The Poetical Works Of Beattie Blair And Falconer With Lives Cri

Chapter 2

Chapter 238,130 wordsPublic domain

Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam, Rectique cultus pectora roborant.

(HORAT.)

Of chance or change, O let not man complain, Else shall he never, never cease to wail; For, from the imperial dome, to where the swain Rears the lone cottage in the silent dale, All feel the assault of Fortune's fickle gale; Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doom'd; Earthquakes have raised to Heaven the humble vale, And gulfs the mountain's mighty mass entomb'd; And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloom'd. [1]

But sure to foreign climes we need not range, Nor search the ancient records of our race, To learn the dire effects of time and change, Which in ourselves, alas! we daily trace. Yet at the darken'd eye, the wither'd face, Or hoary hair, I never will repine: But spare, O Time, whate'er of mental grace, Of candour, love, or sympathy divine, Whate'er of fancy's ray, or friendship's flame is mine.

So I, obsequious to Truth's dread command, Shall here without reluctance change my lay, And smite the Gothic lyre with harsher hand; Now when I leave that flowery path, for aye, Of childhood, where I sported many a day, Warbling and sauntering carelessly along; Where every face was innocent and gay, Each vale romantic, tuneful every tongue, Sweet, wild, and artless all, as Edwin's infant song.

"Perish the lore that deadens young desire," Is the soft tenor of my song no more. Edwin, though loved of Heaven, must not aspire To bliss, which mortals never knew before. On trembling wings let youthful fancy soar, Nor always haunt the sunny realms of joy: But now and then the shades of life explore; Though many a sound and sight of woe annoy, And many a qualm of care his rising hopes destroy.

Vigour from toil, from trouble patience grows: The weakly blossom, warm in summer bower, Some tints of transient beauty may disclose; But soon it withers in the chilling hour. Mark yonder oaks! Superior to the power Of all the warring winds of heaven they rise, And from the stormy promontory tower, And toss their giant arms amid the skies, While each assailing blast increase of strength supplies.

And now the downy cheek and deepen'd voice Gave dignity to Edwin's blooming prime; And walks of wider circuit were his choice, And vales more wild, and mountains more sublime. One evening, as he framed the careless rhyme, It was his chance to wander far abroad, And o'er a lonely eminence to climb, Which heretofore his foot had never trod; A vale appear'd below, a deep retired abode.

Thither he hied, enamour'd of the scene; For rocks on rocks piled, as by magic spell, Here scorch'd with lightning, there with ivy green, Fenced from the north and east this savage dell. Southward a mountain rose with easy swell, Whose long long groves eternal murmur made: And toward the western sun a streamlet fell, Where, through the cliffs, the eye remote survey'd Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold array'd.

Along this narrow valley you might see The wild deer sporting on the meadow ground, And, here and there, a solitary tree, Or mossy stone, or rock with woodbine crown'd. Oft did the cliffs reverberate the sound Of parted fragments tumbling from on high; And from the summit of that craggy mound The perching eagle oft was heard to cry, Or on resounding wings to shoot athwart the sky.

One cultivated spot there was, that spread Its flowery bosom to the noonday beam, Where many a rosebud rears its blushing head, And herbs for food with future plenty teem. Soothed by the lulling sound of grove and stream, Romantic visions swarm on Edwin's soul: He minded not the sun's last trembling gleam, Nor heard from far the twilight curfew toll; When slowly on his ear these moving accents stole.

"Hail, awful scenes, that calm the troubled breast, And woo the weary to profound repose! Can passion's wildest uproar lay to rest, And whisper comfort to the man of woes? Here Innocence may wander, safe from foes, And Contemplation soar on seraph wings. O Solitude! the man who thee foregoes, When lucre lures him, or ambition stings, Shall never know the source whence real grandeur springs.

"Vain man! is grandeur given to gay attire? Then let the butterfly thy pride upbraid: To friends, attendants, armies bought with hire? It is thy weakness that requires their aid: To palaces, with gold and gems inlaid? They fear the thief, and tremble in the storm: To hosts, through carnage who to conquest wade? Behold the victor vanquish'd by the worm! Behold what deeds of woe the locust can perform!

"True dignity is his, whose tranquil mind Virtue has raised above the things below; Who, every hope and fear to Heaven resign'd, Shrinks not, though Fortune aim her deadliest blow." This strain from 'midst the rocks was heard to flow In solemn sounds. Now beam'd the evening star; And from embattled clouds emerging slow, Cynthia came riding on her silver car; And hoary mountain-cliffs shone faintly from afar.

Soon did the solemn voice its theme renew (While Edwin, wrapt in wonder, listening stood): "Ye tools and toys of tyranny, adieu, Scorn'd by the wise, and hated by the good! Ye only can engage the servile brood Of Levity and Lust, who all their days, Ashamed of truth and liberty, have woo'd And hugg'd the chain that, glittering on their gaze, Seems to outshine the pomp of Heaven's empyreal blaze

"Like them, abandon'd to Ambition's sway, I sought for glory in the paths of guile; And fawn'd and smiled, to plunder and betray, Myself betray'd and plunder'd all the while; So gnaw'd the viper the corroding file; But now with pangs of keen remorse, I rue Those years of trouble and debasement vile. Yet why should I this cruel theme pursue? Fly, fly, detested thoughts, for ever from my view!

"The gusts of appetite, the clouds of care, And storms of disappointment, all o'erpast, Henceforth no earthly hope with Heaven shall share This heart, where peace serenely shines at last. And if for me no treasure be amass'd, And if no future age shall hear my name, I lurk the more secure from fortune's blast, And with more leisure feed this pious flame, Whose rapture far transcends the fairest hopes of fame.

"The end and the reward of toil is rest. Be all my prayer for virtue and for peace. Of wealth and fame, of pomp and power possess'd, Who ever felt his weight of woe decrease? Ah! what avails the lore of Rome and Greece, The lay heaven-prompted, and harmonious string, The dust of Ophir, or the Tyrian fleece, All that art, fortune, enterprise can bring, If envy, scorn, remorse, or pride the bosom wring?

"Let Vanity adorn the marble tomb With trophies, rhymes, and 'scutcheons of renown, In the deep dungeon of some Gothic dome, Where night and desolation ever frown. Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down, Where a green, grassy turf is all I crave, With here and there a violet bestrewn, Fast by a brook, or fountain's murmuring wave; And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave.

"And thither let the village swain repair; And, light of heart, the village maiden gay, To deck with flowers her half-dishevell'd hair, And celebrate the merry morn of May. There let the shepherd's pipe the livelong day Fill all the grove with love's bewitching woe; And when mild Evening comes in mantle gray, Let not the blooming band make haste to go; No ghost, nor spell, my long and last abode shall know.

"For though I fly to 'scape from Fortune's rage, And bear the scars of envy, spite, and scorn, Yet with mankind no horrid war I wage, Yet with no impious spleen my breast is torn: For virtue lost, and ruin'd man I mourn. O man! creation's pride, Heaven's darling child, Whom Nature's best, divinest gifts adorn, Why from thy home are truth and joy exiled, And all thy favourite haunts with blood and tears defiled?

"Along yon glittering sky what glory streams! What majesty attends Night's lovely queen! Fair laugh our valleys in the vernal beams; And mountains rise, and oceans roll between, And all conspire to beautify the scene. But, in the mental world, what chaos drear! What forms of mournful, loathsome, furious mien! O when shall that Eternal Morn appear, These dreadful forms to chase, this chaos dark to clear?

"O Thou, at whose creative smile, yon Heaven, In all the pomp of beauty, life, and light, Rose from the abyss; when dark Confusion, driven Down, down the bottomless profound of night, Fled, where he ever flies thy piercing sight! O glance on these sad shades one pitying ray, To blast the fury of oppressive might, Melt the hard heart to love and mercy's sway, And cheer the wandering soul, and light him on the way!"

Silence ensued; and Edwin raised his eyes In tears, for grief lay heavy at his heart. "And is it thus in courtly life," he cries, "That man to man acts a betrayer's part? And dares he thus the gifts of Heaven pervert, Each social instinct, and sublime desire? Hail, Poverty! if honour, wealth, and art, If what the great pursue and learn'd admire, Thus dissipate and quench the soul's ethereal fire!"

He said, and turn'd away; nor did the Sage O'erhear, in silent orisons employ'd. The Youth, his rising sorrow to assuage, Home, as he hied, the evening scene enjoy'd: For now no cloud obscures the starry void; The yellow moonlight sleeps on all the hills; [2] Nor is the mind with startling sounds annoy'd; A soothing murmur the lone region fills Of groves, and dying gales, and melancholy rills.

But he from day to day more anxious grew, The voice still seem'd to vibrate on his ear. Nor durst he hope the hermit's tale untrue; For man he seem'd to love, and Heaven to fear; And none speaks false, where there is none to hear. "Yet, can man's gentle heart become so fell? No more in vain conjecture let me wear My hours away, but seek the hermit's cell; 'Tis he my doubt can clear, perhaps my care dispel."

At early dawn the Youth his journey took, And many a mountain pass'd and valley wide, Then reach'd the wild; where, in a flowery nook, And seated on a mossy stone, he spied An ancient man: his harp lay him beside. A stag sprang from the pasture at his call, And, kneeling, lick'd the wither'd hand that tied A wreath of woodbine round his antlers tall, And hung his lofty neck with many a floweret small.

And now the hoary Sage arose, and saw The wanderer approaching: innocence Smiled on his glowing cheek, but modest awe Depress'd his eye, that fear'd to give offence. "Who art thou, courteous stranger and from whence Why roam thy steps to this sequester'd dale?" "A shepherd boy," the Youth replied, "far hence My habitation; hear my artless tale; Nor levity nor falsehood shall thine ear assail

"Late as I roam'd, intent on Nature's charms, I reach'd at eve this wilderness profound; And, leaning where yon oak expands her arms, Heard these rude cliffs thine awful voice rebound (For in thy speech I recognise the sound). You mourn'd for ruin'd man, and virtue lost, And seem'd to feel of keen remorse the wound, Pondering on former days, by guilt engross'd, Or in the giddy storm of dissipation toss'd.

"But say, in courtly life can craft be learn'd, Where knowledge opens and exalts the soul? Where Fortune lavishes her gifts unearn'd, Can selfishness the liberal heart control? Is glory there achieved by arts as foul As those that felons, fiends, and furies plan? Spiders ensnare, snakes poison, tigers prowl: Love is the godlike attribute of man. O teach a simple youth this mystery to scan.

"Or else the lamentable strain disclaim, And give me back the calm, contented mind. Which, late exulting, view'd in Nature's frame Goodness untainted, wisdom unconfined, Grace, grandeur, and utility combined. Restore those tranquil days that saw me still Well pleased with all, but most with humankind; When Fancy roam'd through Nature's works at will, Uncheck'd by cold distrust, and uninform'd by ill."

"Wouldst thou," the Sage replied, "in peace return To the gay dreams of fond romantic youth, Leave me to hide, in this remote sojourn, From every gentle ear the dreadful truth: For if any desultory strain with ruth And indignation make thine eyes o'erflow, Alas! what comfort could thy anguish soothe, Shouldst thou the extent of human folly know? Be ignorance thy choice, where knowledge leads to woe.

"But let untender thoughts afar be driven; Nor venture to arraign the dread decree. For know, to man, as candidate for heaven, The voice of the Eternal said, Be free: And this divine prerogative to thee Does virtue, happiness, and heaven convey; For virtue is the child of liberty, And happiness of virtue; nor can they Be free to keep the path, who are not free to stray.

"Yet leave me not. I would allay that grief, Which else might thy young virtue overpower; And in thy converse I shall find relief, When the dark shades of melancholy lower; For solitude has many a dreary hour, Even when exempt from grief, remorse, and pain: Come often then; for haply, in my bower, Amusement, knowledge, wisdom thou mayst gain: If I one soul improve, I have not lived in vain."

And now, at length, to Edwin's ardent gaze The Muse of history unrolls her page. But few, alas! the scenes her art displays, To charm his fancy, or his heart engage. Here chiefs their thirst of power in blood assuage, And straight their flames with tenfold fierceness burn Here smiling Virtue prompts the patriot's rage, But, lo! ere long, is left alone to mourn, And languish in the dust, and clasp the abandon'd urn.

"Ambition's slippery verge shall mortals tread, Where ruin's gulf, unfathom'd, yawns beneath? Shall life, shall liberty be lost," he said, "For the vain toys that Pomp and Power bequeath? The car of victory, the plume, the wreath Defend not from the bolt of fate the brave: No note the clarion of Renown can breathe, To alarm the long night of the lonely grave, Or check the headlong haste of time's o'erwhelming wave.

"Ah, what avails it to have traced the springs, That whirl of empire the stupendous wheel? Ah, what have I to do with conquering kings, Hands drench'd in blood, and breasts begirt with steel? To those, whom Nature taught to think and feel, Heroes, alas! are things of small concern; Could History man's secret heart reveal, And what imports a heaven-born mind to learn, Her transcripts to explore what bosom would not yearn?

"This praise, O Cheronean sage [3] is thine! (Why should this praise to thee alone belong?) All else from Nature's moral path decline, Lured by the toys that captivate the throng; To herd in cabinets and camps, among Spoil, carnage, and the cruel pomp of pride; Or chant of heraldry the drowsy song, How tyrant blood o'er many a region wide, Rolls to a thousand thrones its execrable tide.

"Oh, who of man the story will unfold, Ere victory and empire wrought annoy, In that Elysian age misnamed of gold), The age of love, and innocence and joy, When all were great and free! man's sole employ To deck the bosom of his parent earth; Or toward his bower the murmuring stream decoy, To aid the floweret's long-expected birth, And lull the bed of peace, and crown the board of mirth?

"Sweet were your shades, O ye primeval groves! Whose boughs to man his food and shelter lent, Pure in his pleasures, happy in his loves, His eye still smiling, and his heart content. Then, hand in hand, Health, Sport, and Labour went. Nature supplied the wish she taught to crave. None prowl'd for prey, none watch'd to circumvent; To all an equal lot Heaven's bounty gave: No vassal fear'd his lord, no tyrant fear'd his slave.

"But ah! the Historic Muse has never dared To pierce those hallow'd bowers: 'tis Fancy's beam Pour'd on the vision of the enraptured bard, That paints the charms of that delicious theme. Then hail, sweet Fancy's ray! and hail, the dream That weans the weary soul from guilt and woe! Careless what others of my choice may deem, I long, where Love and Fancy lead, to go And meditate on Heaven; enough of Earth I know."

"I cannot blame thy choice," the Sage replied, "For soft and smooth are Fancy's flowery ways. And yet even there, if left without a guide, The young adventurer unsafely plays. Eyes dazzled long by fiction's gaudy rays, In modest truth no light nor beauty find. And who, my child, would trust the meteor blaze, That soon must fail, and leave the wanderer blind, More dark and helpless far, than if it ne'er had shined?

"Fancy enervates, while it soothes the heart; And while it dazzles, wounds the mental sight: To joy each heightening charm it can impart, But wraps the hour of woe in tenfold night. And often, where no real ills affright, Its visionary fiends, an endless train, Assail with equal or superior might, And through the throbbing heart, and dizzy brain, And shivering nerves, shoot stings of more than mortal pain.

"And yet, alas! the real ills of life Claim the full vigour of a mind prepared, Prepared for patient, long, laborious strife, Its guide experience, and truth its guard. We fare on earth as other men have fared. Were they successful? Let us not despair, Was disappointment oft their sole reward? Yet shall their tale instruct, if it declare How they have borne the load ourselves are doom'd to bear.

"What charms the Historic Muse adorn, from spoils, And blood, and tyrants, when she wings her flight, To hail the patriot prince, whose pious toils, Sacred to science, liberty, and right, And peace, through every age divinely bright Shall shine the boast and wonder of mankind! Sees yonder sun, from his meridian height, A lovelier scene than virtue thus enshrined In power, and man with man for mutual aid combined?

"Hail, sacred Polity, by Freedom rear'd! Hail, sacred Freedom, when by law restrain'd! Without you, what were man? A grovelling herd, In darkness, wretchedness, and want enchain'd. Sublimed by you, the Greek and Roman reign'd In arts unrivall'd! O, to latest days, In Albion may your influence unprofaned To godlike worth the generous bosom raise, And prompt the sage's lore, and fire the poet's lays!

"But now let other themes our care engage. For, lo, with modest yet majestic grace, To curb Imagination's lawless rage, And from within the cherish'd heart to brace, Philosophy appears! The gloomy race By Indolence and moping Fancy bred, Fear, Discontent, Solicitude, give place; And Hope and Courage brighten in their stead, While on the kindling soul her vital beams are shed!

"Then waken from long lethargy to life [4] The seeds of happiness, and powers of thought; Then jarring appetites forego their strife, A strife by ignorance to madness wrought. Pleasure by savage man is dearly bought With fell revenge; lust that defies control, With gluttony and death. The mind untaught Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; As Phoebus to the world, is science to the soul.

"And Reason now through number, time, and space, Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, Whose long progression leads to Deity. Can mortal strength presume to soar so high? Can mortal sight, so oft bedimm'd with tears, Such glory bear?--for, lo! the shadows fly From Nature's face; confusion disappears, And order charms the eye, and harmony the ears!

"In the deep windings of the grove, no more The hag obscene and grisly phantom dwell; Nor in the fall of mountain-stream, or roar Of winds, is heard the angry spirit's yell; No wizard mutters the tremendous spell, Nor sinks convulsive in prophetic swoon; Nor bids the noise of drums and trumpets swell, To ease of fancied pangs the labouring moon, Or chase the shade that blots the blazing orb of noon.

"Many a long lingering year, in lonely isle, Stunn'd with the eternal turbulence of waves, Lo! with dim eyes, that never learn'd to smile, And trembling hands, the famish'd native craves Of Heaven his wretched fare; shivering in caves, Or scorch'd on rocks, he pines from day to day; But Science gives the word; and, lo! he braves The surge and tempest, lighted by her ray, And to a happier land wafts merrily away!

"And even where Nature loads the teeming plain With the full pomp of vegetable store, Her bounty, unimproved, is deadly bane: Dark woods and rankling wilds, from shore to shore, Stretch their enormous gloom; which to explore [5] Even Fancy trembles, in her sprightliest mood: For there each eyeball gleams with lust of gore, Nestles each murderous and each monstrous brood, Plague lurks in every shade, and steams from every flood.

"'Twas from Philosophy man learn'd to tame The soil, by plenty to intemperance fed. Lo! from the echoing axe and thundering flame, Poison and plague and yelling rage are fled. The waters, bursting from their slimy bed, Bring health and melody to every vale: And, from the breezy main, and mountain's head, Ceres and Flora, to the sunny dale, To fan their glowing charms, invite the fluttering gale.

"What dire necessities on every hand Our art, our strength, our fortitude require! Of foes intestine what a numerous band Against this little throb of life conspire! Yet Science can elude their fatal ire A while, and turn aside Death's levell'd dart, Soothe the sharp pang, allay the fever's fire, And brace the nerves once more, and cheer the heart, And yet a few soft nights and balmy days impart.

"Nor less to regulate man's moral frame Science exerts her all-composing sway. Flutters thy breast with fear, or pants for fame, Or pines, to indolence and spleen a prey, Or avarice, a fiend more fierce than they? Flee to the shade of Academus' grove; Where cares molest not, discord melts away In harmony, and the pure passions prove How sweet the words of Truth, breathed from the lips of Love.

"What cannot Art and Industry perform, When Science plans the progress of their toil? They smile at penury, disease, and storm; And oceans from their mighty mounds recoil. When tyrants scourge, or demagogues embroil A land, or when the rabble's headlong rage Order transforms to anarchy and spoil, Deep-versed in man the philosophic sage Prepares with lenient hand their frenzy to assuage.

"'Tis he alone, whose comprehensive mind, From situation, temper, soil, and clime Explored, a nation's various powers can bind, And various orders in one Form sublime Of policy, that 'midst the wrecks of time, Secure shall lift its head on high, nor fear The assault of foreign or domestic crime, While public faith, and public love sincere, And industry and law, maintain their sway severe."

Enraptured by the hermit's strain, the youth Proceeds the path of Science to explore. And now, expanded to the beams of truth, New energies, and charms unknown before, His mind discloses: Fancy now no more Wantons on fickle pinion through the skies; But, fix'd in aim, and conscious of her power, Aloft from cause to cause exults to rise, Creation's blended stores arranging as she flies.

Nor love of novelty alone inspires, Their laws and nice dependencies to scan; For, mindful of the aids that life requires, And of the services man owes to man, He meditates new arts on Nature's plan; The cold desponding breast of sloth to warm, The flame of industry and genius fan, And emulation's noble rage alarm, And the long hours of toil and solitude to charm.

But she, who set on fire his infant heart, And all his dreams, and all his wanderings shared And bless'd, the Muse, and her celestial art, Still claim the enthusiast's fond and first regard. From Nature's beauties, variously compared And variously combined, he learns to frame Those forms of bright perfection, [6] which the bard, While boundless hopes and boundless views inflame, Enamour'd, consecrates to never-dying fame.

Of late, with cumbersome, though pompous show, Edwin would oft his flowery rhyme deface, Through ardour to adorn; but Nature now To his experienced eye a modest grace Presents, where ornament the second place Holds, to intrinsic worth and just design Subservient still. Simplicity apace Tempers his rage: he owns her charm divine, And clears the ambiguous phrase, and lops the unwieldy line.

Fain would I sing (much yet unsung remains) What sweet delirium o'er his bosom stole, When the great shepherd of the Mantuan plains [7] His deep majestic melody 'gan roll: Fain would I sing what transport storm'd his soul, How the red current throbb'd his veins along, When, like Pelides, bold beyond control, Without art graceful, without effort strong, Homer raised high to heaven the loud, the impetuous song.

And how his lyre, though rude her first essays, Now skill'd to soothe, to triumph, to complain, Warbling at will through each harmonious maze, Was taught to modulate the artful strain, I fain would sing:--But ah! I strive in vain. Sighs from a breaking heart my voice confound. With trembling step, to join yon weeping train, I haste, where gleams funereal glare around, And, mix'd with shrieks of woe, the knells of death resound.

Adieu, ye lays that Fancy's flowers adorn, The soft amusement of the vacant mind! He sleeps in dust, and all the Muses mourn, He, whom each virtue fired, each grace refined, Friend, teacher, pattern, darling of mankind! He sleeps in dust. [8] Ah, how shall I pursue My theme? To heart-consuming grief resign'd, Here on his recent grave I fix my view, And pour my bitter tears. Ye flowery lays, adieu!

Art thou, my GREGORY, for ever fled? And am I left to unavailing woe? When fortune's storms assail this weary head, Where cares long since have shed untimely snow, Ah, now for comfort whither shall I go? No more thy soothing voice my anguish cheers: Thy placid eyes with smiles no longer glow, My hopes to cherish, and allay my fears. 'Tis meet that I should mourn: flow forth afresh, my tears.

[Footnote 1: See Plato's 'Timæus.']

[Footnote 2: 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.' (Shakspeare.)]

[Footnote 3: 'Cheronean sage:' Plutarch.]

[Footnote 4: The influence of the philosophic spirit, in humanizing the mind, and preparing it for intellectual exertion and delicate pleasure;--in exploring, by the help of geometry, the system of the universe;--in banishing superstition; in promoting navigation, agriculture, medicine, and moral and political science.]

[Footnote 5: 'To explore:' this, from Thomson, who says in his 'Summer'--

'Which even imagination fears to tread.']

[Footnote 6: General ideas of excellence, the immediate archetypes of sublime imitation, both in painting and in poetry. See Aristotle's 'Poetics,' and the 'Discourses' of Sir Joshua Reynolds.]

[Footnote 7: 'Great shepherd of the Mantuan plains:' Virgil.]

[Footnote 8: This excellent person died suddenly on the 10th of February 1773. The conclusion of the poem was written a few days after.]

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

ODE TO HOPE.

I. 1.

O thou, who gladd'st the pensive soul, More than Aurora's smile the swain forlorn, Left all night long to mourn Where desolation frowns, and tempests howl, And shrieks of woe, as intermits the storm, Far o'er the monstrous wilderness resound, And 'cross the gloom darts many a shapeless form, And many a fire-eyed visage glares around! O come, and be once more my guest: Come, for thou oft thy suppliant's vow hast heard, And oft with smiles indulgent cheer'd And soothed him into rest.

I. 2.

Smit by thy rapture-beaming eye Deep flashing through the midnight of their mind, The sable bands combined, Where Fear's black banner bloats the troubled sky, Appall'd retire. Suspicion hides her head, Nor dares the obliquely gleaming eyeball raise; Despair, with gorgon-figured veil o'erspread, Speeds to dark Phlegethon's detested maze. Lo! startled at the heavenly ray, With speed unwonted Indolence upsprings, And, heaving, lifts her leaden wings, And sullen glides away:

I. 3.

Ten thousand forms, by pining Fancy view'd, Dissolve.--Above the sparkling flood, When Phoebus rears his awful brow, From lengthening lawn and valley low The troops of fen-born mists retire. Along the plain The joyous swain Eyes the gay villages again, And gold-illumined spire; While on the billowy ether borne Floats the loose lay's jovial measure; And light along the fairy Pleasure, Her green robes glittering to the morn, Wantons on silken wing. And goblins all To the damp dungeon shrink, or hoary hall, Or westward, with impetuous flight, Shoot to the desert realms of their congenial night.

II. 1.

When first on childhood's eager gaze Life's varied landscape, stretch'd immense around, Starts out of night profound, Thy voice incites to tempt the untrodden maze. Fond he surveys thy mild maternal face, His bashful eye still kindling as he views, And, while thy lenient arm supports his pace, With beating heart the upland path pursues: The path that leads, where, hung sublime, And seen afar, youth's gallant trophies, bright In Fancy's rainbow ray, invite His wingy nerves to climb.

II. 2.

Pursue thy pleasurable way, Safe in the guidance of thy heavenly guard, While melting airs are heard, And soft-eyed cherub-forms around thee play: Simplicity, in careless flowers array'd, Prattling amusive in his accent meek; And Modesty, half turning as afraid, The smile just dimpling on his glowing cheek! Content and Leisure, hand in hand With Innocence and Peace, advance and sing; And Mirth, in many a mazy ring, Frisks o'er the flowery land.

II. 3.

Frail man, how various is thy lot below! To-day though gales propitious blow, And Peace soft gliding down the sky Lead Love along and Harmony, To-morrow the gay scene deforms! Then all around The Thunder's sound Rolls rattling on through Heaven's profound, And down rush all the storms. Ye days that balmy influence shed, When sweet childhood, ever sprightly, In paths of pleasure sported lightly, Whither, ah! whither are ye fled? Ye cherub train, that brought him on his way, O leave him not 'midst tumult and dismay; For now youth's eminence he gains; But what a weary length of lingering toil remains!

III. 1.

They shrink, they vanish into air, Now slander taints with pestilence the gale; And mingling cries assail, The wail of Woe, and groan of grim Despair, Lo! wizard Envy from his serpent eye Darts quick destruction in each baleful glance; Pride smiling stern, and yellow Jealousy, Frowning Disdain, and haggard Hate advance. Behold, amidst the dire array, Pale wither'd Care his giant stature rears, And, lo! his iron hand prepares To grasp its feeble prey.

III. 2.

Who now will guard bewilder'd youth Safe from the fierce assault of hostile rage? Such war can Virtue wage, Virtue, that bears the sacred shield of Truth? Alas! full oft on Guilt's victorious car The spoils of Virtue are in triumph borne; While the fair captive, mark'd with many a scar, In lone obscurity, oppress'd, forlorn, Resigns to tears her angel form. Ill-fated youth, then whither wilt thou fly? No friend, no shelter now is nigh, And onward rolls the storm.

III. 3.

But whence the sudden beam that shoots along? Why shrink aghast the hostile throng? Lo! from amidst affliction's night Hope bursts all radiant on the sight: Her words the troubled bosom soothe. "Why thus dismay'd? Though foes invade, Hope ne'er is wanting to their aid Who tread the path of truth. 'Tis I, who smoothe the rugged way, I, who close the eyes of Sorrow, And with glad visions of to-morrow Repair the weary soul's decay. When Death's cold touch thrills to the freezing heart, Dreams of Heaven's opening glories I impart, Till the freed spirit springs on high In rapture too severe for weak mortality."

ODE TO PEACE.

I. 1.

Peace, heaven-descended maid! whose powerful voice From ancient darkness call'd the morn, Of jarring elements composed the noise; When Chaos, from his old dominion torn, With all his bellowing throng, Far, far was hurl'd the void abyss along; And all the bright angelic choir To loftiest raptures tune the heavenly lyre, Pour'd in loud symphony the impetuous strain; And every fiery orb and planet sung, And wide through night's dark desolate domain Rebounding long and deep the lays triumphant rung.

I. 2.

Oh, whither art thou fled, Saturnian reign? Roll round again, majestic Years! To break fell Tyranny's corroding chain, From Woe's wan cheek to wipe the bitter tears, Ye Years, again roll round! Hark, from afar what loud tumultuous sound, While echoes sweep the winding vales, Swells full along the plains, and loads the gales! Murder deep-roused, with the wild whirlwind's haste And roar of tempest, from her cavern springs; Her tangled serpents girds around her waist, Smiles ghastly stern, and shakes her gore-distilling wings.

I. 3.

Fierce up the yielding skies The shouts redoubling rise: Earth shudders at the dreadful sound, And all is listening, trembling round. Torrents, that from yon promontory's head Dash'd furious down in desperate cascade, Heard from afar amid the' lonely night, That oft have led the wanderer right, Are silent at the noise. The mighty ocean's more majestic voice, Drown'd in superior din, is heard no more; The surge in silence sweeps along the foamy shore.

II. 1.

The bloody banner streaming in the air, Seen on yon sky-mix'd mountain's brow, The mingling multitudes, the madding car, Pouring impetuous on the plain below, War's dreadful lord proclaim. Bursts out by frequent fits the expansive flame. Whirl'd in tempestuous eddies flies The surging smoke o'er all the darken'd skies. The cheerful face of heaven no more is seen, Fades the morn's vivid blush to deadly pale: The bat flits transient o'er the dusky green, Night's shrieking birds along the sullen twilight sail.

II. 2.

Involved in fire-streak'd gloom the car comes on. The mangled steeds grim Terror guides. His forehead writhed to a relentless frown, Aloft the angry Power of Battles rides: Grasp'd in his mighty hand A mace tremendous desolates the land; Thunders the turret down the steep, The mountain shrinks before its wasteful sweep; Chill horror the dissolving limbs invades, Smit by the blasting lightning of his eyes; A bloated paleness beauty's bloom o'erspreads, Fades every flowery field, and every verdure dies.

II. 3.

How startled Frenzy stares, Bristling her ragged hairs! Revenge the gory fragment gnaws; See, with her griping vulture-claws Imprinted deep, she rends the opening wound! Hatred her torch blue-streaming tosses round: The shrieks of agony and clang of arms Re-echo to the fierce alarms Her trump terrific blows. Disparting from behind, the clouds disclose Of kingly gesture a gigantic form, That with his scourge sublime directs the whirling storm.

III. 1.

Ambition, outside fair! within more foul Than fellest fiend from Tartarus sprung, In caverns hatch'd, where the fierce torrents roll Of Phlegethon, the burning banks along, Yon naked waste survey: Where late was heard the flute's mellifluous lay; Where late the rosy-bosom'd Hours In loose array danced lightly o'er the flowers; Where late the shepherd told his tender tale; And, waked by the soft-murmuring breeze of morn, The voice of cheerful labour fill'd the dale; And dove-eyed Plenty smiled, and waved her liberal horn.

III. 2.

Yon ruins sable from the wasting flame But mark the once resplendent dome; The frequent corse obstructs the sullen stream, And ghosts glare horrid from the sylvan gloom. How sadly silent all! Save where outstretch'd beneath yon hanging wall Pale Famine moans with feeble breath, And Torture yells, and grinds her bloody teeth-- Though vain the muse, and every melting lay, To touch thy heart, unconscious of remorse! Know, monster, know, thy hour is on the way, I see, I see the Years begin their mighty course.

III. 3.

What scenes of glory rise Before my dazzled eyes! Young Zephyrs wave their wanton wings, And melody celestial rings: Along the lilied lawn the nymphs advance, Plush'd with love's bloom, and range the sprightly dance: The gladsome shepherds on the mountain-side, Array'd in all their rural pride, Exalt the festive note, Inviting Echo from her inmost grot-- But ah! the landscape glows with fainter light, It darkens, swims, and flies for ever from my sight.

IV. 1.

Illusions vain! Can sacred Peace reside, Where sordid gold the breast alarms, Where cruelty inflames the eye of Pride, And Grandeur wantons in soft Pleasure's arms? Ambition! these are thine; These from the soul erase the form divine; These quench the animating fire That warms the bosom with sublime desire. Thence the relentless heart forgets to feel, Hate rides tremendous on the o'erwhelming brow, And midnight Rancour grasps the cruel steel, Blaze the funereal flames, and sound the shrieks of Woe.

IV. 2.

From Albion fled, thy once beloved retreat, What region brightens in thy smile, Creative Peace, and underneath thy feet Sees sullen flowers adorn the rugged soil? In bleak Siberia blows, Waked by thy genial breath, the balmy rose? Waved over by thy magic wand, Does life inform fell Libya's burning sand? Or does some isle thy parting flight detain, Where roves the Indian through primeval shades, Haunts the pure pleasures of the woodland reign, And led by Reason's ray the path of Nature treads?

IV. 3.

On Cuba's utmost steep, [1] Far leaning o'er the deep, The Goddess' pensive form was seen. Her robe of Nature's varied green Waved on the gale; grief dimm'd her radiant eyes, Her swelling bosom heaved with boding sighs: She eyed the main; where, gaining on the view. Emerging from the ethereal blue, 'Midst the dread pomp of war Gleam'd the Iberian streamer from afar. She saw; and, on refulgent pinions borne, Slow wing'd her way sublime, and mingled with the morn.

[Footnote 1: This alludes to the discovery of America by the Spaniards under Columbus. These ravagers are said to have made their first descent on the islands in the Gulf of Florida, of which Cuba is one.]

ODE ON LORD HAY'S BIRTHDAY.

A muse, unskill'd in venal praise, Unstain'd with flattery's art; Who loves simplicity of lays Breathed ardent from the heart; While gratitude and joy inspire, Resumes the long unpractised lyre, To hail, O HAY, thy natal morn: No gaudy wreath of flowers she weaves, But twines with oak the laurel leaves, Thy cradle to adorn.

For not on beds of gaudy flowers Thine ancestors reclined, Where sloth dissolves, and spleen devours All energy of mind. To hurl the dart, to ride the car, To stem the deluges of war, And snatch from fate a sinking land; Trample the invader's lofty crest, And from his grasp the dagger wrest, And desolating brand:

'Twas this that raised th' illustrious line To match the first in fame! A thousand years have seen it shine With unabated flame; Have seen thy mighty sires appear Foremost in glory's high career, The pride and pattern of the brave. Yet pure from lust of blood their fire, And from ambition's wild desire, They triumph'd but to save.

The Muse with joy attends their way The vale of peace along: There to its lord the village gay Renews the grateful song. Yon castle's glittering towers contain No pit of woe, nor clanking chain, Nor to the suppliant's wail resound: The open doors the needy bless, The unfriended hail their calm recess, And gladness smiles around.

There to the sympathetic heart Life's best delights belong, To mitigate the mourner's smart, To guard the weak from wrong. Ye sons of luxury be wise: Know happiness for ever flies The cold and solitary breast; Then let the social instinct glow, And learn to feel another's woe, And in his joy be blest.

O yet, ere Pleasure plant her snare For unsuspecting youth; Ere Flattery her song prepare To check the voice of Truth; O may his country's guardian power Attend the slumbering infant's bower, And bright inspiring dreams impart; To rouse the hereditary fire, To kindle each sublime desire, Exalt and warm the heart.

Swift to reward a parent's fears, A parent's hopes to crown, Roll on in peace, ye blooming years, That rear him to renown; When in his finish'd form and face Admiring multitudes shall trace Each patrimonial charm combined, The courteous yet majestic mien, The liberal smile, the look serene, The great and gentle mind.

Yet, though thou draw a nation's eyes, And win a nation's love, Let not thy towering mind despise The village and the grove. No slander there shall wound thy fame, No ruffian take his deadly aim, No rival weave the secret snare: For innocence with angel smile, Simplicity that knows no guile, And Love and Peace are there.

When winds the mountain oak assail, And lay its glories waste, Content may slumber in the vale, Unconscious of the blast. Through scenes of tumult while we roam, The heart, alas! is ne'er at home, It hopes in time to roam no more; The mariner, not vainly brave, Combats the storm and rides the wave, To rest at last on shore.

Ye proud, ye selfish, ye severe, How vain your mask of state! The good alone have joy sincere; The good alone are great: Great, when, amid the vale of peace. They bid the plaint of sorrow cease, And hear the voice of artless praise; As when along the trophied plain Sublime they lead the victor train, While shouting nations gaze.

THE JUDGMENT OP PARIS.

Far in the depth of Ida's inmost grove, A scene for love and solitude design'd; Where flowery woodbines wild, by Nature wove, Form'd the lone bower, the royal swain reclined.

All up the craggy cliffs, that tower'd to heaven, Green waved the murmuring pines on every side; Save where, fair opening to the beam of even, A dale sloped gradual to the valley wide.

Echo'd the vale with many a cheerful note; The lowing of the herds resounding long, The shrilling pipe, and mellow horn remote, And social clamours of the festive throng.

For now, low hovering o'er the western main, Where amber clouds begirt his dazzling throne, The Sun with ruddier verdure deck'd the plain; And lakes and streams and spires triumphal shone.

And many a band of ardent youths were seen; Some into rapture fired by glory's charms, Or hurl'd the thundering car along the green, Or march'd embattled on in glittering arms.

Others more mild, in happy leisure gay, The darkening forest's lonely gloom explore, Or by Scamander's flowery margin stray, Or the blue Hellespont's resounding shore.

But chief the eye to Ilion's glories turn'd, That gleam'd along the extended champaign far, And bulwarks in terrific pomp adorn'd, Where Peace sat smiling at the frowns of War.

Rich in the spoils of many a subject clime, In pride luxurious blazed the imperial dome; Tower'd 'mid the encircling grove the fane sublime, And dread memorials mark'd the hero's tomb

Who from the black and bloody cavern led The savage stern, and soothed his boisterous breast; Who spoke, and Science rear'd her radiant head, And brighten'd o'er the long benighted waste:

Or, greatly daring in his country's cause, Whose heaven-taught soul the awful plan design'd, Whence Power stood trembling at the voice of laws; Whence soar'd on Freedom's wing the ethereal mind.

But not the pomp that royalty displays, Nor all the imperial pride of lofty Troy, Nor Virtue's triumph of immortal praise Could rouse the langour of the lingering boy.

Abandon'd all to soft Enone's charms, He to oblivion doom'd the listless day; Inglorious lull'd in Love's dissolving arms, While flutes lascivious breathed the enfeebling lay.

To trim the ringlets of his scented hair: To aim, insidious, Love's bewitching glance; Or cull fresh garlands for the gaudy fair, Or wanton loose in the voluptuous dance:

These were his arts; these won Enone's love, Nor sought his fetter'd soul a nobler aim. Ah, why should beauty's smile those arts approve Which taint with infamy the lover's flame?

Now laid at large beside a murmuring spring, Melting he listen'd to the vernal song, And Echo, listening, waved her airy wing, While the deep winding dales the lays prolong;

When, slowly floating down the azure skies, A crimson cloud flash'd on his startled sight, Whose skirts gay-sparkling with unnumber'd dyes Launch'd the long billowy trails of flickery light.

That instant, hush'd was all the vocal grove, Hush'd was the gale, and every ruder sound; And strains aerial, warbling far above, Rung in the ear a magic peal profound.

Near and more near the swimming radiance roll'd; Along the mountains stream the lingering fires; Sublime the groves of Ida blaze with gold, And all the Heaven resounds with louder lyres.

The trumpet breathed a note: and all in air, The glories vanish'd from the dazzled eye; And three ethereal forms, divinely fair, Down the steep glade were seen advancing nigh.

The flowering glade fell level where they moved; O'erarching high the clustering roses hung; And gales from heaven on balmy pinion roved, And hill and dale with gratulation rung.

The FIRST with slow and stately step drew near, Fix'd was her lofty eye, erect her mien: Sublime in grace, in majesty severe, She look'd and moved a goddess and a queen.

Her robe along the gale profusely stream'd, Light lean'd the sceptre on her bending arm; And round her brow a starry circlet gleam'd, Heightening the pride of each commanding charm.

Milder the NEXT came on with artless grace, And on a javelin's quivering length reclined: To exalt her mien she bade no splendour blaze, Nor pomp of vesture fluctuate on the wind.

Serene, though awful, on her brow the light Of heavenly wisdom shone; nor roved her eyes. Save to the shadowy cliffs majestic height, Or the blue concave of the involving skies.

Keen were her eyes to search the inmost soul: Yet virtue triumph'd in their beams benign, And impious Pride oft felt their dread control, When in fierce lightning flash'd the wrath divine. [1]

With awe and wonder gazed the adoring swain; His kindling cheeks great Virtue's power confess'd; But soon 'twas o'er; for Virtue prompts in vain, When Pleasure's influence numbs the nerveless breast.

And now advanced the QUEEN of melting JOY, Smiling supreme in unresisted charms: Ah, then, what transports fired the trembling boy! How throbb'd his sickening frame with fierce alarms!

Her eyes in liquid light luxurious swim, And languish with unutterable love. Heaven's warm bloom glows along each brightening limb, Where fluttering bland the veil's thin mantlings rove.

Quick, blushing as abash'd, she half withdrew: One hand a bough of flowering myrtle waved. One graceful spread, where, scarce conceal'd from view, Soft through the parting robe her bosom heaved.

"Offspring of Jove supreme! beloved of Heaven! Attend." Thus spoke the Empress of the Skies. "For know, to thee, high-fated prince, 'tis given Through the bright realms of Fame sublime to rise,

Beyond man's boldest hope; if nor the wiles Of Pallas triumph o'er the ennobling thought; Nor Pleasure lure with artificial smiles To quaff the poison of her luscious draught.

When Juno's charms the prize of beauty claim, Shall aught on earth, shall aught in heaven contend? Whom Juno calls to high triumphant fame, Shall he to meaner sway inglorious bend?

Yet lingering comfortless in lonesome wild, Where Echo sleeps 'mid cavern'd vales profound, The pride of Troy, Dominion's darling child, Pines while the slow hour stalks in sullen round.

Hear thou, of Heaven unconscious! From the blaze Of glory, stream'd from Jove's eternal throne, Thy soul, O mortal, caught the inspiring rays That to a god exalt Earth's raptured son.

Hence the bold wish, on boundless pinion borne, That fires, alarms, impels the maddening soul; The hero's eye, hence, kindling into scorn, Blasts the proud menace, and defies control.

But, unimproved, Heaven's noblest boons are vain, No sun with plenty crowns the uncultured vale: Where green lakes languish on the silent plain, Death rides the billows of the western gale.

Deep in yon mountain's womb, where the dark cave Howls to the torrent's everlasting roar, Does the rich gem its flashy radiance wave? Or flames with steady ray the imperial ore?

Toil deck'd with glittering domes yon champaign wide, And wakes yon grove-embosom'd lawns to joy, And rends the rough ore from the mountain's side, Spangling with starry pomp the thrones of Troy.

Fly these soft scenes. Even now, with playful art, Love wreathes the flowery ways with fatal snare; And nurse the ethereal fire that warms thy heart, That fire ethereal lives but by thy care.

Lo! hovering near on dark and dampy wing, Sloth with stern patience waits the hour assign'd, From her chill plume the deadly dews to fling, That quench Heaven's beam, and freeze the cheerless mind.

Vain, then, the enlivening sound of Fame's alarms, For Hope's exulting impulse prompts no more: Vain even the joys that lure to Pleasure's arms, The throb of transport is for ever o'er.

O who shall then to Fancy's darkening eyes Recall the Elysian dreams of joy and light? Dim through the gloom the formless visions rise, Snatch'd instantaneous down the gulf of night.

Thou who, securely lull'd in youth's warm ray, Mark'st not the desolations wrought by Time, Be roused or perish. Ardent for its prey, Speeds the fell hour that ravages thy prime.

And, 'midst the horrors shrined of midnight storm, The fiend Oblivion eyes thee from afar, Black with intolerable frowns her form, Beckoning the embattled whirlwinds into war.

Fanes, bulwarks, mountains, worlds, their tempest whelms; Yet glory braves unmoved the impetuous sweep. Fly then, ere, hurl'd from life's delightful realms, Thou sink to Oblivion's dark and boundless deep.

Fly, then, where Glory points the path sublime, See her crown dazzling with eternal light! 'Tis Juno prompts thy daring steps to climb, And girds thy bounding heart with matchless might.

Warm in the raptures of divine desire, Burst the soft chain that curbs the aspiring mind; And fly where Victory, borne on wings of fire, Waves her red banner to the rattling wind.

Ascend the car: indulge the pride of arms, Where clarions roll their kindling strains on high, Where the eye maddens to the dread alarms, And the long shout tumultuous rends the sky.

Plunged in the uproar of the thundering field, I see thy lofty arm the tempest guide: Fate scatters lightning from thy meteor-shield, And Ruin spreads around the sanguine tide.

Go, urge the terrors of thy headlong car On prostrate Pride, and Grandeur's spoils o'erthrown, While all amazed even heroes shrink afar, And hosts embattled vanish at thy frown.

When glory crowns thy godlike toils, and all The triumph's lengthening pomp exalts thy soul, When lowly at thy feet the mighty fall, And tyrants tremble at thy stern control:

When conquering millions hail thy sovereign might, And tribes unknown dread acclamation join; How wilt thou spurn the forms of low delight! For all the ecstasies of heaven are thine:

For thine the joys, that fear no length of days, Whose wide effulgence scorns all mortal bound: Fame's trump in thunder shall announce thy praise, Nor bursting worlds her clarion's blast confound."

The Goddess ceased, not dubious of the prize: Elate she mark'd his wild and rolling eye, Mark'd his lip quiver, and his bosom rise, And his warm cheek suffused with crimson dye.

But Pallas now drew near. Sublime, serene, In conscious dignity she view'd the swain: Then, love and pity softening all her mien, Thus breathed with accents mild the solemn strain:

"Let those whose arts to fatal paths betray, The soul with passion's gloom tempestuous blind, And snatch from Reason's ken the auspicious ray Truth darts from heaven to guide the exploring mind.

"But Wisdom loves the calm and serious hour, When heaven's pure emanation beams confess'd: Rage, ecstasy, alike disclaim her power, She woo's each gentler impulse of the breast.

Sincere the unalter'd bliss her charms impart, Sedate the enlivening ardours they inspire: She bids no transient rapture thrill the heart, She wakes no feverish gust of fierce desire.

Unwise, who, tossing on the watery way, All to the storm the unfetter'd sail devolve: Man more unwise resigns the mental sway, Borne headlong on by passion's keen resolve.

While storms remote but murmur on thine ear, Nor waves in ruinous uproar round thee roll, Yet, yet a moment check thy prone career, And curb the keen resolve that prompts thy soul.

Explore thy heart, that, roused by Glory's name, Pants all enraptured with the mighty charm-- And does Ambition quench each milder flame? And is it conquest that alone can warm?

To indulge fell Rapine's desolating lust, To drench the balmy lawn in streaming gore, To spurn the hero's cold and silent dust-- Are these thy joys? Nor throbs thy heart for more?

Pleased canst thou listen to the patriot's groan, And the wild wail of Innocence forlorn? And hear the abandon'd maid's last frantic moan, Her love for ever from her bosom torn?

Nor wilt thou shrink, when Virtue's fainting breath Pours the dread curse of vengeance on thy head? Nor when the pale ghost bursts the cave of death, To glare distraction on thy midnight bed?

Was it for this, though born to regal power, Kind Heaven to thee did nobler gifts consign, Bade Fancy's influence gild thy natal hour, And bade Philanthropy's applause be thine?

Theirs be the dreadful glory to destroy, And theirs the pride of pomp, and praise suborn'd, Whose eye ne'er lighten'd at the smile of Joy, Whose cheek the tear of Pity ne'er adorn'd:

Whose soul, each finer sense instinctive quell'd, The lyre's mellifluous ravishment defies: Nor marks where Beauty roves the flowery field, Or Grandeur's pinion sweeps the unbounded skies.

Hail to sweet Fancy's unexpressive charm! Hail to the pure delights of social love! Hail, pleasures mild, that fire not while ye warm, Nor rack the exulting frame, but gently move!

But Fancy soothes no more, if stern remorse With iron grasp the tortured bosom wring. Ah then! even Fancy speeds the venom's course, Even Fancy points with rage the maddening sting.

Her wrath a thousand gnashing fiends attend, And roll the snakes, and toss the brands of hell; The beam of Beauty blasts: dark heavens impend Tottering: and Music thrills with startling yell.

What then avails, that with exhaustless store Obsequious Luxury loads thy glittering shrine? What then avails, that prostrate slaves adore, And Fame proclaims thee matchless and divine?

What though bland Flattery all her arts apply? Will these avail to calm the infuriate brain? Or will the roaring surge, when heaved on high, Headlong hang, hush'd, to hear the piping swain?

In health how fair, how ghastly in decay Man's lofty form! how heavenly fair the mind Sublimed by Virtue's sweet enlivening sway! But ah! to guilt's outrageous rule resign'd.

How hideous and forlorn! when ruthless Care With cankering tooth corrodes the seeds of life, And deaf with passion's storms when pines Despair, And howling furies rouse the eternal strife.

Oh, by thy hopes of joy that restless glow, Pledges of Heaven! be taught by Wisdom's lore; With anxious haste each doubtful path forego, And life's wild ways with cautious fear explore.

Straight be thy course: nor tempt the maze that leads Where fell Remorse his shapeless strength conceals, And oft Ambition's dizzy cliff he treads, And slumbers oft in Pleasure's flowery vales.

Nor linger unresolved: Heaven prompts the choice, Save when Presumption shuts the ear of Pride: With grateful awe attend to Nature's voice, The voice of Nature Heaven ordain'd thy guide.

Warn'd by her voice the arduous path pursue, That leads to Virtue's fane a hardy band: What though no gaudy scenes decoy their view, Nor clouds of fragrance roll along the land?

What though rude mountains heave the flinty way? Yet there the soul drinks light and life divine, And pure aerial gales of gladness play, Brace every nerve, and every sense refine.

Go, prince, be virtuous and be blest. The throne Rears not its state to swell the couch of Lust: Nor dignify Corruption's daring son, To o'erwhelm his humbler brethren of the dust.

But yield an ampler scene to Bounty's eye, An ampler range to Mercy's ear expand: And, 'midst admiring nations, set on high Virtue's fair model, framed by Wisdom's hand.

Go then: the moan of Woe demands thine aid: Pride's licensed outrage claims thy slumbering ire: Pale Genius roams the bleak neglected shade, And battening Avarice mocks his tuneless lyre.

Even Nature pines, by vilest chains oppress'd: The astonish'd kingdoms crouch to Fashion's nod. O ye pure inmates of the gentle breast, Truth, Freedom, Love, O where is your abode?

O yet once more shall Peace from heaven return, And young Simplicity with mortals dwell! Nor Innocence the august pavilion scorn, Nor meek Contentment fly the humble cell!

Wilt thou, my prince, the beauteous train implore 'Midst earth's forsaken scenes once more to bide? Then shall the shepherd sing in every bower, And Love with garlands wreathe the domes of Pride.

The bright tear starting in the impassion'd eyes Of silent Gratitude: the smiling gaze Of Gratulation, faltering while he tries With voice of transport to proclaim thy praise:

The ethereal glow that stimulates thy frame, When all the according powers harmonious move, And wake to energy each social aim, Attuned spontaneous to the will of Jove:

Be these, O man, the triumphs of thy soul; And all the conqueror's dazzling glories slight, That meteor-like o'er trembling nations roll, To sink at once in deep and dreadful night.

Like thine, yon orb's stupendous glories burn With genial beam; nor, at the approach of even, In shades of horror leave the world to mourn, But gild with lingering light the empurpled heaven."

Thus while she spoke, her eye, sedately meek, Look'd the pure fervour of maternal love. No rival zeal intemperate flush'd her cheek-- Can Beauty's boast the soul of Wisdom move?

Worth's noble pride, can Envy's leer appal, Or staring Folly's vain applauses soothe? Can jealous Fear Truth's dauntless heart enthrall? Suspicion lurks not in the heart of Truth.

And now the shepherd raised his pensive head: Yet unresolved and fearful roved his eyes, Scared at the glances of the awful maid; For young unpractised Guilt distrusts the guise

Of shameless Arrogance.--His wavering breast, Though warm'd by Wisdom, own'd no constant fire, While lawless Fancy roam'd afar, unblest Save in the oblivious lap of soft Desire.

When thus the queen of soul-dissolving smiles: "Let gentler fate my darling prince attend, Joyless and cruel are the warrior's spoils, Dreary the path stern Virtue's sons ascend.

Of human joy full short is the career, And the dread verge still gains upon your sight; While idly gazing far beyond your sphere, Ye scan the dream of unapproach'd delight:

Till every sprightly hour and blooming scene Of life's gay morn unheeded glides away, And clouds of tempests mount the blue serene, And storms and ruin close the troublous day.

Then still exult to hail the present joy, Thine be the boon that comes unearn'd by toil; No forward vain desire thy bliss annoy, No flattering hope thy longing hours beguile.

Ah! why should man pursue the charms of Fame, For ever luring, yet for ever coy? Light as the gaudy rainbow's pillar'd gleam, That melts illusive from the wondering boy!

What though her throne irradiate many a clime, If hung loose-tottering o'er the unfathom'd tomb? What though her mighty clarion, rear'd sublime, Display the imperial wreath and glittering plume?

100

Can glittering plume, or can the imperial wreath Redeem from unrelenting fate the brave? What note of triumph can her clarion breathe, To alarm the eternal midnight of the grave?

101

That night draws on: nor will the vacant hour Of expectation linger as it flies: Nor fate one moment unenjoy'd restore: Each moment's flight how precious to the wise!

102

O shun the annoyance of the bustling throng, That haunt with zealous turbulence the great: There coward Office boasts the unpunish'd wrong, And sneaks secure in insolence of state.

103

O'er fancied injury Suspicion pines, And in grim silence gnaws the festering wound: Deceit the rage-embitter'd smile refines, And Censure spreads the viperous hiss around.

104

Hope not, fond prince, though Wisdom guard thy throne, Though Truth and Bounty prompt each generous aim, Though thine the palm of peace, the victor's crown, The Muse's rapture, and the patriot's flame:

105

Hope not, though all that captivates the wise, All that endears the good exalt thy praise: Hope not to taste repose: for Envy's eyes At fairest worth still point their deadly rays.

106

Envy, stern tyrant of the flinty heart, Can aught of Virtue, Truth, or Beauty charm? Can soft Compassion thrill with pleasing smart, Repentance melt, or Gratitude disarm?

107

Ah no. Where Winter Scythia's waste enchains, And monstrous shapes roar to the ruthless storm, Not Phoebus' smile can cheer the dreadful plains, Or soil accursed with balmy life inform.

108

Then, Envy, then is thy triumphant hour, When mourns Benevolence his baffled scheme: When Insult mocks the clemency of Power, And loud dissension's livid firebrands gleam:

109

When squint-eyed Slander plies the unhallow'd tongue, From poison'd maw when Treason weaves his line, And Muse apostate (infamy to song!) Grovels, low muttering, at Sedition's shrine.

110

Let not my prince forego the peaceful shade, The whispering grove, the fountain and the plain: Power, with the oppressive weight of pomp array'd, Pants for simplicity and ease in vain.

111

The yell of frantic Mirth may stun his ear, But frantic Mirth soon leaves the heart forlorn; And Pleasure flies that high tempestuous sphere: Far different scenes her lucid paths adorn.

112

She loves to wander on the untrodden lawn, Or the green bosom of reclining hill, Soothed by the careless warbler of the dawn, Or the lone plaint of ever-murmuring rill.

113

Or from the mountain glade's aerial brow, While to her song a thousand echoes call, Marks the wide woodland wave remote below, Where shepherds pipe unseen, and waters fall.

114

Her influence oft the festive hamlet proves, Where the high carol cheers the exulting ring; And oft she roams the maze of wildering groves, Listening the unnumber'd melodies of Spring.

115

Or to the long and lonely shore retires; What time, loose-glimmering to the lunar beam, Faint heaves the slumberous wave, and starry fires Gild the blue deep with many a lengthening gleam.

116

Then to the balmy bower of Rapture borne, While strings self-warbling breathe Elysian rest, Melts in delicious vision, till the morn Spangle with twinkling dew the flowery waste.

117

The frolic Moments, purple-pinion'd, dance Around, and scatter roses as they play; And the blithe Graces, hand in hand, advance, Where, with her loved compeers, she deigns to stray;

118

Mild Solitude, in veil of rustic dye, Her sylvan spear with moss-grown ivy bound; And Indolence, with sweetly languid eye, And zoneless robe that trails along the ground;

119

But chiefly Love--O thou, whose gentle mind Each soft indulgence Nature framed to share; Pomp, wealth, renown, dominion, all resign'd, Oh, haste to Pleasure's bower, for Love is there.

120

Love, the desire of Gods! the feast of heaven! Yet to Earth's favour'd offspring not denied! Ah! let not thankless man the blessing given Enslave to Fame, or sacrifice to Pride.

121

Nor I from Virtue's call decoy thine ear; Friendly to Pleasure are her sacred laws: Let Temperance' smile the cup of gladness cheer; That cup is death, if he withhold applause.

122

Far from thy haunt be Envy's baneful sway, And Hate, that works the harass'd soul to storm; But woo Content to breathe her soothing lay, And charm from Fancy's view each angry form.

123

No savage joy the harmonious hours profane! Whom Love refines, can barbarous tumults please? Shall rage of blood pollute the sylvan reign? Shall Leisure wanton in the spoils of Peace?

124

Free let the feathery race indulge the song, Inhale the liberal beam, and melt in love: Free let the fleet hind bound her hills along, And in pure streams the watery nations rove.

125

To joy in Nature's universal smile Well suits, O man, thy pleasurable sphere; But why should Virtue doom thy years to toil? Ah! why should Virtue's laws be deem'd severe?

126

What meed, Beneficence, thy care repays? What, Sympathy, thy still returning pang? And why his generous arm should Justice raise, To dare the vengeance of a tyrant's fang?

127

From thankless spite no bounty can secure; Or froward wish of discontent fulfil, That knows not to regret thy bounded power, But blames with keen reproach thy partial will.

128

To check the impetuous all-involving tide Of human woes, how impotent thy strife! High o'er thy mounds devouring surges ride, Nor reck thy baffled toils, or lavish'd life.

129

The bower of bliss, the smile of love be thine, Unlabour'd ease, and leisure's careless dream. Such be their joys who bend at Venus' shrine, And own her charms beyond compare supreme."

130

Warm'd as she spoke, all panting with delight, Her kindling beauties breathed triumphant bloom; And Cupids flutter'd round in circlets bright, And Flora pour'd from all her stores perfume.

131

"Thine be the prize," exclaim'd the enraptured youth, "Queen of unrivall'd charms, and matchless joy."-- O blind to fate, felicity, and truth! But such are they whom Pleasure's snares decoy.

132

The Sun was sunk; the vision was no more; Night downward rush'd tempestuous, at the frown Of Jove's awaken'd wrath: deep thunders roar, And forests howl afar, and mountains groan,

133

And sanguine meteors glare athwart the plain; With horror's scream the Ilian towers resound, Raves the hoarse storm along the bellowing main, And the strong earthquake rends the shuddering ground.

[Footnote 1: This is agreeable to the theology of Homer,--who often represents Pallas as the executioner of divine vengeance.]

THE TRIUMPH OF MELANCHOLY.

Memory, be still! why throng upon the thought These scenes deep-stain'd with Sorrow's sable dye? Hast thou in store no joy-illumined draught, To cheer bewilder'd Fancy's tearful eye?

Yes--from afar a landscape seems to rise, Deck'd gorgeous by the lavish hand of Spring: Thin gilded clouds float light along the skies, And laughing Loves disport on fluttering wing.

How blest the youth in yonder valley laid! Soft smiles in every conscious feature play, While to the gale low murmuring through the glade, He tempers sweet his sprightly-warbling lay.

Hail, Innocence! whose bosom, all serene, Feels not fierce Passion's raving tempest roll! Oh, ne'er may Care distract that placid mien! Oh, ne'er may Doubt's dark shades o'erwhelm thy soul!

Vain wish! for, lo! in gay attire conceal'd, Yonder she comes, the heart-inflaming fiend! (Will no kind power the helpless stripling shield?) Swift to her destined prey see Passion bend!

O smile accursed, to hide the worst designs! Now with blithe eye she woo's him to be blest, While round her arm unseen a serpent twines-- And, lo! she hurls it hissing at his breast.

And, instant, lo! his dizzy eyeball swims Ghastly, and reddening darts a threatful glare; Pain with strong grasp distorts his writhing limbs, And Fear's cold hand erects his bristling hair!

8 Is this, O life, is this thy boasted prime? And does thy spring no happier prospect yield? Why gilds the vernal sun thy gaudy clime, When nipping mildews waste the flowery field?

How Memory pains! Let some gay theme beguile The musing mind, and soothe to soft delight. Ye images of woe, no more recoil; Be life's past scenes wrapt in oblivious night.

Now when fierce Winter, arm'd with wasteful power, Heaves the wild deep that thunders from afar, How sweet to sit in this sequester'd bower, To hear, and but to hear, the mingling war!

Ambition here displays no gilded toy That tempts on desperate wing the soul to rise, Nor Pleasure's flower-embroider'd paths decoy, Nor Anguish lurks in Grandeur's gay disguise.

Oft has Contentment cheer'd this lone abode With the mild languish of her smiling eye; Here Health has oft in blushing beauty glow'd, While loose-robed Quiet stood enamour'd by.

Even the storm lulls to more profound repose: The storm these humble walls assails in vain: Screen'd is the lily when the whirlwind blows, While the oak's stately ruin strews the plain.

Blow on, ye winds! Thine, Winter, be the skies; Roll the old ocean, and the vales lay waste: Nature thy momentary rage defies; To her relief the gentler seasons haste.

Throned in her emerald car, see Spring appear! (As Fancy wills, the landscape starts to view) Her emerald car the youthful Zephyrs bear, Fanning her bosom with their pinions blue.

Around the jocund Hours are fluttering seen; And, lo! her rod the rose-lipp'd power extends. And, lo! the lawns are deck'd in living green, And Beauty's bright-eyed train from heaven descends.

Haste, happy days, and make all nature glad-- But will all nature joy at your return? Say, can ye cheer pale Sickness' gloomy bed, Or dry the tears that bathe the untimely urn?

Will ye one transient ray of gladness dart 'Cross the dark cell where hopeless slavery lies? To ease tired Disappointment's bleeding heart, Will all your stores of softening balm suffice?

When fell Oppression in his harpy fangs From Want's weak grasp the last sad morsel bears, Can ye allay the heart-wrung parent's pangs, Whose famish'd child craves help with fruitless tears?

For ah! thy reign, Oppression, is not past, Who from the shivering limbs the vestment rends, Who lays the once rejoicing village waste, Bursting the ties of lovers and of friends.

O ye, to Pleasure who resign the day, As loose in Luxury's clasping arms you lie, O yet let pity in your breast bear sway, And learn to melt at Misery's moving cry.

But hop'st thou, Muse, vain-glorious as thou art, With the weak impulse of thy humble strain, Hop'st thou to soften Pride's obdurate heart, When Errol's bright example shines in vain?

Then cease the theme. Turn, Fancy, turn thine eye, Thy weeping eye, nor further urge thy flight; Thy haunts, alas! no gleams of joy supply, Or transient gleams, that flash and sink in night.

Yet fain the mind its anguish would forego-- Spread then, historic Muse, thy pictured scroll; Bid thy great scenes in all their splendour glow, And swell to thought sublime the exalted soul.

What mingling pomps rush boundless on the gaze! What gallant navies ride the heaving deep! What glittering towns their cloud-wrapt turrets raise! What bulwarks frown horrific o'er the steep!

Bristling with spears, and bright with burnish'd shields, The embattled legions stretch their long array; Discord's red torch, as fierce she scours the fields, With bloody tincture stains the face of day.

And now the hosts in silence wait the sign. How keen their looks whom Liberty inspires! Quick as the Goddess darts along the line, Each breast impatient burns with noble fires.

Her form how graceful! In her lofty mien The smiles of Love stern Wisdom's frown control; Her fearless eye, determined though serene, Speaks the great purpose, and the unconquer'd soul.

Mark, where Ambition leads the adverse band, Each feature fierce and haggard, as with pain! With menace loud he cries, while from his hand He vainly strives to wipe the crimson stain.

Lo! at his call, impetuous as the storms, Headlong to deeds of death the hosts are driven: Hatred to madness wrought, each face deforms, Mounts the black whirlwind, and involves the heaven.

Now, Virtue, now thy powerful succour lend, Shield them for Liberty who dare to die-- Ah, Liberty! will none thy cause befriend? Are these thy sons, thy generous sons, that fly?

Not Virtue's self, when Heaven its aid denies, Can brace the loosen'd nerves or warm the heart! Not Virtue's self can still the burst of sighs, When festers in the soul Misfortune's dart.

See where, by heaven-bred terror all dismay'd The scattering legions pour along the plain; Ambition's car, with bloody spoils array'd, Hews its broad way, as Vengeance guides the rein.

But who is he that, by yon lonely brook, With woods o'erhung and precipices rude, [1] Abandon'd lies, and with undaunted look Sees streaming from his breast the purple flood?

Ah, Brutus! ever thine be Virtue's tear! Lo! his dim eyes to Liberty he turns, As scarce supported on her broken spear O'er her expiring son the goddess mourns.

Loose to the wind her azure mantle flies, From her dishevell'd locks she rends the plume; No lustre lightens in her weeping eyes, And on her tear-stain'd cheek no roses bloom.

Meanwhile the world, Ambition, owns thy sway, Fame's loudest trumpet labours in thy praise, For thee the Muse awakes her sweetest lay, And Flattery bids for thee her altars blaze.

Nor in life's lofty bustling sphere alone, The sphere where monarchs and where heroes toil, Sink Virtue's sons beneath Misfortune's frown, While Guilt's thrill'd bosom leaps at Pleasure's smile;

Full oft, where Solitude and Silence dwell, Far, far remote, amid the lowly plain, Resounds the voice of Woe from Virtue's cell: Such is man's doom, and Pity weeps in vain.

Still grief recoils--How vainly have I strove Thy power, O Melancholy, to withstand! Tired I submit; but yet, O yet remove Or ease the pressure of thy heavy hand.

Yet for a while let the bewilder'd soul Find in society relief from woe; O yield a while to Friendship's soft control; Some respite, Friendship, wilt thou not bestow?

Come, then, Philander! for thy lofty mind Looks down from far on all that charms the great; For thou canst bear, unshaken and resign'd, The brightest smiles, the blackest frowns of Fate:

Come thou, whose love unlimited, sincere, Nor faction cools, nor injury destroys; Who lend'st to misery's moans a pitying ear, And feel'st with ecstasy another's joys:

Who know'st man's frailty: with a favouring eye, And melting heart, behold'st a brother's fall; Who, unenslaved by custom's narrow tie, With manly freedom follow'st reason's call.

And bring thy Delia, softly-smiling fair, Whose spotless soul no sordid thoughts deform: Her accents mild would still each throbbing care, And harmonize the thunder of the storm.

Though blest with wisdom, and with wit refined, She courts not homage, nor desires to shine: In her each sentiment sublime is join'd To female sweetness, and a form divine.

Come, and dispel the deep surrounding shade: Let chasten'd mirth the social hours employ; O catch the swift-wing'd hour before 'tis fled, On swiftest pinion flies the hour of joy.

Even while the careless disencumber'd soul Dissolving sinks to joy's oblivious dream, Even then to time's tremendous verge we roll With haste impetuous down life's surgy stream.

Can Gaiety the vanish'd years restore, Or on the withering limbs fresh beauty shed, Or soothe the sad inevitable hour, Or cheer the dark, dark mansions of the dead?

Still sounds the solemn knell in Fancy's ear, That call'd Cleora to the silent tomb; To her how jocund roll'd the sprightly year! How shone the nymph in beauty's brightest bloom!

Ah! beauty's bloom avails not in the grave, Youth's lofty mien, nor age's awful grace: Moulder unknown the monarch and the slave, Whelm'd in the enormous wreck of human race.

The thought-fix'd portraiture, the breathing bust, The arch with proud memorials array'd, The long-lived pyramid shall sink in dust To dumb oblivion's ever-desert shade.

Fancy from comfort wanders still astray. Ah, Melancholy! how I feel thy power! Long have I labour'd to elude thy sway! But 'tis enough, for I resist no more.

The traveller thus, that o'er the midnight waste Through many a lonesome path is doom'd to roam, Wilder'd and weary sits him down at last; For long the night, and distant far his home.

[Footnote 1: Such, according to the description given by Plutarch, was the scene of Brutus's death.]

ELEGY.

Tired with the busy crowds, that all the day Impatient throng where Folly's altars flame, My languid powers dissolve with quick decay, Till genial Sleep repair the sinking frame.

Hail, kind reviver! that canst lull the cares, And every weary sense compose to rest, Lighten the oppressive load which anguish bears, And warm with hope the cold desponding breast.

Touch'd by thy rod, from Power's majestic brow Drops the gay plume; he pines a lowly clown; And on the cold earth stretch'd, the son of Woe Quaffs Pleasure's draught, and wears a fancied crown.

When roused by thee, on boundless pinions borne, Fancy to fairy scenes exults to rove, Now scales the cliff gay-gleaming on the morn, Now sad and silent treads the deepening grove;

Or skims the main, and listens to the storms, Marks the long waves roll far remote away; Or, mingling with ten thousand glittering forms, Floats on the gale, and basks in purest day.

Haply, ere long, pierced by the howling blast, Through dark and pathless deserts I shall roam, Plunge down the unfathom'd deep, or shrink aghast Where bursts the shrieking spectre from the tomb:

Perhaps loose Luxury's enchanting smile Shall lure my steps to some romantic dale, Where Mirth's light freaks the unheeded hours beguile, And airs of rapture warble in the gale.

Instructive emblem of this mortal state! Where scenes as various every hour arise In swift succession, which the hand of Fate Presents, then snatches from our wondering eyes.

Be taught, vain man, how fleeting all thy joys, Thy boasted grandeur and thy glittering store: Death comes, and all thy fancied bliss destroys; Quick as a dream it fades, and is no more.

And, sons of Sorrow! though the threatening storm Of angry Fortune overhang awhile, Let not her frowns your inward peace deform; Soon happier days in happier climes shall smile.

Through Earth's throng'd visions while we toss forlorn, 'Tis tumult all, and rage, and restless strife; But these shall vanish like the dreams of morn, When Death awakes us to immortal life.

ELEGY.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1758.

Still shall unthinking man substantial deem The forms that fleet through life's deceitful dream? Till at some stroke of Fate the vision flies, And sad realities in prospect rise; And, from Elysian slumbers rudely torn, The startled soul awakes, to think, and mourn. O ye, whose hours in jocund train advance, Whose spirits to the song of gladness dance, Who flowery plains in endless pomp survey, Glittering in beams of visionary day; 10 O yet, while Fate delays the impending woe, Be roused to thought, anticipate the blow; Lest, like the lightning's glance, the sudden ill Flash to confound, and penetrate to kill; Lest, thus encompass'd with funereal gloom, Like me, ye bend o'er some untimely tomb, Pour your wild ravings in Night's frighted ear, And half pronounce Heaven's sacred doom severe. Wise, beauteous, good! O every grace combined, That charms the eye, or captivates the mind! 20 Fresh, as the floweret opening on the morn, Whose leaves bright drops of liquid pearl adorn! Sweet, as the downy pinion'd gale, that roves To gather fragrance in Arabian groves! Mild, as the melodies at close of day, That, heard remote, along the vale decay! Yet, why with these compared? What tints so fine, What sweetness, mildness, can be match'd with thine? Why roam abroad, since recollection true Restores the lovely form to fancy's view? 30 Still let me gaze, and every care beguile, Gaze on that cheek, where all the graces smile; That soul-expressing eye, benignly bright, Where Meekness beams ineffable delight; That brow, where Wisdom sits enthroned serene, Each feature forms, and dignifies the mean: Still let me listen, while her words impart The sweet effusions of the blameless heart; Till all my soul, each tumult charm'd away, Yields, gently led, to Virtue's easy sway. 40

By thee inspired, O Virtue, age is young, And music warbles from the faltering tongue: Thy ray creative cheers the clouded brow, And decks the faded cheek with rosy glow, Brightens the joyless aspect, and supplies Pure heavenly lustre to the languid eyes: But when youth's living bloom reflects thy beams, Resistless on the view the glory streams: Love, wonder, joy, alternately alarm, And beauty dazzles with angelic charm. 50

Ah, whither fled? ye dear illusions, stay! Lo! pale and silent lies the lovely clay. How are the roses on that cheek decay'd, Which late the purple light of youth display'd! Health on her form each sprightly grace bestow'd: With life and thought each speaking feature glow'd. Fair was the blossom, soft the vernal sky; Elate with hope, we deem'd no tempest nigh: When, lo! a whirlwind's instantaneous gust Left all its beauties withering in the dust. 60

Cold the soft hand that soothed Woe's weary head! And quench'd the eye, the pitying tear that shed! And mute the voice, whose pleasing accents stole, Infusing balm into the rankled soul! O Death, why arm with cruelty thy power, And spare the idle weed, yet lop the flower? Why fly thy shafts in lawless error driven? Is Virtue then no more the care of Heaven? But, peace, bold thought! be still, my bursting heart! We, not Eliza, felt the fatal dart. 70 Escaped the dungeon, does the slave complain, Nor bless the friendly hand that broke the chain? Say, pines not Virtue for the lingering morn, On this dark wild condemn'd to roam forlorn; Where Reason's meteor rays, with sickly glow, O'er the dun gloom a dreadful glimmering throw; Disclosing, dubious, to the affrighted eye O'erwhelming mountains tottering from on high, Black billowy deeps in storms perpetual tost, And weary ways in wildering labyrinths lost 80 O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more. Transporting thought! here let me wipe away The tear of Grief, and wake a bolder lay. But ah! the swimming eye o'erflows anew; Nor check the sacred drops to pity due: Lo! where in speechless, hopeless anguish bend O'er her loved dust, the parent, brother, friend! 90 How vain the hope of man! but cease thy strain, Nor sorrow's dread solemnity profane; Mix'd with yon drooping mourners, on her bier In silence shed the sympathetic tear.

RETIREMENT. 1758.

When in the crimson cloud of even The lingering light decays, And Hesper on the front of heaven His glittering gem displays; Deep in the silent vale, unseen, Beside a lulling stream, A pensive Youth, of placid mien, Indulged this tender theme:

"Ye cliffs, in hoary grandeur piled High o'er the glimmering dale; Ye woods, along whose windings wild Murmurs the solemn gale: Where Melancholy strays forlorn, And Woe retires to weep, What time the wan Moon's yellow horn Gleams on the western deep!

To you, ye wastes, whose artless charms Ne'er drew ambition's eye, 'Scaped a tumultuous world's alarms, To your retreats I fly. Deep in your most sequester'd bower Let me at last recline, Where Solitude, mild, modest power, Leans on her ivied shrine.

How shall I woo thee, matchless fair? Thy heavenly smile how win? Thy smile that smooths the brow of Care, And stills the storm within. O wilt thou to thy favourite grove Thine ardent votary bring, And bless his hours, and bid them move Serene on silent wing?

Oft let Remembrance soothe his mind With dreams of former days, When in the lap of Peace reclined He framed his infant lays; When Fancy roved at large, nor Care Nor cold distrust alarm'd, Nor Envy, with malignant glare, His simple youth had harm'd.

Twas then, O Solitude, to thee His early vows were paid, From heart sincere, and warm, and free, Devoted to the shade. Ah! why did Fate his steps decoy In stormy paths to roam, Remote from all congenial joy?-- O take the wanderer home!

Thy shades, thy silence now be mine, Thy charms my only theme; My haunt the hollow cliff, whose pine Waves o'er the gloomy stream. Whence the scared owl on pinions gray Breaks from the rustling boughs, And down the lone vale sails away To more profound repose.

Oh, while to thee the woodland pours Its wildly-warbling song, And balmy from the bank of flowers The Zephyr breathes along; Let no rude sound invade from far, No vagrant foot be nigh, No ray from Grandeur's gilded car Flash on the startled eye.

But if some pilgrim through the glade Thy hallow'd bowers explore, O guard from harm his hoary head, And listen to his lore; For he of joys divine shall tell, That wean from earthly woe, And triumph o'er the mighty spell That chains his heart below.

For me no more the path invites Ambition loves to tread; No more I climb those toilsome heights By guileful hope misled; Leaps my fond fluttering heart no more To Mirth's enlivening strain; For present pleasure soon is o'er, And all the past is vain."

THE HERMIT.

At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill, And nought but the nightingale's song in the grove 'Twas thus, by the cave of the mountain afar, While his harp rung symphonious, a hermit began: No more with himself or with nature at war, He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.

"Ah! why, all abandon'd to darkness and woe, Why, lone Philomela, that languishing fall? For Spring shall return, and a lover bestow, And sorrow no longer thy bosom enthrall. But if pity inspire thee, renew the sad lay, Mourn, sweetest complainer, man calls thee to mourn: O, soothe him whose pleasures like thine pass away: Full quickly they pass--but they never return.

Now gliding remote on the verge of the sky, The Moon, half extinguish'd, her crescent displays: But lately I mark'd when majestic on high She shone, and the planets were lost in her blaze. Roll on, thou fair orb, and with gladness pursue The path that conducts thee to splendour again. But man's faded glory what change shall renew? Ah, fool! to exult in a glory so vain!

'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more; I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you: For morn is approaching, your charms to restore, Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew: Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn; Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save. But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn? O when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?

'Twas thus, by the glare of false Science betray'd, That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind; My thoughts wont to roam, from shade onward to shade, Destruction before me, and sorrow behind. 'O pity, great Father of light,' then I cried, 'Thy creature, who fain would not wander from thee: Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride: From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free.'

And darkness and doubt are now flying away; No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn: So breaks on the traveller, faint, and astray, The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn. See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending, And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom! On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are blending, And Beauty immortal awakes from the tomb."

THE REPORT OF A MONUMENT TO BE ERECTED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, TO THE MEMORY OF A LATE AUTHOR (CHURCHILL).

(WRITTEN IN 1765.)

[PART OF A LETTER TO A PERSON OF QUALITY.]

Lest your Lordship, who are so well acquainted with everything that relates to true honour, should think hardly of me for attacking the memory of the dead, I beg leave to offer a few words in my own vindication.

If I had composed the following verses, with a view to gratify private resentment, to promote the interest of any faction, or to recommend myself to the patronage of any person whatsoever, I should have been altogether inexcusable. To attack the memory of the dead from selfish considerations, or from mere wantonness of malice, is an enormity which none can hold in greater detestation than I. But I composed them from very different motives; as every intelligent reader, who peruses them with attention, and who is willing to believe me upon my own testimony, will undoubtedly perceive. My motives proceeded from a sincere desire to do some small service to my country, and to the cause of truth and virtue. The promoters of faction I ever did, and ever will, consider as the enemies of mankind: to the memory of such I owe no veneration: to the writings of such I owe no indulgence.

Your Lordship knows that (Churchill) owed the greatest share of his renown to the most incompetent of all judges, the mob: actuated by the most unworthy of all principles, a spirit of insolence, and inflamed by the vilest of all human passions, hatred to their fellow-citizens. Those who joined the cry in his favour seemed to me to be swayed rather by fashion than by real sentiment: he therefore might have lived and died unmolested by me, confident as I am, that posterity, when the present unhappy dissensions are forgotten, will do ample justice to his real character. But when I saw the extravagant honours that were paid to his memory, and heard that a monument in Westminster Abbey was intended for one whom even his admirers acknowledge to have been an incendiary and a debauchee; I could not help wishing that my countrymen would reflect a little on what they were doing, before they consecrated, by what posterity would think the public voice, a character, which no friend to virtue or true taste can approve. It was this sentiment, enforced by the earnest request of a friend, which produced the following little poem; in which I have said nothing of (Churchill's) manners that is not warranted by the best authority: nor of his writings, that is not perfectly agreeable to the opinion of many of the most competent judges in Britain.

ABERDEEN, January 1765.

Bufo, begone! with thee may Faction's fire, That hatch'd thy salamander-fame, expire. Fame, dirty idol of the brainless crowd, What half-made moon-calf can mistake for good! Since shared by knaves of high and low degree; Cromwell and Cataline: Guido Faux, and thee. By nature uninspired, untaught by art; With not one thought that breathes the feeling heart, With not one offering vow'd to Virtue's shrine, With not one pure unprostituted line; 10 Alike debauch'd in body, soul, and lays;-- For pension'd censure, and for pension'd praise, For ribaldry, for libels, lewdness, lies, For blasphemy of all the good and wise: Coarse violence in coarser doggrel writ, Which bawling blackguards spell'd, and took for wit: For conscience, honour, slighted, spurn'd, o'erthrown:-- Lo! Bufo shines the minion of renown. Is this the land that boasts a Milton's fire, And magic Spenser's wildly warbling lyre? 20 The land that owns the omnipotence of song, When Shakspeare whirls the throbbing heart along? The land, where Pope, with energy divine, In one strong blaze bade wit and fancy shine: Whose verse, by truth in virtue's triumph born, Gave knaves to infamy, and fools to scorn; Yet pure in manners, and in thought refined, Whose life and lays adorn'd and bless'd mankind? Is this the land, where Gray's unlabour'd art Soothes, melts, alarms, and ravishes the heart: 30 While the lone wanderer's sweet complainings flow In simple majesty of manly woe: Or while, sublime, on eagle pinion driven, He soars Pindaric heights, and sails the waste of Heaven? Is this the land, o'er Shenstone's recent urn, Where all the Loves and gentler Graces mourn? And where, to crown the hoary bard of night, [1] The Muses and the Virtues all unite? Is this the land where Akenside displays The bold yet temperate flame of ancient days? 40 Like the rapt sage, [2] in genius as in theme, Whose hallow'd strain renown'd Illyssus' stream: Or him, the indignant bard, [3] whose patriot ire, Sublime in vengeance, smote the dreadful lyre: For truth, for liberty, for virtue warm, Whose mighty song unnerved a tyrant's arm, Hush'd the rude roar of discord, rage, and lust, And spurn'd licentious demagogues to dust. Is this the queen of realms? the glorious isle, Britannia, blest in Heaven's indulgent smile? 50 Guardian of truth, and patroness of art, Nurse of the undaunted soul, and generous heart! Where, from a base unthankful world exiled, Freedom exults to roam the careless wild: Where taste to science every charm supplies, And genius soars unbounded to the skies? And shall a Bufo's most polluted name Stain her bright tablet of untainted fame? Shall his disgraceful name with theirs be join'd, Who wish'd and wrought the welfare of their kind? 60 His name, accurst, who, leagued with----[4] and Hell, Labour'd to rouse, with rude and murderous yell, Discord the fiend, to toss rebellion's brand, To whelm in rage and woe a guiltless land: To frustrate wisdom's, virtue's noblest plan, And triumph in the miseries of man. Drivelling and dull, when crawls the reptile Muse, Swoln from the sty, and rankling from the stews, With envy, spleen, and pestilence replete, And gorged with dust she lick'd from Treason's feet: 70 Who once, like Satan, raised to Heaven her sight, But turn'd abhorrent from the hated light:-- O'er such a Muse shall wreaths of glory bloom? No--shame and execration be her doom. Hard-fated Bufo, could not dulness save Thy soul from sin, from infamy thy grave? Blackmore and Quarles, those blockheads of renown, Lavish'd their ink, but never harm'd the town. Though this, thy brother in discordant song, Harass'd the ear, and cramp'd the labouring tongue: 80 And that, like thee, taught staggering prose to stand, And limp on stilts of rhyme around the land. Harmless they dozed a scribbling life away, And yawning nations own'd the innoxious lay, But from thy graceless, rude, and beastly brain, What fury breathed the incendiary strain? Did hate to vice exasperate thy style? No--Bufo match'd the vilest of the vile. Yet blazon'd was his verse with Virtue's name-- Thus prudes look down to hide their want of shame: 90 Thus hypocrites to truth, and fools to sense, And fops to taste, have sometimes made pretence: Thus thieves and gamesters swear by honour's laws: Thus pension-hunters bawl "their country's cause:" Thus furious Teague for moderation raved, And own'd his soul to liberty enslaved. Nor yet, though thousand cits admire thy rage, Though less of fool than felon marks thy page: Nor yet, though here and there one lonely spark Of wit half brightens through the involving dark, 100 To show the gloom more hideous for the foil, But not repay the drudging reader's toil; (For who for one poor pearl of clouded ray Through Alpine dunghills delves his desperate way? Did genius to thy verse such bane impart? No. 'Twas the demon of thy venom'd heart, (Thy heart with rancour's quintessence endued). And the blind zeal of a misjudging crowd. Thus from rank soil a poison'd mushroom sprung, Nursling obscene of mildew and of dung: 110 By Heaven design'd on its own native spot Harmless to enlarge its bloated bulk, and rot. But gluttony the abortive nuisance saw; It roused his ravenous, undiscerning maw: Gulp'd down the tasteless throat, the mess abhorr'd Shot fiery influence round the maddening board. O had thy verse been impotent as dull, Nor spoke the rancorous heart, but lumpish scull; Had mobs distinguish'd, they who howl'd thy fame, The icicle from the pure diamond's flame, 120 From fancy's soul thy gross imbruted sense, From dauntless truth thy shameless insolence, From elegance confusion's monstrous mass, And from the lion's spoils the skulking ass, From rapture's strain the drawling doggrel line, From warbling seraphim the grunting swine; With gluttons, dunces, rakes, thy name had slept, Nor o'er her sullied fame Britannia wept: Nor had the Muse, with honest zeal possess'd, To avenge her country, by thy name disgraced, 130 Raised this bold strain for virtue, truth, mankind, And thy fell shade to infamy resign'd. When frailty leads astray the soul sincere, Let mercy shed the soft and manly tear. When to the grave descends the sensual sot, Unnamed, unnoticed, let his carrion rot. When paltry rogues, by stealth, deceit, or force, Hazard their necks, ambitious of your purse: For such the hangman wreaths his trusty gin, And let the gallows expiate their sin. 140 But when a ruffian, whose portentous crimes, Like plagues and earthquakes terrify the times, Triumphs through life, from legal judgment free, For Hell may hatch what law could ne'er foresee: Sacred from vengeance shall his memory rest?-- Judas, though dead, though damn'd, we still detest.

[Footnote 1: 'Hoary bard of night:' Dr Young.] [Footnote 2: 'Rapt sage:' Pluto.] [Footnote 3: 'Indignant bard:' Alceus; see Akenside's 'Ode on Lyric Poetry.']

[Footnote 4: Wilkes.]

THE BATTLE OF THE PIGMIES AND CRANES.

(FROM THE "PYGMÆO-GERANO-MACHIA" OF ADDISON.)

1762.

The Pigmy people, and the feather'd train, Mingling in mortal combat on the plain, I sing. Ye Muses, favour my designs, Lead on my squadrons and arrange the lines; The flashing swords and fluttering wings display, And long bills nibbling in the bloody fray; Cranes darting with disdain on tiny foes, Conflicting birds and men, and war's unnumber'd woes! The wars and woes of heroes six feet long Have oft resounded in Pierian song. 10 Who has not heard of Colchos' golden fleece, And Argo mann'd with all the flower of Greece? Of Thebes' fell brethren; Theseus stern of face; And Peleus' son, unrivall'd in the race; Eneas, founder of the Roman line, And William, glorious on the banks of Boyne? Who has not learn'd to weep at Pompey's woes, And over Blackmore's epic page to doze? 'Tis I, who dare attempt unusual strains, Of hosts unsung, and unfrequented plains; 20 The small shrill trump, and chiefs of little size, And armies rushing down the darken'd skies. Where India reddens to the early dawn, Winds a deep vale from vulgar eye withdrawn: Bosom'd in groves the lowly region lies, And rocky mountains round the border rise. Here, till the doom of fate its fall decreed, The empire flourish'd of the pigmy breed; Here Industry perform'd, and Genius plann'd, And busy multitudes o'erspread the land. 30 But now to these lone bounds if pilgrim stray, Tempting through craggy cliffs the desperate way, He finds the puny mansion fallen to earth, Its godlings mouldering on the abandon'd hearth; And starts where small white bones are spread around, "Or little [1] footsteps lightly print the ground;" While the proud crane her nest securely builds, Chattering amid the desolated fields. But different fates befell her hostile rage, While reign'd invincible through many an age 40 The dreaded pigmy: roused by war's alarms, Forth rush'd the madding manikin to arms. Fierce to the field of death the hero flies; The faint crane fluttering flaps the ground and dies; And by the victor borne (o'erwhelming load!) With bloody bill loose-dangling marks the road. And oft the wily dwarf in ambush lay, And often made the callow young his prey; With slaughter'd victims heap'd his board, and smiled, To avenge the parent's trespass on the child. 50 Oft, where his feather'd foe had rear'd her nest, And laid her eggs and household gods to rest, Burning for blood in terrible array, The eighteen-inch militia burst their way: All went to wreck; the infant foeman fell, Whence scarce his chirping bill had broke the shell. Loud uproar hence and rage of arms arose, And the fell rancour of encountering foes; Hence dwarfs and cranes one general havoc whelms, And Death's grim visage scares the pigmy realms. 60 Not half so furious blazed the warlike fire Of mice, high theme of the Maeonian lyre; When bold to battle march'd the accoutred frogs, And the deep tumult thunder'd through the bogs. Pierced by the javelin bulrush on the shore Here agonizing roll'd the mouse in gore; And there the frog (a scene full sad to see!) Shorn of one leg, slow sprawl'd along on three; He vaults no more with vigorous hops on high, But mourns in hoarsest croaks his destiny. 70 And now the day of woe drew on apace, A day of woe to all the pigmy race, When dwarfs were doom'd (but penitence was vain) To rue each broken egg, and chicken slain. For, roused to vengeance by repeated wrong, From distant climes the long-bill'd legions throng: From Strymon's lake, Cayster's plashy meads, And fens of Scythia, green with rustling reeds; From where the Danube winds through many a land, And Mareotis leaves the Egyptian strand; 80 To rendezvous they waft on eager wing, And wait, assembled, the returning spring. Meanwhile they trim their plumes for length of flight, Whet their keen beaks and twisting claws for fight: Each crane the pigmy power in thought o'erturns, And every bosom for the battle burns. When genial gales the frozen air unbind, The screaming legions wheel, and mount the wind; Far in the sky they form their long array, And land and ocean stretch'd immense survey 90 Deep, deep beneath; and, triumphing in pride With clouds and winds commix'd, innumerous ride. 'Tis wild obstreperous clangour all, and heaven Whirls, in tempestuous undulation driven. Nor less the alarm that shook the world below, Where march'd in pomp of war the embattled foe: Where manikins with haughty step advance, And grasp the shield, and couch the quivering lance: To right and left the lengthening lines they form, And rank'd in deep array await the storm. 100 High in the midst the chieftain-dwarf was seen, Of giant stature and imperial mien: Full twenty inches tall, he strode along, And view'd with lofty eye the wondering throng; And while with many a scar his visage frown'd, Bared his broad bosom, rough with many a wound Of beaks and claws, disclosing to their sight The glorious meed of high heroic might. For with insatiate vengeance he pursued, And never-ending hate, the feathery brood. 110 Unhappy they, confiding in the length Of horny beak, or talon's crooked strength, Who durst abide his rage; the blade descends, And from the panting trunk the pinion rends: Laid low in dust the pinion waves no more, The trunk disfigured stiffens in its gore. What hosts of heroes fell beneath his force! What heaps of chicken carnage mark'd his course! How oft, O Strymon, thy lone banks along, Did wailing Echo waft the funeral song! 120 And now from far the mingling clamours rise, Loud and more loud rebounding through the skies. From skirt to skirt of Heaven, with stormy sway, A cloud rolls on, and darkens all the day. Near and more near descends the dreadful shade, And now in battailous array display'd, On sounding wings, and screaming in their ire, The cranes rush onward, and the fight require. The pigmy warriors eye with fearless glare The host thick swarming o'er the burden'd air; 130 Thick swarming now, but to their native land Doom'd to return a scanty straggling band.-- When sudden, darting down the depth of heaven, Fierce on the expecting foe the cranes are driven, The kindling frenzy every bosom warms, The region echoes to the crash of arms; Loose feathers from the encountering armies fly, And in careering whirlwinds mount the sky. To breathe from toil upsprings the panting crane, Then with fresh vigour downwards darts again. 140 Success in equal balance hovering hangs. Here, on the sharp spear, mad with mortal pangs, The bird transfix'd in bloody vortex whirls, Yet fierce in death the threatening talon curls; There, while the life-blood bubbles from his wound, With little feet the pigmy beats the ground: Deep from his breast the short, short sob he draws, And, dying, curses the keen-pointed claws. Trembles the thundering field, thick cover'd o'er With falchions, mangled wings, and streaming gore; 150 And pigmy arms, and beaks of ample size, And here a claw, and there a finger, lies. Encompass'd round with heaps of slaughter'd foes, All grim in blood the pigmy champion glows; And on the assailing host impetuous springs, Careless of nibbling bills and flapping wings; And 'midst the tumult wheresoe'er he turns, The battle with redoubled fury burns; From every side the avenging cranes amain Throng, to o'erwhelm this terror of the plain. 160 When suddenly (for such the will of Jove) A fowl enormous, sousing from above, The gallant chieftain clutch'd, and, soaring high, (Sad chance of battle!) bore him up the sky. The cranes pursue, and, clustering in a ring, Chatter triumphant round the captive king. But, ah! what pangs each pigmy bosom wrung, When, now to cranes a prey, on talons hung, High in the clouds they saw their helpless lord, His wriggling form still lessening as he soar'd. 170 Lo! yet again with unabated rage, In mortal strife the mingling hosts engage. The crane with darted bill assaults the foe, Hovering; then wheels aloft to 'scape the blow: The dwarf in anguish aims the vengeful wound; But whirls in empty air the falchion round. Such was the scene, when 'midst the loud alarms Sublime the eternal Thunderer rose in arms, When Briareus, by mad ambition driven, Heaved Pelion huge, and hurl'd it high at heaven, 180 Jove roll'd redoubling thunders from on high, Mountains and bolts encounter'd in the sky; Till one stupendous ruin whelm'd the crew, Their vast limbs weltering wide in brimstone blue. But now at length the pigmy legions yield, And, wing'd with terror, fly the fatal field. They raise a weak and melancholy wail, All in distraction scattering o'er the vale. Prone on their routed rear the cranes descend; Their bills bite furious, and their talons rend; 190 With unrelenting ire they urge the chase, Sworn to exterminate the hated race. 'Twas thus the pigmy name, once great in war, For spoils of conquer'd cranes renown'd afar, Perish'd. For, by the dread decree of Heaven, Short is the date to earthly grandeur given, And vain are all attempts to roam beyond Where fate has fix'd the everlasting bound. Fallen are the trophies of Assyrian power, And Persia's proud dominion is no more: 200 Yea, though to both superior far in fame, Thine empire, Latium, is an empty name! And now, with lofty chiefs of ancient time, The pigmy heroes roam the Elysian clime. Or, if belief to matron-tales be due, Full oft, in the belated shepherd's view, Their frisking forms, in gentle green array'd, Gambol secure amid the moonlight glade: Secure, for no alarming cranes molest, And all their woes in long oblivion rest: 210 Down the deep vale and narrow winding way They foot it featly, ranged in ringlets gay: 'Tis joy and frolic all, where'er they rove, And Fairy-people is the name they love.

[Footnote 1: 'Or little,' &c.: from Gray's Elegy.]

THE HARES.

A FABLE.

Yes, yes, I grant the sons of Earth Are doom'd to trouble from their birth. We all of sorrow have our share; But say, is yours without compare? Look round the world; perhaps you'll find Each individual of our kind Press'd with an equal load of ill, Equal at least: look further still, And own your lamentable case Is little short of happiness. 10 In yonder hut that stands alone Attend to Famine's feeble moan; Or view the couch where Sickness lies, Mark his pale cheek, and languid eyes; His frame by strong convulsion torn, His struggling sighs, and looks forlorn. Or see, transfixt with keener pangs, Where o'er his hoard the miser hangs; Whistles the wind; he starts, he stares, Nor Slumber's balmy blessing shares; 20 Despair, Remorse, and Terror roll Their tempests on his harass'd soul. But here perhaps it may avail To enforce our reasoning with a tale. Mild was the morn, the sky serene, The jolly hunting band convene, The beagle's breast with ardour burns, The bounding steed the champaign spurns, And Fancy oft the game descries Through the hound's nose and huntsman's eyes, 30 Just then a council of the hares Had met on national affairs. The chiefs were set; while o'er their head The furze its frizzled covering spread. Long lists of grievances were heard, And general discontent appear'd. "Our harmless race shall every savage Both quadruped and biped ravage? Shall horses, hounds, and hunters still Unite their wits to work us ill? 40 The youth, his parent's sole delight, Whose tooth the dewy lawns invite, Whose pulse in every vein beats strong, Whose limbs leap light the vales along, May yet ere noontide meet his death, And lie dismember'd on the heath. For youth, alas! nor cautious age, Nor strength, nor speed eludes their rage. In every field we meet the foe, Each gale comes fraught with sounds of woe; 50 The morning but awakes our fears, The evening sees us bathed in tears. But must we ever idly grieve, Nor strive our fortunes to relieve? Small is each individual's force; To stratagem be our recourse; And then, from all our tribes combined, The murderer to his cost may find No foes are weak whom Justice arms, Whom Concord leads, and Hatred warms. 60 Be roused; or liberty acquire, Or in the great attempt expire." He said no more, for in his breast Conflicting thoughts the voice suppress'd: The fire of vengeance seem'd to stream From his swoln eyeball's yellow gleam. And now the tumults of the war, Mingling confusedly from afar, Swell in the wind. Now louder cries Distinct of hounds and men arise. 70 Forth from the brake, with beating heart, The assembled hares tumultuous start, And, every straining nerve on wing, Away precipitately spring. The hunting band, a signal given, Thick thundering o'er the plain are driven; O'er cliff abrupt, and shrubby mound, And river broad, impetuous bound; Now plunge amid the forest shades, Glance through the openings of the glades; 80 Now o'er the level valley sweep, Now with short step strain up the steep; While backward from the hunter's eyes The landscape like a torrent flies. At last an ancient wood they gain'd, By pruner's axe yet unprofaned. High o'er the rest, by nature rear'd, The oak's majestic boughs appear'd; Beneath, a copse of various hue In barbarous luxuriance grew. 90 No knife had curb'd the rambling sprays, No hand had wove the implicit maze. The flowering thorn, self-taught to wind, The hazel's stubborn stem entwined, And bramble twigs were wreathed around, And rough furze crept along the ground. Here sheltering from the sons of murther, The hares their tired limbs drag no further. But, lo! the western wind ere long Was loud, and roar'd the woods among; 100 From rustling leaves and crashing boughs The sound of woe and war arose. The hares distracted scour the grove, As terror and amazement drove; But danger, wheresoe'er they fled, Still seem'd impending o'er their head. Now crowded in a grotto's gloom, All hope extinct, they wait their doom. Dire was the silence, till, at length, Even from despair deriving strength, 110 With bloody eye and furious look, A daring youth arose and spoke: "O wretched race, the scorn of Fate, Whom ills of every sort await! O cursed with keenest sense to feel The sharpest sting of every ill! Say ye, who, fraught with mighty scheme, Of liberty and vengeance dream, What now remains? To what recess Shall we our weary steps address, 120 Since Fate is evermore pursuing All ways, and means to work our ruin? Are we alone, of all beneath, Condemn'd to misery worse than death? Must we, with fruitless labour, strive In misery worse than death to live? No. Be the smaller ill our choice; So dictates Nature's powerful voice. Death's pang will in a moment cease; And then, all hail, eternal peace!" 130 Thus while he spoke, his words impart The dire resolve to every heart. A distant lake in prospect lay, That, glittering in the solar ray, Gleam'd through the dusky trees, and shot A trembling light along the grot. Thither with one consent they bend, Their sorrows with their lives to end; While each, in thought, already hears The water hissing in his ears. 140 Fast by the margin of the lake, Conceal'd within a thorny brake, A linnet sat, whose careless lay Amused the solitary day. Careless he sung, for on his breast Sorrow no lasting trace impress'd; When suddenly he heard a sound Of swift feet traversing the ground. Quick to the neighbouring tree he flies, Thence trembling casts around his eyes; 150 No foe appear'd, his fears were vain; Pleased he renews the sprightly strain. The hares whose noise had caused his fright, Saw with surprise the linnet's flight. "Is there on earth a wretch," they said, "Whom our approach can strike with dread?" An instantaneous change of thought To tumult every bosom wrought. So fares the system-building sage, Who, plodding on from youth to age, 160 At last on some foundation dream Has rear'd aloft his goodly scheme, And proved his predecessors fools, And bound all nature by his rules; So fares he in that dreadful hour, When injured Truth exerts her power, Some new phenomenon to raise, Which, bursting on his frighted gaze, From its proud summit to the ground Proves the whole edifice unsound. 170 "Children," thus spoke a hare sedate, Who oft had known the extremes of fate, "In slight events the docile mind May hints of good instruction find, That our condition is the worst, And we with such misfortunes curst, As all comparison defy, Was late the universal cry; When, lo! an accident so slight As yonder little linnet's flight, 180 Has made your stubborn hearts confess (So your amazement bids me guess) That all our load of woes and fears Is but a part of what he bears. Where can he rest secure from harms, Whom even a helpless hare alarms? Yet he repines not at his lot; When past, the danger is forgot: On yonder bough he trims his wings, And with unusual rapture sings: 190 While we, less wretched, sink beneath Our lighter ills, and rush to death. No more of this unmeaning rage, But hear, my friends, the words of age: "When, by the winds of autumn driven, The scatter'd clouds fly 'cross the heaven, Oft have we, from some mountain's head, Beheld the alternate light and shade Sweep the long vale. Here, hovering, lowers The shadowy cloud; there downward pours, 200 Streaming direct, a flood of day, Which from the view flies swift away; It flies, while other shades advance, And other streaks of sunshine glance. Thus chequer'd is the life below With gleams of joy and clouds of woe. Then hope not, while we journey on, Still to be basking in the sun; Nor fear, though now in shades ye mourn, That sunshine will no more return. 210 If, by your terrors overcome, Ye fly before the approaching gloom, The rapid clouds your flight pursue, And darkness still o'ercasts your view. Who longs to reach the radiant plain Must onward urge his course amain: For doubly swift the shadow flies, When 'gainst the gale the pilgrim plies. At least be firm, and undismay'd Maintain your ground! the fleeting shade 220 Ere long spontaneous glides away, And gives you back the enlivening ray. Lo, while I speak, our danger past! No more the shrill horn's angry blast Howls in our ear: the savage roar Of war and murder is no more. Then snatch the moment fate allows, Nor think of past or future woes." He spoke; and hope revives; the lake That instant one and all forsake, 230 In sweet amusement to employ The present sprightly hour of joy. Now from the western mountain's brow, Compass'd with clouds of various glow, The sun a broader orb displays, And shoots aslope his ruddy rays. The lawn assumes a fresher green, And dew-drops spangle all the scene. The balmy zephyr breathes along, The shepherd sings his tender song, 240 With all their lays the groves resound, And falling waters murmur round: Discord and care were put to flight, And all was peace and calm delight.

THE WOLF AND SHEPHERDS.

A FABLE.

(WRITTEN IN 1757, AND FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1766.)

Laws, as we read in ancient sages, Have been like cobwebs in all ages: Cobwebs for little flies are spread, And laws for little folks are made; But if an insect of renown, Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone, Be caught in quest of sport or plunder, The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. Your simile perhaps may please one With whom wit holds the place of reason: 10 But can you prove that this in fact is Agreeable to life and practice? Then hear, what in his simple way Old Æsop told me t' other day. In days of yore, but (which is very odd) Our author mentions not the period, We mortal men, less given to speeches, Allow'd the beasts sometimes to teach us. But now we all are prattlers grown, And suffer no voice but our own; 20 With us no beast has leave to speak, Although his honest heart should break. 'Tis true, your asses and your apes, And other brutes in human shapes, And that thing made of sound and show, Which mortals have misnamed a beau, (But in the language of the sky Is call'd a two-legg'd butterfly), Will make your very heartstrings ache With loud and everlasting clack, 30 And beat your auditory drum, Till you grow deaf, or they grow dumb. But to our story we return: 'Twas early on a Summer morn, A Wolf forsook the mountain den, And issued hungry on the plain. Full many a stream and lawn he past And reach'd a winding vale at last; Where from a hollow rock he spied The shepherds drest in flowery pride. 40 Garlands were strew'd, and all was gay, To celebrate a holiday. The merry tabor's gamesome sound Provoked the sprightly dance around. Hard by a rural board was rear'd, On which in fair array appear'd The peach, the apple, and the raisin, And all the fruitage of the season. But, more distinguish'd than the rest, Was seen a wether ready drest, 50 That smoking, recent from the flame, Diffused a stomach-rousing steam. Our Wolf could not endure the sight, Courageous grew his appetite: His entrails groan'd with tenfold pain, He lick'd his lips, and lick'd again: At last, with lightning in his eyes, He bounces forth, and fiercely cries: "Shepherds, I am not given to scolding, But now my spleen I cannot hold in. 60 By Jove, such scandalous oppression Would put an elephant in passion. You, who your flocks (as you pretend) By wholesome laws from harm defend, Which make it death for any beast, How much soe'er by hunger press'd, To seize a sheep by force or stealth, For sheep have right to life and health; Can you commit, uncheck'd by shame, What in a beast so much you blame? 70 What is a law, if those who make it Become the forwardest to break it? The case is plain: you would reserve All to yourselves, while others starve. Such laws from base self-interest spring, Not from the reason of the thing--" He was proceeding, when a swain Burst out,--"And dares a wolf arraign His betters, and condemn their measures, And contradict their wills and pleasures? 80 We have establish'd laws, 'tis true, But laws are made for such as you. Know, sirrah, in its very nature A law can't reach the legislature. For laws, without a sanction join'd, As all men know, can never bind; But sanctions reach not us the makers, For who dares punish us, though breakers? 'Tis therefore plain, beyond denial, That laws were ne'er design'd to tie all; 90 But those, whom sanctions reach alone: We stand accountable to none. Besides, 'tis evident, that, seeing Laws from the great derive their being, They as in duty bound should love The great, in whom they live and move, And humbly yield to their desires: 'Tis just what gratitude requires. What suckling, dandled on the lap, Would tear away its mother's pap? 100 But hold--Why deign I to dispute With such a scoundrel of a brute? Logic is lost upon a knave, Let action prove the law our slave." An angry nod his will declared To his gruff yeoman of the guard; The full-fed mongrels, train'd to ravage, Fly to devour the shaggy savage. The beast had now no time to lose In chopping logic with his foes; 110 "This argument," quoth he, "has force, And swiftness is my sole resource." He said, and left the swains their prey, And to the mountains scour'd away.

SONG;

IN IMITATION OF SHAKSPEARE'S "BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND."

Blow, blow, thou vernal gale! Thy balm will not avail To ease my aching breast; Though thou the billows smooth, Thy murmurs cannot soothe My weary soul to rest.

Flow, flow, thou tuneful stream! Infuse the easy dream Into the peaceful soul; But thou canst not compose The tumult of my woes, Though soft thy waters roll.

Blush, blush, ye fairest flowers! Beauties surpassing yours My Rosalind adorn; Nor is the Winter's blast, That lays your glories waste, So killing as her scorn.

Breathe, breathe, ye tender lays, That linger down the maze Of yonder winding grove; O let your soft control Bend her relenting soul To pity and to love.

Fade, fade, ye flowerets fair! Gales, fan no more the air! Ye streams, forget to glide; Be hush'd each vernal strain; Since nought can soothe my pain, Nor mitigate her pride.

TO LADY CHARLOTTE GORDON,

DRESSED IN A TARTAN SCOTCH BONNET, WITH PLUMES, ETC.

Why, lady, wilt them bind thy lovely brow With the dread semblance of that warlike helm; That nodding plume, and wreath of various glow, That graced the chiefs of Scotia's ancient realm?

Thou know'st that Virtue is of power the source, And all her magic to thy eyes is given; We own their empire, while we feel their force, Beaming with the benignity of heaven.

The plumy helmet and the martial mien Might dignify Minerva's awful charms; But more resistless far the Idalian queen-- Smiles, graces, gentleness, her only arms.

EPITAPH:

BEING PART OF AN INSCRIPTION DESIGNED FOR A MONUMENT ERECTED BY A GENTLEMAN TO THE MEMORY OF HIS LADY.

Farewell, my best beloved! whose heavenly mind Genius with virtue, strength with softness join'd; Devotion, undebased by pride or art, With meek simplicity, and joy of heart: Though sprightly, gentle; though polite, sincere; And only of thyself a judge severe: Unblamed, unequall'd in each sphere of life, The tenderest daughter, sister, parent, wife. In thee, their patroness the afflicted lost; Thy friends their pattern, ornament, and boast; And I--but ah, can words my loss declare, Or paint the extremes of transport and despair! O thou, beyond what verse or speech can tell-- My guide, my friend, my best beloved, farewell!

EPITAPH

ON TWO YOUNG MEN OF THE NAME OF LEITCH, WHO WERE DROWNED IN CROSSING THE RIVER SOUTHESK. 1757.

O thou! whose steps in sacred reverence tread These lone dominions of the silent dead; On this sad stone a pious look bestow, Nor uninstructed read this tale of woe; And while the sigh of sorrow heaves thy breast, Let each rebellious murmur be suppress'd; Heaven's hidden ways to trace, for us how vain! Heaven's wise decrees, how impious to arraign! Pure from the stains of a polluted age, In early bloom of life they left the stage: Not doom'd in lingering woe to waste their breath, One moment snatch'd them from the power of Death: They lived united, and united died; Happy the friends whom Death cannot divide!

EPITAPH, INTENDED FOR HIMSELF.

Escaped the gloom of mortal life, a soul Here leaves its mouldering tenement of clay, Safe where no cares their whelming billows roll, No doubts bewilder, and no hopes betray.

Like thee, I once have stemm'd the sea of life; Like thee, have languish'd after empty joys; Like thee, have labour'd in the stormy strife; Been grieved for trifles, and amused with toys.

Yet, for a while, 'gainst Passion's threatful blast Let steady Reason urge the struggling oar; Shot through the dreary gloom, the morn at last Gives to thy longing eye the blissful shore.

Forget my frailties, thou art also frail; Forgive my lapses, for thyself mayst fall; Nor read, unmoved, my artless tender tale, I was a friend, O man! to thee, to all.

END OF BEATTIE'S POEMS.

POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BLAIR.

THE LIFE OF ROBERT BLAIR.

The paradox of Dr Johnson, in reference to sacred poetry, has long ago fallen into disrepute. It seems singular indeed, how it ever obtained credence, even although supported by one of the most powerful pens that ever wrote in Britain, when we remember that, previous to that author's day, the best poetry in the world 'had' been sacred. The Holy Scriptures then existed, with that poetry which bursts out at their every pore, besides being collected here and there into masses of rich song, "pressed down, shaken together, and running over." Dante, too, had written his great work, which, as if to mark it out for ever from things unclean and common, he had called the "'Divina' Commedia," and which was worthy of the name. Tasso's "Gerusalemme Liberata" had a religious moral, as well as a title suggestive of religious ideas. Spenser's "Faery Queen" was sacred, if not in all the parts, yet at least in the pervading spirit of its poetry. Cowley's "Davideis," Herbert's "Temple," Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," and Young's "Night Thoughts," existed then, were all admitted to be more or less masterpieces, and were all sacred in their subjects and aims. Blair's "Grave" too, had, ere Johnson's day, appeared, and furnished a good example of a solemn and religious theme, treated with genuine poetic power.

We need not say what a flood of sacred song has arisen since, and drowned the dictum of the lexicographer in the waves. Nay, an opinion is gaining ground, that all lofty poetry tends toward the sacred, and lies under the shadow of the divine. Poetry is like fire, which, even when employed in culinary or destructive purposes, points its column upwards, and seems to transmit the flower and essence of its conquests to heaven. All poetry that does not thus ascend is either morbid in spirit, or secondary in merit.

We come now to the life of one of our best religious poets,--ROBERT BLAIR--whose short poem "The Grave," is so admirable as to excite keen regret that it is almost the only specimen extant of his gifted and original mind.

The facts of his life are more than usually scanty, and our biography, therefore, must be brief and meagre. Robert Blair was born in Edinburgh, in 1699. It is curious, by the way, how few poets the Modern Athens has produced. It has bred lawyers, statists, critics, savans, in plenty, but reared but few men of transcendant genius, and, so far as we remember, only five good poets,--Scott, Ferguson, Ramsay, Falconer, and Blair,--whom the manufacturing town of Paisley nearly matches with its Tannahill, Motherwell, Alexander and John Wilson. Blair was the eldest son of the Rev. David Blair, who was a minister of the Old Church of Edinburgh, and one of the chaplains to the King. His mother was Euphemia Nisbet, daughter of Alexander Nisbet, Esq., of Carfin. His grandfather, Robert Blair, of Irvine,--descended from the ancient family of Blair 'of that ilk ('i.e.', of Blair), in Ayrshire,--distinguished himself, in the troublous times of the Solemn League and Covenant, as a powerful preacher, an able negociator, and a brave, determined man. The celebrated Hugh Blair,--whose writings, once so popular, seem now nearly forgotten,--was our poet's cousin, although younger by nineteen years. Robert lost his father while yet a boy, but enjoyed the anxious care and admirable training of an excellent mother. He studied first at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards in Holland. Of the particulars of either part of his curriculum nothing is known. On his return from abroad, he seems to have received license to preach, and to have hung about Edinburgh for a few years, an unemployed probationer. This was of less consequence, as he had some hereditary property. It gave him, too, abundant leisure for study, and he employed it well--cultivating natural history and the cognate sciences--publishing a few fugitive verses, which made very little impression on the public--and drawing out the first rude draught of the poem which was destined to make him immortal,--"The Grave." In 1731, when he was in his thirty-second year, he was appointed to the living of Athelstaneford, a parish in East Lothian, where he continued to reside all the rest of his life. Dissenter though the author of this biography be, he is free to confess, that there is very much that is enviable in the position of a parish minister, particularly in the country. Possessed of an easy competence, and a manageable field of labour, surrounded by the simplicities of rural manners, and the picturesque features of rural scenery,--lord of his sphere of duty, and master of his time,--his life can be, and often is, one of the most useful and happy, honourable in its toils, and graceful in its relaxations, to be found on earth. Where could we expect elegant studies to be prosecuted with more success, or whence could we expect more works of sanctified learning and genius to issue, than in and from the "manses" of Scotland, always so beautifully situated, now on the brink of the mountain stream, singing its wild way through the woods,--now in the centre of rich orchards and fertile fields,--now on sunny braes, overlooking the whole parish, prostrate in its loveliness at their feet,--and now surrounded and shadowed by broad old oaks and tall black pine-trees? And so, accordingly, it has been, although not perhaps to the extent we might have wished or expected. Philosophy of the deepest order has been studied--inquiries the most profound and extensive into natural science and history have been prosecuted; and painting, music, and poetry, have found enthusiastic and gifted votaries, who, at the same time, have not neglected their higher vocation,--in the quiet manses of our country; and we rejoice to know that this state of things continues, and is not confined to the Established Church, but may be asserted with equal or greater force to exist in others.

At Athelstaneford, Blair seems to have realised this ideal of a country minister. He was attentive to his pastoral duties, and the correspondent of Doddridge and the author of "The Grave," could not fail to be an evangelical, a practical, and a powerful preacher. He at the same time diligently prosecuted his favourite studies, which were botany, natural history, and poetry. Possessing a considerable fortune, he lived on a footing of equality and friendship with the gentry of the neighbourhood, and others of similar rank in distant parts of Scotland. Sir Francis Kinloch of Gilmerton and John Gallander of Craigforth are mentioned as two of his intimates. We are tempted to figure the author of "The Grave" as a morose and melancholy 'solitaire'--musing amid midnight churchyards--stumbling over bones--and returning home to light his lamp, inserted in a gaping skull, and to write out his gloomy cogitations. This is very far from being his real character. He was more frequently seen wandering amidst the flowery nooks of summer, with a microscope in his hand; or, on his way home from his pastoral visitations, stopping to analyse the fungi and the mosses which met him on his path; or musing above the long liquid lapse of some wayside stream, down which were floating the red leaves of autumn; or turning a telescope of his own construction aloft to the gleaming host of heaven. In his mode of spending his time, as well as in some of the stern features of his genius, he resembled Crabbe, who, believing that every weed was a flower, spent much of his time amidst the fields and on the sea-shores; who extracted delight out of the meanest fungus, even as he extracted poetry out of the humblest characters; and whose life, like Blair's, was a harmless dream.

After spending seven years of studious solitude, he, in 1738, married his relation, Isabella Law, daughter of Mr Law of Elvingston, who had been professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and whose death, which had happened ten years before, he had mourned in some rather lame verses, which our readers will find in this edition. Her brother was the sheriff-depute of East Lothian. She is described as a lady of great beauty and amiable manners, and succeeded in making the poet very happy. She bore him five sons and one daughter. Of these, Robert arose, through various gradations of honour at the Scottish bar, to be President of the Court of Session, and died in 1811. He was a man of massive and powerful intellect. It is, we think, in 'Peter's Letters' that Lockhart gives a glowing portraiture of President Blair's remarkable powers. He had not the genius or "hairbrained sentimental trace" of his father, but had inherited that clear, stern understanding, and that profound insight into men and manners, which are met with in every page of "The Grave."

Of this poem the author had, we said, drawn a first outline when a youth in Edinburgh. This he completed after his settlement at Athelstaneford; and, about the year 1742, he began to make arrangements for its publication. He had, probably through his neighbour, the celebrated Colonel Gardiner, who fell at the battle of Prestonpans, become acquainted with Isaac Watts, who paid him, he says in one of his letters, "many civilities." To him he forwarded the MS. of his poem. Dr Watts, with characteristic candour and good taste, admired it, and offered it to two different London booksellers, both of whom, however, declined to publish it, expressing a doubt whether any person living three hundred miles from town could write so as to be acceptable to the fashionable and the polite! No poetry at that time went down except imitations of Pope. Blair got back his MS., and, nothing daunted, sent it to Philip Doddridge, who was also an intimate of Colonel Gardiner's, requesting his opinion, which appears to have been as favourable as that of Dr Watts. At length it was published in London in the year 1743, and reprinted at Edinburgh in 1747, a year after its author's death.

Between that event and the appearance of his poem, nothing remarkable occurred. The success of his work must have shed additional sweetness into a cup which was rich before. "His tastes," says one of his biographers, "were elegant and domestic. Books and flowers seem to have been the only rivals in his thoughts. His rambles were from his fireside to his garden; and, although the only record of his genius is of a gloomy character, it is evident that his habits and life contributed to render him cheerful and happy." At last that awful chasm, the terrors, grandeurs, and moral lessons of which he had so powerfully sung, opened its jaws to receive him, and the Grave crowned its laureate with its cold and earthy crown. He was seized with fever, caught probably in the exercise of his pastoral functions, and expired on the 4th of February 1746, at the early age of forty-seven, when his body and mind were both in full vigour, and when, speaking after the manner of men, yet greater works than "The Grave" were before him. He left his wife, who lived till 1774, and five children behind him. His body reposes in the church-yard of Athelstaneford, without a monument, and with nothing but the initials K.B. to mark the spot.

The fact that he died comparatively so young, sufficiently accounts for the paucity of his poems. He had found a vein of rich and virgin gold; he had thrown out one mass of ore, and was, as it were, resting on his pickaxe ere recommencing his labour, when he was smitten down by a workman who never rests nor slumbers. Still let us thankfully accept what he has produced; the more as it is so distinctively original, so free from any serious alloy, and so impressively religious in its spirit and tone.

This masterpiece of Blair's genius is not a great poem so much as it is a magnificent portion, fragment, or book of a great poem. The most, alike of its merits and its faults, spring from the fact, that it keeps close to its subject--it daguerreotypes its dreadful theme. Many have objected to its conclusion as lame and impotent, and would have wished a loftier swell of hopeful anticipation of the Resurrection at the close; but this, in fact, would have started the subject of another poem. Blair was writing of the power and triumphs of the tomb. He left it to others, or possibly to another poem by himself, to celebrate the victory over it, to be gained at the resurrection. Enough for his purpose to allude to it at the close, in such a way as to intimate his own belief in its reality. Surely he expects too much who requires the painter of "Night" to introduce "Morning" into the same picture.

The shortness of the poem has been objected to it. But this, we think, shows the poet's good sense. The subject is too uniform and too gloomy for a long poem. "The Grave, in twelve books" would have been totally unreadable. It was far better to give, as Blair has given, a strong, stern, rapid, and concentrated sketch of the grisly gulf. The grave, in one respect, has no unity, and no story. It stands by itself, hollow, solitary, with its momentary ghastly yawnings, its general repose, and the dark mysteries which, whether open or shut, it conceals in its silent bosom. Reverence, as well as good taste, requires the poet who would venture on such a theme, to approach it trembling, and to withdraw from it in haste.

Yet Blair has been accused of a want of reverence in his treatment of this awful subject, nor is this objection altogether unfounded; the poet does treat "the Grave" in a somewhat abrupt and cavalier fashion, and does not seem sufficiently afraid of it. He was young when he wrote the greater part of the poem, and of young poets we may ask as Wordsworth asks about little children, "What can they know of death?" It had never knocked at his door or glared in at his window. He was, besides, of a bold and daring genius. He consulted rather strong effect than minute finish. The tone and style of his poem, consequently, are somewhat hirsute and unpolished. Campbell says of him, judiciously, "Blair may be a homely and even a gloomy poet in the eye of fastidious criticism; but there is a masculine and pronounced character even in his gloom and homeliness that keeps it most distinctly apart from either dulness or vulgarity. His style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance without regular beauty." He excels most in describing the darkest and most terrible ideas suggested by the subject, and seems almost to exult, while depicting the triumphs of the grave over the rich, the strong, the lofty, and the powerful. Death himself he assails in language approaching virulence, as when he says

O great maneater, Unheard-of epicure, without a fellow, Thou must render up thy dead, And with high interest too.

This exulting spirit, however, springs in him, less from ferocious feeling than from conscious rejoicing power. He is not a savage, brandishing his bloody tomahawk, so much as a Michael Angelo, hewing, with heat and haste, at one of his terrible pieces of statuary. He characterizes the miser severely; he lashes the proud wicked man whom he sees pompously hearsed into Hell; with stern irony he pursues the beauty from her looking-glass to the clods where

"The high-fed worm, in lazy volumes roll'd, Feeds on her damask cheek;"

he derides the baffled son of Æsculapius, who is deserted and deceived by his own drugs; and he exerts all the fearful force of his genius to show us the suicide in that "Other Place," where

"The common damn'd shun his society, And look upon themselves as fiends less foul."

But the fine imagery and the rapid touch serve alike to show that though he is angry, it is with the wrath of a man--not with the malignity of a demon. We have sometimes been induced to fancy that Pollok, in the "Course of Time," loves to linger amid the ruins of fallen and lost natures; and finds a savage luxury in the contemplation of the agonies of those whom he represents as damned. He tells us that he loved no scenery so well as that of solitary wastes, where nature was utterly barren and seemed willing to decay--where the dark wings of monotonous gloom and eternal silence met and sullenly embraced over the dreary region; and he seems to have had the same passion for moral as for physical desolations. Blair, on the other hand, never tarries long in such scenes; he does not dwell amidst, and brood over them like an owl, but crosses them with the swift brushing wing of a bird returning to her evening nest. He never goes out of his way to search for them--he sees and shows them merely because they meet him on his path. There is nothing morbid nor much that is melancholy in this poem. He takes the hard fact as it is, and paints it with all his force, but he does not seek to exaggerate or discolour it. He shows "the Grave" in various lights, at morning, night, and noon--not under the uniform weight of a leaden midnight sky, or only by the ghastly illumination of a waning moon.

Southey, in his "Life of Cowper," has fallen into the mistake of supposing Blair one of the imitators of Young. Now, in fact, Blair's poem was 'written' before the "Last Day" of Young, or the "Night Thoughts" had appeared. Its originality is indeed one of its greatest merits and charms. The author has copied no style, imitated no manner, and scorned to permit any living man or poet to stand between him and the cold stern reality of death, which he was to reflect in song. He is worthy, thus, of the name so often misapplied, of Poet--'i.e.' Maker. You see an original genius both in the beauties and the faults of the work. Its language, so simply strong and daring in its homeliness, its free and energetic motion, its fresh fearless touch, its fidelity to nature and to life, the quick succession and sharp brief poignancy of its pictures, its absence of elaboration, and carelessness about minute lights and shades--all combine to prove that the author has an eye, an imagination, and a purpose quite peculiar to himself. He treats "the Grave" with as much originality as if he had been contemporary with the earliest sepulchre--as if he had plucked grass from Abel's tomb; and yet, while it has not lost to his eye its first fearful gloss and glory, it has gathered around it the dear or dismal associations of six thousand years; and Adam and the "new-made widow" seem to be leaning side by side over its dust. We could have conceived of him treating the subject more reconditely, imaginatively, and metaphysically, but not of handling it with more direct and masculine power.

That he has done so, is, undoubtedly, one great cause of the poem's popularity. Had he woven any gossamer of reverie or philosophic conjecture over "the Grave," or even shown much personal interest in it, he might have gained a more peculiar set of admirers, but would not have won his way to the world's heart. As it is, the popularity of "The Grave" has been unbounded. Partly from the subject, partly from the shortness, partly from the signal truth and force of the poem, it rose rapidly to fame. It became "everybody's Grave." The poem was copied into all school collections. It lay along with 'Robinson Crusoe' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress', in the windows of cottages, and on the tables of wayside inns--achieving thus what Coleridge predicated over that well-thumbed copy of 'Thomson's Seasons', in the Welsh ale-house--"true fame!" It pervaded America. It was translated into other languages, and in its own it now transmigrated into a tract, now filled the page of a periodical, and now became a small separate book, telling its solemn tale to those who, though at first reluctant, as was the wedding guest to hear the Anciente Marinere, were at last compelled to listen, if not to learn. Light ballads and other amusing and clever trifles, had before and have since thus "put a girdle round about the globe in forty minutes;" but here was the phenomenon of a sad and serious strain, with little merit or charm but Christian truth and rugged poetry, passing, as if on telegraphic wires, through the whole world in a moment of time. Perhaps we should add a reason, although a very subordinate one, for the popularity of the poem. It was its author's 'first' and 'last'. He wrote himself at once and easily 'up'--he never tried and succeeded in writing himself laboriously 'down'.

The only books which should gain permanent reputation are those which supply materials for thought, and are studded with moveable gems of expression. We think we may divide the poems of the past and present into two classes, which we may discriminate into 'buildings' and 'quarries'. Many works to which you can hardly deny the character of works of genius may be likened to elegant and splendid edifices, the structure of which you cannot but admire, although the secret of their architecture you do not understand, and although from them you neither do nor can extract a single stone. They stand up before the view, dazzling and confounding,--

"Distinct but distant, clear, but ah! how cold."

Other books, less magnificent in aspect and rougher in style, are yet so full of suggestive and germinating thought, that we must liken them to quarries, surrounded it may be by thorns and briars, and precipices, but containing the richest of matter, and communicating with the very depths of the earth. Not to enter on the vexed questions connected with more celebrated poets, we may name Darwin and Dr Thomas Brown as two specimens of the building, and Robert Blair as an admirable example of the quarry. In household words and sententious truths, he yields (taking his space into consideration), not even to Young, or Pope, or Cowper, but to Shakspeare alone. His poem is a tissue of texts; many of his expressions might pass and have passed for bits of Hamlet. Take a few:--

"Friendship, mysterious cement of the soul, Sweetener of life, and solder of society."

"Son of the morning, whither art thou gone? Where hast thou hid thy many-spangled head, And the majestic menace of thine eyes Felt from afar?"

"Sorry pre-eminence of high descent! Above the vulgar, born to 'rot in state'."

Hence, by the way, Byron's famous lines,--

"It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold The 'rottenness' of eighty years in gold."

The exquisite description of beauty in the grave has been already quoted. That of the strong man dying is quite Shakspearian, and equally so is the picture commencing, "Death's shafts fly quick," particularly the passage about the sexton. How much he has compressed in the few words of the celebrated description!--

"The wind is up; hark! how it howls! methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary; Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rook'd in the spire, screams loud."

Who Blair's favourite authors were, we are not informed, but internal evidence proves him to have frequently and profitably read Shakspeare; and in terseness of description, comprehensiveness of vision, careless grandeur of execution, and short felicitous strokes of genius, he bears to him a considerable resemblance.

Blair's originality is proved by the fact, that many poets since have been either indebted to or inspired by his manly, noble verse. A great original, although he seldom steals himself, is the innocent cause of much theft in others, and his writings tempt, like the unbolted gate of a bank, to plunder. Young, although a truly gifted man, has kindled his night-lamp again and again at the phosphoric flame of "The Grave." The author of the "Night Thoughts" has written more sustained and sounding passages than Blair; his style is more antithetic, and his general mode of thought more ingenious; his book is a much larger one; he exhibits at times gleams of deeper insight; has occasional bursts of more impassioned earnestness; and his work has a personal interest, like an interrupted story or imperfect plot running through it: but "The Grave" is superior in ease, in nature, in healthy tone, and in those happy touches which light upon even genius only in rare and favoured hours. In some of these points, as well as in a certain power of rough moral anatomy, and vivid hurrying sarcasm (like one in haste lifting, handling, and striking with a red-hot falchion), Blair reminds us rather of Cowper; but the poet of "The Task" teaches a sterner morality, wears around him a mantle of austerer gloom, abounds more in Scriptural reference and in purely theological matter, and exhibits a more thoroughly bardic and prophetic spirit. James Grahame, the author of "The Sabbath," resembles Blair somewhat in happy pictorial flashes, and in the frequent rudeness of his versification; but is, on the whole, a milder, a more refined, a tenderer, and a weaker writer. It is clear that Pollok found the germ of his noble poem, "The Course of Time," in "The Grave." They resemble each other in their want of a plot, a hinge, a "back-bone," both being collections of loosely-strung moral sketches, with no unity but that of spirit, as also in the homely force and boldness of the writing; and if Pollok in aught differ from Blair, it is partly in the length of his poem and its elaboration, and partly in that feverish, hectic heat, and that morbid intensity and fury of temperament, which are the sources of much of Pollok's strength, and of more of his weakness. No poem on any similar subject, in our time, can be named with Blair's, except perhaps Bryant's "Thanatopsis." The moral tendency, however, and religious tone of the two poems are entirely different. "Thanatopsis" looks at the Grave solely in its physical and poetical aspects. It never mentions either the Resurrection or the Future State. An Indian would have coloured his poem on the sepulchre with finer and fierier lines, like the stamp of autumn on the fallen leaf. The main idea in it (an idea probably suggested by a line in "The Grave"--

"What is this world? What but a spacious burial-place unwall'd?")

is that of the earth as a great sepulchre; and its lesson is to inculcate on the death-devoted dust, which we call man, the duty of dropping into its kindred dust as quietly and gracefully as possible. It is, as a poem, chiefly remarkable for its solemn music, which reminds you of a burial-march, but is far inferior to the Scottish poem in lofty moral, in theological truth, and in illustrative power. Blair, and not Bryant, remains the laureate of the Grave.

It is much to have one's name and fame connected with one of the great centrical truths of the universe, especially when that truth is related to a fact. Suppose a writer to have produced a great poem on Light and the Sun--or on Absolute Being and God--or on Immortal Life and Heaven--how sublime and how enviable were his reputation! It were for ever bound up, in the bundle of life, with these great Ideas and Facts. Now, Blair has sung, in notes as yet unequalled, one of the cardinal, although one of the gloomiest thoughts and actualities in existence, and his name ought to stand proportionally high. He has, in a solemn yet happy hour, turned aside from the highways, and the byeways too, of the world, and gone a-musing and meditating, like Isaac in the evening fields, and found among these a field of the dead, a place of skulls; and, returning home, has recorded that one brief meditation in verse, and made it and himself immortal. Such, precisely, is this Poem, and such the experience of this Poet. As long as "the mourners go about the streets," or assemble in their crowds, blackening the silent 'braes' on their way to the country churchyard--as long as the grass of the grave murmurs out its moral in the western wind, and the sunshine seems to sadden as it shines upon the memorials and monuments of the dead--so long shall men read the "The Grave," and turn with pensive joy and tearful gratitude to the memory of its poet.

BLAIR'S POEMS.

THE GRAVE.

While some affect the sun, and some the shade, Some flee the city, some the hermitage; Their aims as various, as the roads they take In journeying through life;--the task be mine, To paint the gloomy horrors of the tomb; The appointed place of rendezvous, where all These travellers meet.--Thy succours I implore, Eternal king! whose potent arm sustains The keys of Hell and Death.--The Grave, dread thing! Men shiver when thou'rt named: Nature appall'd 10 Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah! how dark Thy long-extended realms, and rueful wastes! Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night, Dark as was chaos, ere the infant Sun Was roll'd together, or had tried his beams Athwart the gloom profound.--The sickly taper, By glimmering through thy low-brow'd misty vaults (Furr'd round with mouldy damps, and ropy slime), Lets fall a supernumerary horror, And only serves to make thy night more irksome. 20 Well do I know thee by thy trusty yew, Cheerless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell 'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms: Where light-heel'd ghosts, and visionary shades, Beneath the wan cold moon (as fame reports) Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds: No other merriment, dull tree! is thine. See yonder hallow'd fane--the pious work Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot, And buried 'midst the wreck of things which were; 30 There lie interr'd the more illustrious dead. The wind is up: hark! how it howls! Methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary: Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rook'd in the spire, screams loud: the gloomy aisles Black-plaster'd, and hung round with shreds of 'scutcheons, And tatter'd coats of arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, The mansions of the dead.--Roused from their slumbers, In grim array the grisly spectres rise, 40 Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen, Pass and repass, hush'd as the foot of night. Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious sound! I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill. Quite round the pile, a row of reverend elms, Coeval near with that, all ragged show, Long lash'd by the rude winds: some rift half down Their branchless trunks; others so thin at top, That scarce two crows could lodge in the same tree. Strange things, the neighbours say, have happen'd here: 50 Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs; Dead men have come again, and walk'd about; And the great bell has toll'd, unrung, untouch'd! (Such tales their cheer at wake or gossipping, When it draws near to witching time of night.) Oft, in the lone church-yard at night I've seen, By glimpse of moonshine chequering through the trees, The schoolboy with his satchel in his hand, Whistling aloud to bear his courage up, And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones 60 (With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown), That tell in homely phrase who lie below. Sudden he starts! and hears, or thinks he hears, The sound of something purring at his heels; Full fast he flies, and dares not look behind him, Till out of breath he overtakes his fellows; Who gather round, and wonder at the tale Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly, That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand O'er some new-open'd grave, and, strange to tell! 70 Evanishes at crowing of the cock. The new-made widow too, I've sometimes spied, Sad sight! slow moving o'er the prostrate dead: Listless, she crawls along in doleful black, Whilst bursts of sorrow gush from either eye, Past falling down her now untasted cheek. Prone on the lowly grave of the dear man She drops; whilst busy meddling memory, In barbarous succession, musters up The past endearments of their softer hours, 80 Tenacious of its theme. Still, still she thinks She sees him, and, indulging the fond thought, Clings yet more closely to the senseless turf, Nor heeds the passenger who looks that way. Invidious grave!--how dost thou rend in sunder Whom love has knit, and sympathy made one! A tie more stubborn far than nature's band. Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul; Sweetener of life, and solder of society! I owe thee much: thou hast deserved from me, 90 Far, far beyond what I can ever pay. Oft have I proved the labours of thy love, And the warm efforts of the gentle heart, Anxious to please.--Oh! when my friend and I In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on, Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank, Where the pure limpid stream has slid along In grateful errors through the underwood, Sweet murmuring,--methought the shrill-tongued thrush 100 Mended his song of love; the sooty blackbird Mellow'd his pipe, and soften'd every note; The eglantine smelt sweeter, and the rose Assumed a dye more deep; whilst every flower Vied with its fellow-plant in luxury Of dress.--Oh! then the longest summer's day Seem'd too, too much in haste: still the full heart Had not imparted half! 'twas happiness Too exquisite to last. Of joys departed, Not to return, how painful the remembrance! 110 Dull Grave!--thou spoil'st the dance of youthful blood, Strik'st out the dimple from the cheek of mirth, And every smirking feature from the face; Branding our laughter with the name of madness. Where are the jesters now? the men of health Complexionally pleasant? Where the droll, Whose every look and gesture was a joke To clapping theatres and shouting crowds, And made even thick-lipp'd musing melancholy To gather up her face into a smile 120 Before she was aware? Ah! sullen now, And dumb as the green turf that covers them. Where are the mighty thunderbolts of war? The Roman Cæsars, and the Grecian chiefs, The boast of story? Where the hotbrain'd youth, Who the tiara at his pleasure tore From kings of all the then discover'd globe, And cried, forsooth, because his arm was hamper'd, And had not room enough to do its work?-- Alas! how slim, dishonourably slim, 130 And cramm'd into a place we blush to name! Proud Royalty! how alter'd in thy looks! How blank thy features, and how wan thy hue! Son of the morning, whither art thou gone? Where hast thou hid thy many-spangled head, And the majestic menace of thine eyes, Felt from afar? Pliant and powerless now, Like new-born infant wound up in his swathes, Or victim tumbled flat upon its back, That throbs beneath the sacrificer's knife. 140 Mute must thou bear the strife of little tongues, And coward insults of the base-born crowd, That grudge a privilege thou never hadst, But only hoped for in the peaceful grave, Of being unmolested and alone. Arabia's gums and odoriferous drugs, And honours by the heralds duly paid In mode and form even to a very scruple: Oh, cruel irony! these come too late; And only mock whom they were meant to honour, 150 Surely there's not a dungeon slave that's buried In the highway, unshrouded and uncoffin'd, But lies as soft, and sleeps as sound as he. Sorry pre-eminence of high descent, Above the vulgar born, to rot in state! But see! the well plumed hearse comes nodding on, Stately and slow; and properly attended By the whole sable tribe that painful watch The sick man's door, and live upon the dead, By letting out their persons by the hour, 160 To mimic sorrow when the heart's not sad. How rich the trappings, now they're all unfurl'd And glittering in the sun! Triumphant entries Of conquerors, and coronation pomps, In glory scarce exceed. Great gluts of people Retard the unwieldy show; whilst from the casements And houses' tops, ranks behind ranks close wedged Hang bellying o'er. But tell us, why this waste? Why this ado in earthing up a carcase That's fallen into disgrace, and in the nostril 170 Smells horrible?--Ye undertakers, tell us, 'Midst all the gorgeous figures you exhibit, Why is the principal conceal'd, for which You make this mighty stir?--'Tis wisely done; What would offend the eye in a good picture, The painter casts discreetly into shade. Proud lineage! now how little thou appear'st! Below the envy of the private man! Honour, that meddlesome officious ill, Pursues thee even to death, nor there stops short; 180 Strange persecution! when the grave itself Is no protection from rude sufferance. Absurd to think to overreach the grave, And from the wreck of names to rescue ours! The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-famed sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain. The tapering pyramid, the Egyptian's pride, 190 And wonder of the world; whose spiky top Has wounded the thick cloud, and long outlived The angry shaking of the winter's storm; Yet spent at last by the injuries of heaven, Shatter'd with age and furrow'd o'er with years, The mystic cone, with hieroglyphics crusted, At once gives way. Oh, lamentable sight! The labour of whole ages tumbles down, A hideous and mis-shapen length of ruins. Sepulchral columns wrestle, but in vain, 200 With all-subduing Time: his cankering hand With calm deliberate malice wasteth them: Worn on the edge of days, the brass consumes, The busto moulders, and the deep-cut marble, Unsteady to the steel, gives up its charge. Ambition, half convicted of her folly, Hangs down the head, and reddens at the tale. Here, all the mighty troublers of the earth, Who swam to sovereign rule through seas of blood; The oppressive, sturdy, man-destroying villains, 210 Who ravaged kingdoms, and laid empires waste, And in a cruel wantonness of power Thinn'd states of half their people, and gave up To want the rest; now, like a storm that's spent, Lie hush'd, and meanly sneak behind the covert. Vain thought! to hide them from the general scorn That haunts and dogs them like an injured ghost Implacable. Here, too, the petty tyrant, Whose scant domains geographer ne'er noticed, And, well for neighbouring grounds, of arm as short; 220 Who fix'd his iron talons on the poor, And gripp'd them like some lordly beast of prey; Deaf to the forceful cries of gnawing hunger, And piteous, plaintive voice of misery (As if a slave was not a shred of nature, Of the same common nature with his lord); Now tame and humble, like a child that's whipp'd, Shakes hands with dust, and calls the worm his kinsman; Nor pleads his rank and birthright: Under ground Precedency's a jest; vassal and lord, 230 Grossly familiar, side by side consume. When self-esteem, or others' adulation, Would cunningly persuade us we are something Above the common level of our kind, The Grave gainsays the smooth-complexion'd flattery, And with blunt truth acquaints us what we are. Beauty,--thou pretty plaything, dear deceit! That steals so softly o'er the stripling's heart, And gives it a new pulse, unknown before, The Grave discredits thee: thy charms expunged, 240 Thy roses faded, and thy lilies soil'd, What hast thou more to boast of? Will thy lovers Flock round thee now, to gaze and do thee homage? Methinks I see thee with thy head low laid, Whilst, surfeited upon thy damask cheek, The high-fed worm, in lazy volumes roll'd, Riots unscared. For this, was all thy caution? For this, thy painful labours at thy glass? To improve those charms and keep them in repair, For which the spoiler thanks thee not. Foul feeder! 250 Coarse fare and carrion please thee full as well, And leave as keen a relish on the sense. Look how the fair one weeps!--the conscious tears Stand thick as dew-drops on the bells of flowers: Honest effusion! the swoln heart in vain Works hard to put a gloss on its distress. Strength, too,--thou surly, and less gentle boast Of those that laugh loud at the village ring! A fit of common sickness pulls thee down With greater ease than e'er thou didst the stripling 260 That rashly dared thee to the unequal fight. What groan was that I heard?--deep groan indeed! With anguish heavy laden; let me trace it: From yonder bed it comes, where the strong man, By stronger arm belabour'd, gasps for breath Like a hard-hunted beast. How his great heart Beats thick! his roomy chest by far too scant To give the lungs full play. What now avail The strong-built, sinewy limbs, and well spread shoulders? See how he tugs for life, and lays about him, 270 Mad with his pains!--Eager he catches hold Of what comes next to hand, and grasps it hard, Just like a creature drowning;--hideous sight! Oh! how his eyes stand out, and stare full ghastly! While the distemper's rank and deadly venom Shoots like a burning arrow 'cross his bowels, And drinks his marrow up.--Heard you that groan? It was his last.--See how the great Goliath, Just like a child that brawl'd itself to rest, Lies still.--What mean'st thou then, O mighty boaster! 280 To vaunt of nerves of thine? What means the bull, Unconscious of his strength, to play the coward, And flee before a feeble thing like man, That, knowing well the slackness of his arm, Trusts only in the well-invented knife? With study pale, and midnight vigils spent, The star-surveying sage, close to his eye Applies the sight-invigorating tube; And, travelling through the boundless length of space, Marks well the courses of the far-seen orbs, 290 That roll with regular confusion there, In ecstasy of thought. But, ah, proud man! Great heights are hazardous to the weak head; Soon, very soon, thy firmest footing fails; And down thou dropp'st into that darksome place, Where nor device nor knowledge ever came. Here the tongue-warrior lies, disabled now, Disarm'd, dishonour'd, like a wretch that's gagg'd, And cannot tell his ails to passers-by. Great man of language!--whence this mighty change, 300 This dumb despair, and drooping of the head? Though strong persuasion hung upon thy lip, And sly insinuation's softer arts In ambush lay about thy flowing tongue; Alas, how chop-fallen now! Thick mists and silence Rest, like a weary cloud, upon thy breast Unceasing.--Ah! where is the lifted arm, The strength of action, and the force of words, The well-turn'd period, and the well-timed voice, With all the lesser ornaments of phrase? 310 Ah! fled for ever, as they ne'er had been; Razed from the book of fame; or, more provoking, Perchance some hackney hunger-bitten scribbler Insults thy memory, and blots thy tomb With long flat narrative, or duller rhymes, With heavy halting pace that drawl along; Enough to rouse a dead man into rage, And warm with red resentment the wan cheek. Here the great masters of the healing art, These mighty mock defrauders of the tomb, 320 Spite of their juleps and catholicons, Resign to fate.--Proud Æsculapius' son! Where are thy boasted implements of art, And all thy well-cramm'd magazines of health? Nor hill nor vale, as far as ship could go, Nor margin of the gravel-bottom'd brook, Escaped thy rifling hand;--from stubborn shrubs Thou wrung'st their shy retiring virtues out, And vex'd them in the fire: nor fly, nor insect, Nor writhy snake, escaped thy deep research. 330 But why this apparatus Why this cost? Tell us, thou doughty keeper from the grave, Where are thy recipes and cordials now, With the long list of vouchers for thy cures? Alas! thou speakest not.--The bold impostor Looks not more silly when the cheat's found out. Here the lank-sided miser, worst of felons, Who meanly stole (discreditable shift!) From back, and belly too, their proper cheer, Eased of a tax it irk'd the wretch to pay 340 To his own carcase, now lies cheaply lodged. By clamorous appetites no longer teased, Nor tedious bills of charges and repairs. But, ah! where are his rents, his comings-in? Ay! now you've made the rich man poor indeed; Robb'd of his gods, what has he left behind? O cursed lust of gold! when for thy sake The fool throws up his interest in both worlds; First starved in this, then damn'd in that to come. How shocking must thy summons be, O Death! 350 To him that is at ease in his possessions; Who, counting on long years of pleasure here, Is quite unfurnish'd for that world to come! In that dread moment, how the frantic soul Raves round the walls of her clay tenement, Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help, But shrieks in vain!--How wishfully she looks On all she's leaving, now no longer her's! A little longer, yet a little longer, Oh! might she stay, to wash away her stains, 360 And fit her for her passage.--Mournful sight! Her very eyes weep blood;--and every groan She heaves is big with horror: but the foe, Like a staunch murderer, steady to his purpose, Pursues her close through every lane of life, Nor misses once the track, but presses on; Till, forced at last to the tremendous verge, At once she sinks to everlasting ruin. Sure 'tis a serious thing to die! My soul, What a strange moment it must be, when near 370 Thy journey's end, thou hast the gulf in view! That awful gulf no mortal e'er repass'd To tell what's doing on the other side. Nature runs back and shudders at the sight, And every life-string bleeds at thoughts of parting; For part they must: body and soul must part; Fond couple! link'd more close than wedded pair. This wings its way to its Almighty Source, The witness of its actions, now its judge: That drops into the dark and noisome grave, 380 Like a disabled pitcher of no use. If death were nothing, and nought after death; If when men died, at once they ceased to be, Returning to the barren womb of nothing, Whence first they sprung; then might the debauchee Untrembling mouth the heavens:--then might the drunkard Reel over his full bowl, and, when 'tis drain'd, Fill up another to the brim, and laugh At the poor bugbear Death: then might the wretch That's weary of the world, and tired of life, 390 At once give each inquietude the slip, By stealing out of being when he pleased, And by what way, whether by hemp, or steel. Death's thousand doors stand open.--Who could force The ill pleased guest to sit out his full time, Or blame him if he goes? Sure he does well, That helps himself, as timely as he can, When able.--But if there's an Hereafter; And that there is, conscience, uninfluenced, And suffer'd to speak out, tells every man; 400 Then must it be an awful thing to die: More horrid yet to die by one's own hand. Self-murder!--name it not: our island's shame, That makes her the reproach of neighbouring states. Shall nature, swerving from her earliest dictate, Self-preservation, fall by her own act? Forbid it, Heaven!--Let not upon disgust The shameless hand be foully crimson'd o'er With blood of its own lord.--Dreadful attempt! Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage 410 To rush into the presence of our Judge; As if we challenged him to do his worst, And matter'd not his wrath!--Unheard-of tortures Must be reserved for such: these herd together; The common damn'd shun their society, And look upon themselves as fiends less foul. Our time is fix'd; and all our days are number'd; How long, how short, we know not:--this we know, Duty requires we calmly wait the summons, Nor dare to stir till Heaven shall give permission: 420 Like sentries that must keep their destined stand, And wait the appointed hour, till they're relieved. Those only are the brave who keep their ground, And keep it to the last. To run away Is but a coward's trick: to run away From this world's ills, that at the very worst Will soon blow o'er, thinking to mend ourselves, By boldly venturing on a world unknown, And plunging headlong in the dark;--'tis mad! No frenzy half so desperate as this. 430 Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity To those you left behind, disclose the secret? Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out; What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be. I've heard that souls departed have sometimes Forewarn'd men of their death:--'twas kindly done To knock, and give the alarm.--But what means This stinted charity?--'Tis but lame kindness That does its work by halves.--Why might you not Tell us what 'tis to die? do the strict laws 440 Of your society forbid your speaking Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more: Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter; A very little time will clear up all, And make us learn'd as you are, and as close. Death's shafts fly thick!--Here falls the village-swain, And there his pamper'd lord!--The cup goes round; And who so artful as to put it by? 'Tis long since death had the majority; 450 Yet, strange! the living lay it not to heart. See yonder maker of the dead man's bed, The Sexton, hoary-headed chronicle; Of hard, unmeaning face, down which ne'er stole A gentle tear; with mattock in his hand Digs through whole rows of kindred and acquaintance, By far his juniors.--Scarce a skull's cast up, But well he knew its owner, and can tell Some passage of his life.--Thus hand in hand The sot has walk'd with death twice twenty years; 460 And yet ne'er younker on the green laughs louder, Or clubs a smuttier tale: when drunkards meet, None sings a merrier catch, or lends a hand More willing to his cup.--Poor wretch! he minds not, That soon some trusty brother of the trade Shall do for him what he has done for thousands. On this side, and on that, men see their friends Drop off, like leaves in autumn; yet launch out Into fantastic schemes, which the long livers In the world's hale and undegenerate days 470 Could scarce have leisure for.--Fools that we are! Never to think of death and of ourselves At the same time: as if to learn to die Were no concern of ours.--O more than sottish, For creatures of a day, in gamesome mood, To frolic on eternity's dread brink Unapprehensive; when, for aught we know, The very first swoln surge shall sweep us in! Think we, or think we not, time hurries on With a resistless, unremitting stream; 480 Yet treads more soft than e'er did midnight thief, That slides his hand under the miser's pillow, And carries off his prize.--What is this world? What but a spacious burial-field unwall'd, Strew'd with death's spoils, the spoils of animals Savage and tame, and full of dead men's bones! The very turf on which we tread once lived; And we that live must lend our carcases To cover our own offspring: in their turns They too must cover theirs.--'Tis here all meet! 490 The shivering Icelander, and sun-burnt Moor; Men of all climes, that never met before; And of all creeds, the Jew, the Turk, the Christian. Here the proud prince, and favourite yet prouder, His sovereign's keeper, and the people's scourge, Are huddled out of sight.--Here lie abash'd The great negotiators of the earth, And celebrated masters of the balance, Deep read in stratagems, and wiles of courts. Now vain their treaty skill: death scorns to treat. 500 Here the o'er-loaded slave flings down his burden From his gall'd shoulders;--and when the cruel tyrant, With all his guards and tools of power about him, Is meditating new unheard-of hardships, Mocks his short arm,--and, quick as thought, escapes Where tyrants vex not, and the weary rest. Here the warm lover, leaving the cool shade, The tell-tale echo, and the babbling stream (Time out of mind the favourite seats of love), Fast by his gentle mistress lays him down, 510 Unblasted by foul tongue.--Here friends and foes Lie close; unmindful of their former feuds. The lawn-robed prelate and plain presbyter, Erewhile that stood aloof, as shy to meet, Familiar mingle here, like sister streams That some rude interposing rock had split. Here is the large-limb'd peasant;--here the child Of a span long, that never saw the sun, Nor press'd the nipple, strangled in life's porch. Here is the mother, with her sons and daughters; 520 The barren wife; the long-demurring maid, Whose lonely unappropriated sweets Smiled like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff, Not to be come at by the willing hand. Here are the prude severe, and gay coquette, The sober widow, and the young green virgin, Cropp'd like a rose before 'tis fully blown, Or half its worth disclosed. Strange medley here! Here garrulous old age winds up his tale; And jovial youth, of lightsome vacant heart, 530 Whose every day was made of melody, Hears not the voice of mirth.--The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, the churl, the scoundrel, and the mean; The supple statesman, and the patriot stern; The wrecks of nations, and the spoils of time, With all the lumber of six thousand years. 540 Poor man!--how happy once in thy first state! When yet but warm from thy great Maker's hand, He stamp'd thee with his image, and, well pleased, Smiled on his last fair work.--Then all was well. Sound was the body, and the soul serene; Like two sweet instruments, ne'er out of tune, That play their several parts.--Nor head, nor heart, Offer'd to ache: nor was there cause they should; For all was pure within: no fell remorse, Nor anxious casting-up of what might be, 550 Alarm'd his peaceful bosom.--Summer seas Show not more smooth, when kiss'd by southern winds Just ready to expire.--Scarce importuned, The generous soil, with a luxuriant hand, Offer'd the various produce of the year, And everything most perfect in its kind. Blessed! thrice-blessed days!--But ah, how short! Blest as the pleasing dreams of holy men; But fugitive like those, and quickly gone. O slippery state of things!--What sudden turns! 560 What strange vicissitudes in the first leaf Of man's sad history!--To-day most happy, And ere to-morrow's sun has set, most abject! How scant the space between these vast extremes! Thus fared it with our sire:--not long he enjoy'd His paradise.--Scarce had the happy tenant Of the fair spot due time to prove its sweets, Or sum them up, when straight he must be gone, Ne'er to return again.--And must he go? Can nought compound for the first dire offence 570 Of erring man? Like one that is condemn'd, Fain would he trifle time with idle talk, And parley with his fate. But 'tis in vain; Not all the lavish odours of the place, Offer'd in incense, can procure his pardon, Or mitigate his doom. A mighty angel, With flaming sword, forbids his longer stay, And drives the loiterer forth; nor must he take One last and farewell round. At once he lost His glory and his God. If mortal now, 580 And sorely maim'd, no wonder!--Man has sinn'd. Sick of his bliss, and bent on new adventures, Evil he needs would try: nor tried in vain. (Dreadful experiment! destructive measure! Where the worst thing could happen is success.) Alas! too well he sped:--the good he scorn'd Stalk'd off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost, Not to return; or if it did, its visits, Like those of angels, short and far between: Whilst the black Demon, with his hell-scaped train, 590 Admitted once into its better room, Grew loud and mutinous, nor would be gone; Lording it o'er the man: who now too late Saw the rash error which he could not mend: An error fatal not to him alone, But to his future sons, his fortune's heirs. Inglorious bondage! Human nature groans Beneath a vassalage so vile and cruel, And its vast body bleeds through every vein. What havoc hast thou made, foul monster, Sin! 600 Greatest and first of ills: the fruitful parent Of woes of all dimensions: but for thee Sorrow had never been,--All-noxious thing, Of vilest nature! Other sorts of evils Are kindly circumscribed, and have their bounds. The fierce volcano, from his burning entrails That belches molten stone and globes of fire, Involved in pitchy clouds of smoke and stench, Mars the adjacent fields for some leagues round, And there it stops. The big-swoln inundation, 610 Of mischief more diffusive, raving loud, Buries whole tracts of country, threatening more; But that too has its shore it cannot pass. More dreadful far than these! Sin has laid waste, Not here and there a country, but a world: Despatching, at a wide-extended blow, Entire mankind; and for their sakes defacing A whole creation's beauty with rude hands; Blasting the foodful grain, the loaded branches; And marking all along its way with ruin. 620 Accursed thing!--Oh! where shall fancy find A proper name to call thee by, expressive Of all thy horrors?--Pregnant womb of ills! Of tempers so transcendantly malign, That toads and serpents of most deadly kind Compared to thee are harmless.--Sicknesses Of every size and symptom, racking pains, And bluest plagues, are thine.--See how the fiend Profusely scatters the contagion round! Whilst deep-mouth'd slaughter, bellowing at her heels, 630 Wades deep in blood new-spilt; yet for to-morrow Shapes out new work of great uncommon daring, And inly pines till the dread blow is struck. But, hold! I've gone too far; too much discover'd My father's nakedness, and nature's shame. Here let me pause, and drop an honest tear, One burst of filial duty and condolence, O'er all those ample deserts Death hath spread, This chaos of mankind.--O great man-eater! Whose every day is carnival, not sated yet! 640 Unheard-of epicure, without a fellow! The veriest gluttons do not always cram; Some intervals of abstinence are sought To edge the appetite: Thou seekest none. Methinks the countless swarms thou hast devour'd, And thousands at each hour thou gobblest up, This, less than this, might gorge thee to the full! But, ah! rapacious still, thou gap'st for more: Like one, whole days defrauded of his meals, On whom lank Hunger lays her skinny hand, 650 And whets to keenest eagerness his cravings: As if diseases, massacres, and poison, Famine, and war, were not thy caterers. But know that thou must render up thy dead, And with high interest too.--They are not thine, But only in thy keeping for a season, Till the great promised day of restitution; When loud-diffusive sound from brazen trump Of strong-lung'd cherub shall alarm thy captives, And rouse the long, long sleepers into life, 660 Day-light, and liberty.-- Then must thy gates fly open, and reveal The mines that lay long forming under ground, In their dark cells immured; but now full ripe, And pure as silver from the crucible, That twice has stood the torture of the fire And inquisition of the forge. We know, The illustrious Deliverer of mankind, The Son of God, thee foil'd. Him in thy power Thou couldst not hold: self-vigorous he rose, 670 And, shaking off thy fetters, soon retook Those spoils his voluntary yielding lent: (Sure pledge of our releasement from thy thrall!) Twice twenty days he sojourn'd here on earth, And show'd himself alive to chosen witnesses, By proofs so strong, that the most slow-assenting Had not a scruple left. This having done, He mounted up to heaven. Methinks I see him Climb the aerial heights, and glide along Athwart the severing clouds: but the faint eye, 680 Flung backwards in the chase, soon drops its hold; Disabled quite, and jaded with pursuing. Heaven's portals wide expand to let him in; Nor are his friends shut out: as some great prince Not for himself alone procures admission, But for his train. It was his royal will That where he is, there should his followers be. Death only lies between: a gloomy path, Made yet more gloomy by our coward fears; But not untrod, nor tedious: the fatigue 690 Will soon go off. Besides, there's no bye-road To bliss. Then why, like ill-condition'd children, Start we at transient hardships in the way That leads to purer air, and softer skies, And a ne'er-setting sun?--Fools that we are! We wish to be where sweets unwithering bloom; But straight our wish revoke, and will not go. So have I seen, upon a summer's even, Fast by the rivulet's brink a youngster play: How wishfully he looks to stem the tide! 700 This moment resolute, next unresolved: At last he dips his foot; but as he dips, His fears redouble, and he runs away From the inoffensive stream, unmindful now Of all the flowers that paint the further bank, And smiled so sweet of late.--Thrice welcome death! That after many a painful bleeding step Conducts us to our home, and lands us safe On the long-wish'd-for shore.--Prodigious change! Our bane turn'd to a blessing!--Death, disarm'd, 710 Loses his fellness quite.--All thanks to him Who scourged the venom out!--Sure the last end Of the good man is peace!--How calm his exit! Night dews fall not more gently to the ground, Nor weary, worn-out winds expire so soft. Behold him in the evening-tide of life, A life well spent, whose early care it was His riper years should not upbraid his green: By unperceived degrees he wears away; Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting. 720 High in his faith and hopes, look how he reaches After the prize in view! and, like a bird That's hamper'd, struggles hard to get away: Whilst the glad gates of sight are wide expanded To let new glories in, the first fair fruits Of the fast-coming harvest.--Then, oh then! Each earth-born joy grows vile, or disappears, Shrunk to a thing of nought.--Oh! how he longs To have his passport sign'd, and be dismiss'd! 'Tis done! and now he's happy! The glad soul 730 Has not a wish uncrown'd.--Even the lag flesh Rests, too, in hope of meeting once again Its better half, never to sunder more. Nor shall it hope in vain:--the time draws on, When not a single spot of burial earth, Whether on land, or in the spacious sea, But must give back its long-committed dust Inviolate!--and faithfully shall these Make up the full account; not the least atom Embezzled, or mislaid, of the whole tale. 740 Each soul shall have a body ready furnish'd; And each shall have his own.--Hence, ye profane! Ask not how this can be?--Sure the same power That rear'd the piece at first, and took it down, Can re-assemble the loose scatter'd parts, And put them as they were.--Almighty God Has done much more; nor is his arm impair'd Through length of days: and what he can, he will: His faithfulness stands bound to see it done. When the dread trumpet sounds, the slumbering dust, 750 Not unattentive to the call, shall wake; And every joint possess its proper place, With a new elegance of form, unknown To its first state. Nor shall the conscious soul Mistake its partner, but, amidst the crowd, Singling its other half, into its arms Shall rush, with all the impatience of a man That's new come home; and, having long been absent, With haste runs over every different room, In pain to see the whole. Thrice happy meeting! 760 Nor time, nor death, shall ever part them more. Tis but a night, a long and moonless night; We make the grave our bed, and then are gone. Thus, at the shut of even, the weary bird Leaves the wide air, and in some lonely brake Cowers down, and dozes till the dawn of day, Then claps his well-fledged wings, and bears away.

A POEM,

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE LEARNED AND EMINENT MR WILLIAM LAW, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

In silence to suppress my griefs I've tried, And kept within its banks the swelling tide! But all in vain: unbidden numbers flow; Spite of myself my sorrows vocal grow. This be my plea.--Nor thou, dear Shade, refuse The well-meant tribute of the willing muse, Who trembles at the greatness of its theme, And fain would say what suits so high a name. Which, from the crowded journal of thy fame,-- Which of thy many titles shall I name? 10 For, like a gallant prince, that wins a crown, By undisputed right before his own, Variety thou hast: our only care Is what to single out, and what forbear. Though scrupulously just, yet not severe; Though cautious, open; courteous, yet sincere; Though reverend, yet not magisterial; Though intimate with few, yet loved by all; Though deeply read, yet absolutely free From all the stiffnesses of pedantry; 20 Though circumspectly good, yet never sour; Pleasant with innocence, and never more. Religion, worn by thee, attractive show'd, And with its own unborrow'd beauty glow'd: Unlike the bigot, from whose watery eyes Ne'er sunshine broke, nor smile was seen to rise; Whose sickly goodness lives upon grimace, And pleads a merit from a blubber'd face. Thou kept thy raiment for the needy poor, And taught the fatherless to know thy door; 30 From griping hunger set the needy free; That they were needy, was enough to thee. Thy fame to please, whilst others restless be, Fame laid her shyness by, and courted thee; And though thou bade the flattering thing give o'er, Yet, in return, she only woo'd thee more. How sweet thy accents! and how mild thy look! What smiling mirth was heard in all thou spoke; Manhood and grizzled age were fond of thee, And youth itself sought thy society. 40 The aged thou taught, descended to the young, Clear'd up the irresolute, confirm'd the strong; To the perplex'd thy friendly counsel lent, And gently lifted up the diffident; Sigh'd with the sorrowful, and bore a part In all the anguish of a bleeding heart; Reclaim'd the headstrong; and, with sacred skill, Committed hallow'd rapes upon the will; Soothed our affections; and, with their delight, To gain our actions, bribed our appetite. 50 Now, who shall, with a greatness like thy own, Thy pulpit dignify, and grace thy gown? Who, with pathetic energy like thine, The head enlighten, and the heart refine? Learn'd were thy lectures, noble the design, The language _Roman_, and the action fine; The heads well ranged, the inferences clear, And strong and solid thy deductions were: Thou mark'd the boundaries out 'twixt right and wrong, And show'd the land-marks as thou went along. 60 Plain were thy reasonings, or, if perplex'd, Thy life was the best comment on thy text; For, if in darker points we were deceived, 'Twas only but observing how thou lived. Bewilder'd in the greatness of thy fame, What shall the Muse, what next in order name? Which of thy social qualities commend-- Whether of husband, father, or of friend? A husband soft, beneficent, and kind, As ever virgin wish'd, or wife could find; 70 A father indefatigably true To both a father's trust and tutor's too; A friend affectionate and staunch to those Thou wisely singled out; for few thou chose: Few, did I say, that word we must recall; A friend, a willing friend, thou wast to all. Those properties were thine, nor could we know Which rose the uppermost, so all wast thou. So have I seen the many-colour'd mead, Brush'd by the vernal breeze, its fragrance shed: 80 Though various sweets the various field exhaled, Yet could we not determine which prevail'd, Nor this part _rose_, that _honey-suckle_ call But a rich bloomy aggregate of all. And thou, the once glad partner of his bed, But now by sorrow's weeds distinguished, Whose busy memory thy grief supplies, And calls up all thy husband to thine eyes; Thou must not be forgot. How alter'd now! How thick thy tears! How fast thy sorrows flow! 90 The well known voice that cheer'd thee heretofore, These soothing accents thou must hear no more. Untold be all the tender sighs thou drew, When on thy cheek he fetch'd a long adieu. Untold be all thy faithful agonies, At the last anguish of his closing eyes; For thou, and only such as thou, can tell The killing anguish of a last farewell. This earth, yon sun, and these blue-tinctured skies, Through which it rolls, must have their obsequies: 100 Pluck'd from their orbits, shall the planets fall, And smoke and conflagration cover all: What, then, is man? The creature of a day, By moments spent, and minutes borne away. Time, like a raging torrent, hurries on; Scarce can we say _it is_, but that 'tis gone. Whether, fair shade! with social spirits, tell (Whose properties thou once described so well), Familiar now thou hearest them relate The rites and methods of their happy state: 110 Or if, with forms more fleet, thou roams abroad, And views the great magnificence of God, Points out the courses of the orbs on high, And counts the silver wonders of the sky! Or if, with glowing seraphim, thou greets Heaven's King, and shoutest through the golden streets, That crowds of white-robed choristers display, Marching in triumph through the pearly way? Now art thou raised beyond this world of cares, This weary wilderness, this vale of tears; 120 Forgetting all thy toils and labours past, No gloom of sorrow stains thy peaceful breast. Now, 'midst seraphic splendours shalt thou dwell, And be what only these pure forms can tell. How cloudless now, and cheerful is thy day! What joys, what raptures, in thy bosom play! How bright the sunshine, and how pure the air! There's no difficulty of breathing there. With willing steps a pilgrim at thy shrine, To dew it with my tears the task be mine; 130 In lonely dirge, to murmur o'er thy urn And with new-gather'd flowers thy turf adorn: Nor shall thy image from my bosom part; No force shall rip thee from this bleeding heart. Oft shall I think o'er all I've left in thee, Nor shall oblivion blot thy memory; But grateful love its energy express (The father gone) now to the fatherless.

END OF BLAIR'S POEMS.

POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM FALCONER.

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF

WILLIAM FALCONER.

It may seem singular how the life of a sailor--a life so full of vicissitude and enterprise, of hair's-breadth escapes, of contact with wild men and wild usages, and of intercourse with a form of nature so vast, so fluctuating, so mysterious, and so terribly sublime as the ocean, which, in its calm and silence, forms an emblem of all that is peaceful and profound, and, in its tempestuous rage, of all that is unreconciled and anarchical in the mind of man, now comparable to a

"Cradled child in dreamless slumber bound!"

and now to a mad sister of the earth, screaming and foaming in fierce and aimless antagonism to her brother--should have reared so few poets. This may arise either from the uncultivated and careless character of sailors as a class, or from the influence of habit in deadening the effect of the grandest objects. It is the same with other modes of life equally romantic. What more so than that of a shepherd among the Grampian Mountains, constantly living between the everlasting hills and the silent sun and stars, surrounded by streams, cataracts, deep dun moorlands, and the wild-eyed and wild-winged creatures which dwell in them alone, their life hid in Nature, and their cries of rude praise going up continually to Nature's God? And yet the Highlands of Scotland have not hitherto produced one great rural poet, except Macpherson, who did belong to the peasantry. And so of the seafaring class; only, so far as we remember, have expressed, the one in verse, and the other in prose, the 'poetry' of their calling,--namely, Cooper and Falconer, both of whose descriptions of sea storms and scenery have been equalled, if not surpassed, however, by such landsmen as Byron and Scott. A poetic mind, which comes in contact with strange and wonderful events or scenery only at intervals, often carries away a much more vivid idea of their striking features than those who reside constantly in their midst. It must be a very rough rope, to borrow an image from the theme, which does not feel softer after long handling. It is the short and sudden impression, made in the twinkling of an eye, which is at once the most lively and the most lasting. When, however, enthusiasm continues, as in some favoured cases, unabated by familiarity, and is united to thorough technical knowledge, then the professional man may be nearly as successful as the amateur, or if there be any deficiency in freshness of feeling, it is made up for by accuracy of knowledge. It was so in the case of James Hogg, the poet of the shepherd life of Southern Scotland, and in William Falconer, the poet of British shipwreck. We shall afterwards show how his knowledge of his profession partly helped and partly hindered him in his poem.

William Falconer was born in Edinburgh in the year 1736. He was the son of a poor barber in the Netherbow, who had two other children, both deaf and dumb, who ended their days in a poor-house. He early, through frequent visits to Leith, came in contact with that tremendous element which he was to sing so powerfully, and in which he was to sink at last--which was to give him at once his glory and his grave. While a mere boy, he went, by his own account, reluctantly on board a Leith merchant ship, and was afterwards in the Royal Navy. Of his early education or habits very little is known. He had all his scholarship from one Webster. We figure him (after the similitude of a dear lost sailor boy, a relative of our own) as a stripling, with curling hair, ruddy cheek, form prematurely developed into round robustness, frank, free, and manly bearing, returning ever and anon from his ocean wanderings, and bearing to his friends some rare bird or shell of the tropics as a memorial of his labours and his love. Before he was eighteen years of age, Providence supplied him with the materials whence he was to pile up the monument of his future fame. He became second mate in the ship 'Britannia', a vessel trading in the Levant. This vessel was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, exactly in the manner described in the poem, which is just a coloured photograph of the adventures, difficulties, dangers, and disastrous result of the voyage. In 1751 we find him living in Edinburgh, and publishing his first poem. This was an elegy on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was followed by other pieces, which appeared in the 'Gentleman's Magazine', and which will be found in this volume. Some have claimed for him the authorship of the favourite sea song, "Cease, Rude Boreas," but this seems uncertain.

Falconer is supposed to have continued in the merchant service (one of his biographers maintains that he was for some time in the 'Ramilies', a man-of-war, which suffered shipwreck in the Channel) till 1762, when he published his "Shipwreck." This poem was dedicated to the Duke of York, who had newly become Rear-Admiral of the Blue on board the 'Princess Amelia', attached to the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The Duke was not a Solomon, but he had sense enough to perceive, that the sailor who could produce such a poem was no ordinary man, and generous enough to offer him promotion, if he should leave the merchant service for the Royal Navy. Falconer, accordingly, was promoted to be a midshipman on board the 'Royal George' (Sir Edward Hawke's ship); the same, we believe, which afterwards went down in such a disastrous manner, and furnished a subject for one of Cowper's boldest little poems. "The Shipwreck" was highly commended by the 'Monthly Review',--then the leading literary organ,--and became widely popular.

While in the 'Royal George', Falconer contrived to find time for his poetical studies. Retiring sometimes from his messmates, into a small space between the cable-trees and the ship's side, he wrote his Ode on "the Duke of York's Second Departure from England, as Rear-Admiral." This poem was severely criticised in the 'Critical Review'. It has certainly much pomp, and thundering sound of language and versification, but wants the genuine Pindaric inspiration.

At the peace of 1763 the 'Royal George' was paid off, and Falconer became purser of the 'Glory', frigate of 32 guns. About this time he married a young lady named Hicks, daughter of a surgeon in Sheerness-yard--a lady more distinguished by her mental than her physical qualities. The poet dubbed her in his verses, "Miranda." It is hinted that he had some difficulty in procuring her consent to marry him, and was forced to lay regular siege to her in rhyme. At length she capitulated, and the marriage was eminently happy. She survived her husband many years; lived at Bath, and enjoyed a comfortable livelihood on the proceeds of her husband's "Marine Dictionary."

When the 'Glory' was laid up at Chatham, Commissioner Hanway, brother of the once celebrated Jonas Hanway (whom Dr Johnson so justly chastised for his diatribe against Tea), showed much interest in the pursuits and person of our poet. He even ordered the captain's cabin to be fitted up with every comfort, that Falconer might pursue his studies without expense, and with all convenience. Here he brought his "Marine Dictionary" to a conclusion--a work which had occupied him for years, and which supplied a desideratum in the literature of the profession. The design had been suggested by one Scott, and approved of by Sir Edward Hawke; and the book, when it appeared in 1769, was greatly commended by Dr Hamel, the Frenchman, who had gained note himself, by producing some works on naval architecture. From the 'Glory' Falconer received an appointment in the 'Swift-sure'. In 1764 he issued a new edition of "The Shipwreck," carefully corrected, and with considerable additions. The next year he issued a political poem, in which, like a true tar of the 'Royal George', he took the King's side, and emitted much dull and drivelling bile against Lord Chatham, Wilkes, and Churchill. The satire proved that, though at home on the ocean, he was utterly "at sea" in land-politics.

Falconer had now left his cabin study with its many pleasant accommodations, and become a scribbler of all work in a London garret. Here his existence ran on for a while in an obscure and probably miserable current. It is said that Murray, the bookseller, the father of 'the' John Murray, of Albemarle Street, wished to take the poet into partnership,--upon terms of great advantage,--but that Falconer, for reasons which are not known, declined the offer. "My Murray," as Byron calls him, was destined instead to have his name connected with a grander and ghastlier shipwreck than it lay in the brain of the projected partner of his firm to conceive, or in his genius to execute--that, namely, described in the ever-detestable, yet ever-memorable, second canto of "Don Juan."

In 1769, a third edition of his poem was called for, and he was employed in making improvements and additions when he was again summoned to sea. In his hurry of departure, he is said to have committed these to the care of the notorious David Mallett, the son of a Crieff innkeeper, the friend of Thomson, the biographer of Bacon, and, as Johnson called him, the "beggarly Scotchman, who drew the trigger of Bolingbroke's blunderbuss of infidelity," who seems to have paid no manner of attention to his trust, as mistakes in the nautical terms and a frequent inferiority in execution manifest.

Falconer had undoubtedly thought the sea a hard and sickening profession; but latterly found that writing for the booksellers was a slavery still more abject and unendurable. He resolved once more to embark upon the "melancholy main." Often as he had hugged its horrors, laid his hand on its mane, and narrowly escaped its devouring jaws, he was drawn in again as by the fatal suction of a whirlpool into its power. Perhaps he had imbibed a passion for the sea. At all events, he accepted the office of purser to the Aurora frigate, which was going out to India, and on the 30th of September 1769, he left England for ever. The Aurora was never heard of more! Some vague rumours, indeed, prevailed of a contradictory character--that she had been burned--that she had foundered in the Mozambique Channel--that she had been cast away on a reef of rocks near Macao--that five persons had been saved from her wreck, but nothing certain transpired, except that she was lost; and this fine singer of the sea along with her. Unfortunate Aurora! dawn soon overcast! Unfortunate poet, so speedily removed!

"It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built i' the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, That laid so low that sacred head of thine."

The drowning of one poet of far loftier genius in the Bay of Spezia, latterly proved that the offering up of Falconer's life had not fully appeased the wrath of old Neptune, and that bards may still entertain, in the lines of Wordsworth,

"Of the old sea some reverential fear."

Burns heard of and deplored the loss of the Poet of the Shipwreck. In one of his letters to Mrs Dunlop, he mentions the fact, and adds the beautiful words, "He was one of those daring, adventurous spirits which Scotland beyond any other country is remarkable for producing. Little does the fond mother think, as she hangs delighted over the sweet little leech at her bosom, where the poor fellow may hereafter wander, and what may be his fate. I remember a stanza in an old Scottish ballad, which speaks feelingly to the heart--

'Little did my mother think, That day she cradled me, What land I was to travel on, Or what death I should die.'"

Falconer is represented as a bluff, blunt, but cheerful sailor--fond of amusing his shipmates with acrostics on the names of their mistresses--with little learning except in seamanship, and what he had picked up in his travels. His smaller pieces scarcely deserve criticsm. His whole reputation now reposes on the one pillar of his one poem, "The Shipwreck."

This poem was greatly overrated when it first appeared. It was by some critics preferred to Virgil's "Æneid," and compared to the "Odyssey." It is now, we think, as unjustly depreciated. That there is a good deal of swollen commonplace in the diction and sentiments, must be admitted. Falconer arose in a bad age in respect of poetry. The terseness of Pope was gone, and in his imitators only his tinkle remained. His exquisite sense and trembling finish had vanished, and only his conventional diction--the ghost of his greatness--was to be found in the poets of the time. It was extremely natural that a half-taught mind like Falconer's should be captivated by what was the mode of the day. Indeed, Burns himself was only saved from the same error by continuing to write in Scotch; many of his English verses and his letters are marred by more or less of the disgusting and vicious affectation of style which then prevailed; and in parts of Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," we find the last modified specimen of the evil. Hence, in Falconer the obsolete mythological allusions--the names with classical terminations--the perpetual apostrophes--the set and stilted speeches he puts into the mouths of heroes--the bombast, verbiage, and sounding sameness of much of his verse. Nor do we greatly admire the story which he introduces with the poem, nor the discrimination of his characters, nor, what may be called strictly, the pathos of the piece. Indeed, considering the size of the poem, there is so much that is vapid and common, that the counter-balancing excellences must be great ere they could have floated it so long. To use an expression suitable to the theme, the vessel which has sailed so far, notwithstanding its numerous leaks, must be of a strong and sturdy build.

And this is the main merit of "The Shipwreck." It has in most of its descriptive passages a certain rugged strength and truth, which prove at once the perspicacity and the poetic vision of the author, who, while he sees all the minute details of his subject, sees also the glory of imagination shining around them. A ship appears before his view, with its every spar and yard, clear and distinct as if seen in meridian sunshine, and yet with a radiance of poetry around it all, as if he were looking at it by moonlight, or in the magical light of a dream. Take the following lines, for instance:--

"Up-torn reluctant from its oozy cave, The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave. High on the slipp'ry masts the yards ascend, And far abroad the canvas wings extend. Along the glassy plain the vessel glides, While azure radiance trembles on her sides."

We grant, indeed, that sometimes his technical lore rises up, as it were, and drowns the poetry. What imaginative quality, for example, have we in the following verses?

"The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent, In streaming pendants flying, is unbent; With brails refixed, another soon prepared, Ascending spreads along beneath the yard; To each yard-arm the head-rope they extend, And soon their ear-rings and their robans bend. That task perform'd, they first the braces slack, Then to the chess-tree drag the unwilling tack; And, while the lee clue-garnet's lower'd away, Taught aft the sheet they tally, and belay."

This is mere log-book; and such passages are common in the poem. But frequently he bathes the web of the shrouds and ship-rigging in rich ideal gold. Take the following:--

"With equal sheets restrain'd, the bellying sail Spreads a broad concave to the sweeping gale; While o'er the foam the ship impetuous flies, The helm the attentive timoneer applies: As in pursuit along the aerial way, With ardent eye the falcon marks his prey, Each motion watches of the doubtful chase, Obliquely wheeling through the fluid space; So, govern'd by the steersman's GLOWING hands, The regent helm her motion still commands."

Falconer may in some points be likened to Crabbe. Like him, he excels in minute and patient painting. Like him he is capable at times of extracting the imaginative element from the barest and simplest details. And, like him, he sometimes sets before us, mere dry inventories or invoices, instead of such poetical catalogues as Homer gives of ships, and Milton of devils. It is remarkable that Falconer never shines at all except when he is describing ships or sea scenery.

"His path is on the mountain waves, His home is on the deep."

No words in Scripture are so strange to him as these, "There shall be no more sea." The course of his voyage in the Shipwreck, brings him past lands the most famous in the ancient world for arts and arms, for philosophy, patriotism, and poetry. And sore does he labour to lash himself into inspiration as he apostrophizes them; but in vain--the result is little else than furious feebleness and stilted bombast. But when he returns to the element, the impatient, irregular, changeful, treacherous, terrible ocean--and watches the night, winged with black storm and red lightning, sinking down over the Mediterranean, and the devoted bark which is helplessly struggling with its billows, then his blood rises, his verse heaves, and hurries on, and you see the full-born poet--

"High o'er the poop the audacious seas aspire, Uproll'd in hills of fluctuating fire: With labouring throes she rolls on either side, And dips her gunnells in the yawning tide. Her joints unhinged in palsied langour play, As ice-flakes part beneath the noontide ray; The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds, And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds. From wintry magazines that sweep the sky, Descending globes of hail incessant fly; High on the masts with pale and lurid rays, Amid the gloom portentous meteors blaze! The ethereal dome in mournful pomp array'd, Now buried lies beneath impervious shade,-- Now flashing round intolerable light, Redoubles all the horrors of the night. Such terror Sinai's trembling hill o'erspread, When Heaven's loud trumpet sounded o'er its head. It seem'd the wrathful angel of the wind, Had all the horrors of the skies combined; And here to one ill-fated ship opposed, At once the dreadful magazine disclosed."

This is noble writing. "Deep calleth unto deep." It reminds us of Pope's translation of that tremendous passage in the 8th Book of the Iliad, where Jove comes forth, and darts his angry lightnings in the eyes of the Grecians, and repels and appals their mightiest; Nestor alone, but with his horse wounded by the dart of Paris, sustaining the divine assault.

Lord Byron, in his letter to Bowles in defence of Pope, alludes to Falconer's Shipwreck, and cites it in proof of the poetical use which may be made of the works of art. But it has justly been remarked by Hazlitt, in his very masterly reply, published in the 'London Magazine', that the finest parts of the Shipwreck are not those in which he appears to versify parts of his own Marine Dictionary, or in which he makes vain efforts to describe the vestiges of Grecian grandeur, but those in which, as in the above passage, he mates with the sublime and terrible 'natural' phenomena he meets in his voyage--the gathering of the storm--the treacherous lull of the sea, breathing itself like a tiger for its fatal spring--the ship, now walking the calm waters of the glassy sea, and now wrestling like a demon of kindred power and fury with the angry billows--the last fearful onset of the maddened surge--and the secret stab given by the assassin rock from below, which completes the ruin of the doomed vessel, and scatters its fragments o'er the tide, growling in joy--these, as the poet describes them, constitute the poetical glory of "The Shipwreck," and these have little connexion with art, and much with nature.

Lord Byron was better at emulating than at criticising Falconer's 'chef-d'oeuvre'. We have already once or twice alluded to 'his' Shipwreck--surely the grandest and most characteristic effort of his genius, in its demoniac force, and demoniac spirit. As we have elsewhere said, "he describes the horrors of a shipwreck, like a fiend who had, invisible, sat amid the shrouds, choked with laughter--with immeasurable glee had heard the wild farewell rising from sea to sky--had leaped into the long-boat as it put off with its pale crew--had gloated o'er the cannibal repast--had leered, unseen, into the 'dim eyes of those shipwreck'd men'--and with a loud and savage burst of derision had seen them at length sinking into the waves." The superiority of his picture over Falconer's, lies in the simplicity and strength of the style, in the ease of the narrative, in the variety of the incidents and characters, and in certain short masterly touches, now of pathos, now of infernal humour, and now of description, competent only to Byron and to Shakspeare. Such are,--

"Then shriek'd the timid and stood still the brave." "The bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony." "For he, poor fellow, had a wife and children, Two things to dying people quite bewildering,"--

and the inimitable description of the rainbow, closing with,--

"Then changed like to a bow that's bent, and then-- Forsook the dim eyes of these shipwreck'd men."

The technicalities introduced are fewer; and are handled with greater force, and made to tell more on the general effect. You marvel, too, at the versatility of the writer, who seems this moment to be looking at the scene with the eye of the melancholy Jacques; the next, with the philosophical aspect of the moralizing Hamlet; the next, with the rage of a misanthropical Timon; and the next, with the bitter sneer of a malignant Iago: and yet, who, amidst all these disguises, leaves on you the impression that he is throughout acting the part, and displaying the spirit, of a demon--a deep current of mockery at man's miseries, and at God's providence, running under all his moods and imitations. We read it once, when recovering from an illness, and shall never forget the withering horror, and the shock of disgust and loathing, which it gave to our weakened nerves.

Since Falconer's time, besides Byron, Scott, in the Pirate, and Cooper, there has not, as we hinted, been much of the poetical extracted from the sea. The subject suggested in Boswell's Johnson, by General Oglethorpe, as a noble theme for a poem--namely, "The Mediterranean," is still unsung, at least by any competent bard. Mrs Hemans has one sweet strain on the "Treasures of the Deep." Allan Cunningham's "Wet Sheet and Flowing Sea," and Barry Cornwall's "The Sea, the Sea," are in everybody's mouth. We remember a young student at Glasgow College, long since dead--George Gray by name--a thin lame lad, with dark mild eyes, and a fine spiritual expression on his pale face, handing in to Professor Milne of the Moral Philosophy class, some lines which he read to his class, and by which they, as well as the old, arid, although profound and ingenious philosopher, were perfectly electrified. We shall quote all we remember of them, and it will be thought much, when we state that twenty-five years have elapsed since we read them. They began--

"The storm is up; the anchor spring, And man the sails, my merry men; I must not lose the carolling Of ocean in a hurricane; My soul mates with the mountain storm, The cooing gale disdains. Bring Ocean in his wildest form, All booming thunder-strains; I'll bid him welcome, clap his mane; I'll dip my temples in his yeast, And hug his breakers to my breast; And bid them hail! all hail, I cry, My younger brethren hail!

The sea shall be my cemetery Unto eternity.

How glorious 'tis to have the wave For ever dashing o'er thee;-- Besides that dull and lonesome grave, Where worms and earth devour thee.

My messmates, when ye drink my dirge, Go, fill the cup from ocean's surge; And when ye drain the beverage up, Remember Neptune in the cup. For he has been my _brawling host_, Since first I roam'd from coast to coast; And he my _brawling_ host shall be-- I love his ocean courtesy-- His _boisterous_ hospitality."

These lines, to us at least, seem to echo the rough roar of the breakers, as they rush upon an iron-bound coast. Poor G. Gray! He now sleeps, not in the bosom of that old Ocean he loved so dearly, but, we think, in the kirkyard of Douglas, in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire,--a light early quenched,--but whose memory this notice and these lines may, perhaps, for a season, preserve! The SEA still lies over, after all written in prose or rhyme regarding it, as the subject for a great poem; and it will task all the energies of even the truest poet.

FALCONER'S POEMS.

THE SHIPWRECK.

IN THREE CANTOS.

THE TIME EMPLOYED IN THIS POEM IS ABOUT SIX DAYS.

Quæque ipse miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.

VIRG. ÆN. lib. ii.

INTRODUCTION TO THE POEM.

While jarring interests wake the world to arms, And fright the peaceful vale with dire alarms, While Albion bids the avenging thunder roll Along her vassal deep from pole to pole; Sick of the scene, where War with ruthless hand Spreads desolation o'er the bleeding land; Sick of the tumult, where the trumpet's breath Bids ruin smile, and drowns the groan of death; 'Tis mine, retired beneath this cavern hoar, That stands all lonely on the sea-beat shore, 10 Far other themes of deep distress to sing Than ever trembled from the vocal string: A scene from dumb oblivion to restore, To fame unknown, and new to epic lore; Where hostile elements conflicting rise, And lawless surges swell against the skies, Till hope expires, and peril and dismay Wave their black ensigns on the watery way. Immortal train! who guide the maze of song, To whom all science, arts, and arms belong; 20 Who bid the trumpet of eternal fame Exalt the warrior's and the poet's name, Or in lamenting elegies express The varied pang of exquisite distress; If e'er with trembling hope I fondly stray'd In life's fair morn beneath your hallow'd shade, To hear the sweetly-mournful lute complain, And melt the heart with ecstasy of pain, Or listen to the enchanting voice of love, While all Elysium warbled through the grove: 30 Oh! by the hollow blast that moans around, That sweeps the wild harp with a plaintive sound; By the long surge that foams through yonder cave, Whose vaults remurmur to the roaring wave; With living colours give my verse to glow, The sad memorial of a tale of woe! The fate in lively sorrow to deplore Of wanderers shipwreck'd on a leeward shore. Alas! neglected by the sacred Nine, Their suppliant feels no genial ray divine: 40 Ah! will they leave Pieria's happy shore To plough the tide where wintry tempests roar? Or shall a youth approach their hallow'd fane, Stranger to Phoebus, and the tuneful train? Far from the Muses' academic grove 'Twas his the vast and trackless deep to rove; Alternate change of climates has he known, And felt the fierce extremes of either zone: Where polar skies congeal the eternal snow, Or equinoctial suns for ever glow, 50 Smote by the freezing, or the scorching blast, 'A ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,' [1] From regions where Peruvian billows roar, To the bleak coasts of savage Labrador; From where Damascus, pride of Asian plains, Stoops her proud neck beneath tyrannic chains, To where the Isthmus, [2] laved by adverse tides, Atlantic and Pacific seas divides: But while he measured o'er the painful race In fortune's wild illimitable chase, 60 Adversity, companion of his way, Still o'er the victim hung with iron sway, Bade new distresses every instant grow, Marking each change of place with change of woe: In regions where the Almighty's chastening hand With livid pestilence afflicts the land, Or where pale famine blasts the hopeful year, Parent of want and misery severe; Or where, all-dreadful in the embattled line, The hostile ships in naming combat join, 70 Where the torn vessel wind and waves assail, Till o'er her crew distress and death prevail. Such joyless toils in early youth endured, The expanding dawn of mental day obscured, Each genial passion of the soul oppress'd, And quench'd the ardour kindling in his breast. Then censure not severe the native song, Though jarring sounds the measured verse prolong, Though terms uncouth offend the softer ear, Yet truth and human anguish deign to hear: 80 No laurel wreath these lays attempt to claim, Nor sculptured brass to tell the poet's name. And, lo! the power that wakes the eventful song Hastes hither from Lethean banks along: She sweeps the gloom, and rushing on the sight, Spreads o'er the kindling scene propitious light. In her right hand an ample roll appears, Fraught with long annals of preceding years, With every wise and noble art of man, Since first the circling hours their course began: 90 Her left a silver wand on high display'd, Whose magic touch dispels oblivion's shade: Pensive her look; on radiant wings that glow Like Juno's birds, or Iris' flaming bow, She sails; and swifter than the course of light Directs her rapid intellectual flight: The fugitive ideas she restores, And calls the wandering thought from Lethe's shores; To things long past a second date she gives, And hoary time from her fresh youth receives; 100 Congenial sister of immortal Fame, She shares her power, and Memory is her name. O first-born daughter of primeval time! By whom transmitted down in every clime The deeds of ages long elapsed are known, And blazon'd glories spread from zone to zone; Whose magic breath dispels the mental night, And o'er the obscured idea pours the light: Say on what seas, for thou alone canst tell, What dire mishap a fated ship befell, 110 Assail'd by tempests, girt with hostile shores? Arise! approach! unlock thy treasured stores! Full on my soul the dreadful scene display, And give its latent horrors to the day.

[Footnote 1: 'A ship-boy,' &c.: Shakspeare's 'Henry the Fourth,' act iii.] [Footnote 2: 'Isthmus:' of Darien.]