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STANZAS TO MR. BENTLEY.

A FRAGMENT.

IN silent gaze the tuneful choir among,

Half pleas'd, half blushing, let the Muse admire, While Bentley leads her sister-art along, And bids the pencil answer to the lyre.

See, in their course, each transitory thought,
Fix'd by his touch, a lasting essence take;
Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought,
To local symmetry and life awake!

The tardy rhymes that us'd to linger on,
To censure cold, and negligent of fame,

In swifter measures animated run,

And catch a lustre from his genuine flame.

Ah! could they catch his strength, his easy grace, His quick creation, his unerring line;

The energy of Pope they might efface,

And Dryden's harmony submit to mine.

But not to one in this benighted age
Is that diviner inspiration giv'n,

That burns in Shakspere's or in Milton's page,
The pomp and prodigality of heav'n.

As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems that singly charm the sight,
Together dart their intermingled rays,

And dazzle with a luxury of light.

Enough for me, if to some feeling breast
My lines a secret sympathy impart ;'
And as their pleasing influence flows confest,'
A sigh of soft reflection heaves the heart.'

*

SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER,

WRITTEN IN 1761, AND FOUND IN ONE OF HIS POCKET-BOOKS.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,
He had not the method of making a fortune :
Could love and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd;
No very great wit, he believed in a God.

A Post or a Pension he did not desire,

But left Church and State to Charles Townshend and Squire.

AMATORY LINES.

WITH beauty, with pleasure surrounded, to languish—
To weep without knowing the cause of my anguish ;
To start from short slumbers, and wish for the morning-
To close my dull eyes when I see it returning;

Sighs sudden and frequent, looks ever dejected—

Words that steal from my tongue, by no meaning con

nected!

Ah! say, fellow-swains, how these symptoms befell me? They smile, but reply not-sure Delia will tell me!

EXTRACTS.

PROPERTIUS, LIB. III. ELEG. V. v. 19.

"Me juvat in prima coluisse Helicona juventa, &c."

IMITATED.

LONG as of youth the joyous hours remain,
Me may Castalia's sweet recess detain,
Fast by the umbrageous vale lull'd to repose,
Where Aganippe warbles as it flows;

Or roused by sprightly sounds from out the trance,
I'd in the ring knit hands, and join the Muses' dance.
Give me to send the laughing bowl around,
My soul in Bacchus' pleasing fetters bound;
Let on this head unfading flowers reside,
There bloom the vernal rose's earliest pride;
And when, our flames commission'd to destroy,
Age step 'twixt Love and me, and intercept the joy;
When my changed head these locks no more shall know,
And all its jetty honours turn to snow;

Then let me rightly spell of Nature's ways;

To Providence, to HIм my thoughts I'd raise,
Who taught this vast machine its stedfast laws,
That first, eternal, universal Cause;

Search to what regions yonder star retires,
That monthly waning hides her paly fires,
And whence, anew revived, with silver light
Relumes her crescent orb to cheer the dreary night:
How rising winds the face of ocean sweep,
Where lie the eternal fountains of the deep,
And whence the cloudy magazines maintain
Their wintry war, or pour the autumnal rain ;
How flames perhaps, with dire confusion hurl❜d,
Shall sink this beauteous fabric of the world;
What colours paint the vivid arch of Jove;
What wondrous force the solid earth can move,
When Pindus' self approaching ruin dreads,
Shakes all his pines, and bows his hundred heads;
Why does yon orb, so exquisitely bright,
Obscure his radiance in a short-liv'd night;
Whence the Seven-Sisters' congregated fires,
And what Bootes' lazy waggon tires;

How the rude surge its sandy bounds control;
Who measured out the year, and bade the seasons roll;
If realms beneath those fabled torments know,
Pangs without respite, fires that ever glow,

Earth's monster brood stretch'd on their iron bed,
The hissing terrors round Alecto's head,
Scarce to nine acres Tityus' bulk confined,
The triple dog that scares the shadowy kind,
All angry heaven inflicts, or hell can feel,
The pendent rock, Ixion's whirling wheel,
Famine at feasts, or thirst amid the stream;
Or are our fears the enthusiast's empty dream,
And all the scenes, that hurt the grave's repose,
But pictured horror and poetic woes.

These soft inglorious joys my hours engage;

Be love my youth's pursuit, and science crown my age.

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