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain.

Thou hast achieved a part; hast gain'd the ear
Of Britain's senate to thy glorious cause;

Hope smiles, Joy springs, and, though cold Caution pause And weave delay, the better hour is near

That shall remunerate thy toils severe

By peace for Afric, fenced with British laws.

Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love

From all the Just on earth, and all the Blest above.

TO DR. AUSTIN,

OF CECIL STREET, LONDON.

[May 26, 1792.]

AUSTIN! accept a grateful verse from me,
The poet's treasure, no inglorious fee.
Loved by the Muses, thy ingenuous mind
Pleasing requital in my verse may find;

Verse oft has dash'd the scythe of Time aside,
Immortalizing names which else had died:
And O! could I command the glittering wealth
With which sick kings are glad to purchase health!
Yet, if extensive fame, and sure to live,

Were in the power of verse like mine to give,

I would not recompense his art with less,

Who, giving Mary health, heals my distress.

Friend of my friend!* I love thee, though unknown, And boldly call thee, being his, my own.

SONNET,

TO GEORGE ROMNEY, ESQ.

On his picture of me in Crayons, drawn at Eartham, in the 61st year of my age, and in the months of August

and September, 1792.

[October, 1792.]

ROMNEY, expert infallibly to trace

On chart or canvass, not the form alone
And semblance, but, however faintly shown,

The mind's impression too on every face-
With strokes that time ought never to erase

Thou hast so pencil'd mine that, though I own The subject worthless, I have never known The artist shining with superior grace.

* Hayley.

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