Away they came, through thick and thin, Our courtier walks from dish to dish, Give me again my hollow tree, A crust of bread, and liberty!' } BOOK IV. ODE I. TO VENUS. AGAIN? new tumults in my breast? Ah spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest! I am not now, alas! the man As in the gentle reign of my queen Anne. Ah! sound no more thy soft alarms, Nor circle sober fifty with thy charms! Mother too fierce of dear desires! Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires: To number five direct your doves There spread round Murray all your blooming loves; Noble and young, who strikes the heart With every sprightly, every decent part; Equal the injur'd to defend, To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend. He, with a hundred arts refin'd, Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind: To him each rival shall submit, Make but his riches equal to his wit. Then shall thy form the marble grace, (Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend the face : His house, embosom'd in the grove, Sacred to social life and social love, Shall glitter o'er the pendent green, Where Thames reflects the visionary scene: Thither the silver-sounding lyres Shall call the smiling loves and young desires; There, every grace and muse shall throng, Exalt the dance, or animate the song; There youths and nymphs, in consort gay, Shall hail the rising, close the parting day. With me, alas! those joys are o'er; For me the vernal garlands bloom no more. Adieu! fond hope of mutual fire, The still-believing, still renew'd desire; Adieu! the heart-expanding bowl, And all the kind deceivers of the soul! But why? ah tell me, ah too dear! Steals down my cheek th' involuntary tear? Why words so flowing, thoughts so free, Stop, or turn nonsense, at once glance of thee? Thee, dress'd in fancy's airy beam, Absent I follow through th' extended dream; Now, now I cease, I clasp thy charms, And now you burst (ah cruel) from my arms! And swiftly shoot along the Mall, Or softly glide by the canal ; Now shown by Cynthia's silver ray, And now on rolling waters snatch'd away. PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK. A FRAGMENT. EST you should think that verse shall die, Taught on the wings of truths to fly Though daring Milton sits sublime, Sages and chiefs long since had birth Ere Cæsar was or Newton nam'd; These rais'd new empires o'er the earth, And those new heavens and systems fram'd. Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! MISCELLANIES. ON RECEIVING FROM THE RIGHT HON. LADY FRANCES SHIRLEY A Standish and Two Pens. YES, I beheld th' Athenian queen Descend in all her sober charms; And, Take,' she said, and smil'd serene, Secure the radiant weapons wield; This golden lance shall guard desert, And if a vice dares keep the field, 'This steel shall stab it to the heart.' Aw'd, on my bended knees I fell, "What well? what weapon?' Flavia cries, It came from Bertrand's, not the skies; But, friend, take heed whom you attack; |