While Rome could none esteem But virtue's patriot theme, You loved her hills, and led her laureate band; But staid to sing alone To one distinguish'd throne, And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land. No more, in hall or bower, The passions own thy power, Love, only Love, her forceless numbers mean; For thou hast left her shrine, Nor olive more, nor vine, Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. To some divine excess, Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole : What each, what all supply, May court, may charm our eye, Thou! only thou canst raise the meeting soul! Of these let others ask, To aid some mighty task, I only seek to find thy temperate vale: To maids and shepherds round, And all thy sons, O Nature! learn my tale. ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. As once, if not with light regard, Florimel. See Spenser, Leg. 4th. At solemn turney hung on high, The wish of each love darting eye. Lo! to each other nymph in turn applied, Her baffled hand with vain endeavour Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name, To few the god-like gift assigns, And gaze her visions wild, and feel unmix'd her flame, The band, as fairy legends say, Was wove on that creating day, When He, who call'd with thought to birth Yon tented sky, this laughing earth, And drest with springs, and forests tall, And pour'd the main engirting all, And placed her on his sapphire throne, C The dangerous passions kept aloof, Far from the sainted growing woof; Its glooms cmbrown, its springs unlock, An Eden, like his own, lies spread, I view that oak, the fancied glades among, By which, as Milton lay, his evening ear, From many a cloud that dropp'd ethereal dew, Night sphered in heaven its native strains could hear; From Waller's myrtle shades retreating, Of all the sons of soul, was known, Have now o'erturn'd th' inspiring bowers, Or curtain'd close such scenes from every future view, R. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR MDCCXLVI. How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, By fairy hands their knell is rung, TO MERCY. Strophe. O THOU! Who sitt'st a smiling bride, Winn'st from his fatal grasp the spear, And bidest in wreaths of flowers his bloodless sword! Thou who, amidst the deathful field, By godlike chiefs alone beheld, Oft with thy bosom bare art found, Pleading for him, the youth who sinks to ground: wound! :D Antistrophe. When he whom even our joys provoke, O'ertook him on his blasted road, And stopp'd his wheels, and look'd his rage away. That bore him swift to savage deeds, Thy tender melting eyes they own: O maid! for all thy love to Britain shewn, To thee we build a roseate bower, TO LIBERTY. Strophe. WHO shall awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life Shali sing the sword, in myrtles drest, Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing, It leap'd in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound O Goddess! in that feeling hour, When most its sounds would court thy ears, Let not my shell's misguided power E'er draw thy sad, thy mindful tears. |