Page images
PDF
EPUB

TO MRS. M. B. ON HER BIRTH-DAY.

Oн, be thou bless'd with all that Heaven can send,
Long health, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend!
Not with those toys the female world admire,
Riches that vex, and vanities that tire.

With added years, if life bring nothing new,
But like a sieve let every blessing through,
Some joy still lost, as each vain year runs o'er,
And all we gain, some sad reflection more;
Is that a birth day? 'tis, alas! too clear,
'Tis but the funeral of the former year.

Let joy or ease, let affluence or content,
And the gay conscience of a life well spent,
Calm every thought, inspirit every grace,
Glow in thy heart, and smile upon thy face.
Let day improve on day, and year on year,
Without a pain, a trouble, or a fear;
Till death unfelt that tender frame destroy,
In some soft dream, or ecstacy of joy.
Peaceful sleep out the sabbath of the tomb,
And wake to raptures in a life to come.

TO MR. THOMAS SOUTHERN,
On his Birth-day, 1742.

RESIGN'D to live, prepared to die,
With not one sin but poetry,

This day Tom's fair account has run
(Without a blot) to eighty-one.
Kind Boyle, before his poet, lays
A table, with a cloth of bays;
And Ireland, mother of sweet singers,
Presents her harp still to his fingers.
The feast, his towering genius marks
In yonder wild-goose and the larks!
The mushrooms show his wit was sudden!
And for his judgment, lo! a pudden !

Roast beef, though old, proclaims him stout,
And grace, although a bard, devout.

May Tom, whom heaven sent down to raise
The price of prologues and of plays,
Be every birth-day more a winner,
Digest his thirty thousandth dinner;
Walk to his grave without reproach,
And scorn a rascal and a coach.

TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE.*

IN beauty or wit,

No mortal as yet,

To question your empire has dared

But men of discerning

Have thought that in learning,

To yield to a lady was hard.

Impertinent schools,

With musty dull rules,

Have reading to females denied::
So papists refuse

The Bible to use,

Lest flocks should be wise as their guide.

"Twas a woman at first

(Indeed she was cursed)

In knowledge that tasted delight,

And sages agree

That laws should decree

To the first of possessors the right.

* This panegyric on Lady Mary Wortley Montague might have been suppressed by Mr. Pope, on account of her having satirized him in her verses to the imitator of Horace; which abuse he returned in the first satire of the second book of Horace.

From furious Sappho, scarce a milder fate,
P-'d by her love, or libell'd by her hate.

Then bravely, fair dame,

Resume the old claim,

Which to your whole sex does belong;
And let men receive,

From a second bright Eve,

The knowledge of right and of wrong.
But if the first Eve,

Hard doom did receive,

When only one apple had she,
What a punishment new

Shall be found out for you,

Who tasting, have robb'd the whole tree!

EPISTLE IV, OF BOOK I, OF HORACE'S EPISTLES.*

A modern Imitation.

SAY,† St. John, who alone peruse
With candid eye, the mimic muse,
What schemes of politics, or laws,
In Gallic lands the patriot draws!
Is then a greater work in hand,
Than all the tomes of Haines's band?
'Or shoots he folly as it flies?
Or catches manners as they rise?'t
Or, urged by unquench'd native.heat,
Does St. John Greenwich sports repeat?

*This satire on Lord Bolingbroke, and the praise bestowed on him in a letter to Mr. Richardson, where Mr. Pope says,

The sons shall blush their fathers were his foes: being so contradictory, probably occasioned the former to be suppressed. S.

t

Ad Albium Tibullum.

Albi, nostrorum sermonum, candide judex, Quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedana? Scribere, quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula vincat. The lines here quoted occur in the Essay on Man. § An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres?

Where (emulous of Chartres' fame)
E'en Chartres' self is scarce a name.
*To you (the all-envied gift of heaven)
The indulgent gods, unask'd, have given
A form complete in every part,

And, to enjoy that gift, the art.

What could a tender mother's care
Wish better to her favourite heir,
Than wit, and fame, and lucky hours,
A stock of health, and golden showers,
And graceful fluency of speech,
Precepts before unknown to teach?
Amidst thy various ebbs of fear,
And gleaming hope, and black despair;
Yet let thy friend this truth impart;
A truth I tell with bleeding heart
(In justice for your labours past,)
That every day shall be your last;
That every hour you life renew
Is to your injured country due.

In spite of tears, of mercy spite,
My genius still must rail, and write.
Haste to thy Twickenham's safe retreat,
And mingle with the grumbling great:
There, half devour'd by spleen, you'll find
The rhyming bubbler of mankind;
There (objects of our mutual hate)
We'll ridicule both church and state.

Di tibi formam

Di tibi divitias dederunt, artemque fruendi. † Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno, Qui sapere, et fari possit quæ sentiat, et cui Gratia, fama, valetudo contingat abunde, non deficiente crumena? 1 Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras. Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. Me pinguem et nitidum bene curatâ cute visca, Cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege porcum.

[blocks in formation]

EPIGRAM ON MRS. TOFTS,

A handsome Woman with a fine Voice, but very covetous and proud.*

So bright is thy beauty, so charming thy song,
As had drawn both the beasts and their Orpheus along;
But such is thy avarice and such is thy pride,
That the beasts must have starved, and the poet
have died.

EPIGRAM,

On one who made long Epitaphs.†
FRIEND, for your epitaphs I'm grieved;
Where still so much is said,
One half will never be believed,

The other never read.

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER,
On his painting for me the Statues of Apollo,
Venus, and Hercules.

WHAT god, what genius, did the pencil move
When Kneller painted these?

'Twas Friendship-warm as Phoebus, kind as Love, And strong as Hercules.

*This epigram, first printed anonymously in Steele's Collection, and copied in the Miscellanies of Swift and Pope, is ascribed to Pope by sir John Hawkins, in his History of Music-Mrs. Tofts, who was the daughter of a person in the family of Bishop Burnet, is celebrated as a singer little inferior, either for her voice or manner, . to the best Italian women. She lived at the introduction of the opera into this kingdom, and sung in company with Nicolini; but, being ignorant of Italian, chanted her recitative in English, in answer to his Italian; yet the charms of their voices overcame the absurdity.

It is not generally known that the person here meant was Dr. Robert Friend, bead master of Westminater school,

« PreviousContinue »