Proud to gratify thy will,
Ready nature waits thee still:
Balmy wines to thee she pours,
Weeping through the dewy flow'rs;
Rich as those by Hebe given
To the thirsty sons of heaven.
Yet alas! we both agree;
Miserable thou like me!
Each alike in youth rehearses
Gentle strains, and tender verses;
Ever wandering far from home;
Mindless of the days to come,
(Such as aged winter brings
Trembling on his icy wings)
Both alike at last we die;
Thou art starv'd, and so am I!
To move the springs of nature as we please,
To think with spirit, but to write with ease:
With living words to warm the conscious heart,
Or please the soul with nicer charms of art,
For this the Grecian soar'd in epic strains,
And softer Maro left the Mantuan plains:
Melodious Spenser felt the lover's fire,
And awful Milton strung his heavenly lyre.
'Tis yours, like these, with curious toil to trace
The powers of language, harmony, and grace,
How nature's self with living lustre shines;
How judgment strengthens, and how art refines;
How to grow bold with conscious sense of fame,
And force a pleasure which we dare not blame;
To charm us more through negligence than pains,
And give ev'n life and action to the strains:
Led by some law, whose powerful impulse guides
Each happy stroke, and in the soul presides:
Some fairer image of perfection, giv'n
To' inspire mankind, itself deriv'd from Heav'n.
O ever worthy, ever crown'd with praise;
Bless'd in thy life, and bless'd in all thy lays!
Add, that the Sisters every thought refine:
Or ev❜n thy life be faultless as thy line:
Yet envy still with fiercer rage pursues,
Obscures the virtue, and defames the muse,
A soul like thine, in pains, in grief resign'd,
Views with vain scorn the malice of mankind:
Not critics, but their planets prove unjust:
And are they blam'd who sin because they must?
Yet sure not so must all peruse thy lays;
I cannot rival-and yet dare to praise.
A thousand charms at once my thoughts engage,
Sappho's soft sweetness, Pindar's warmer rage,
Statius' free vigour, Virgil's studious care,
And Homer's force, and Ovid's easier air.
So seems some picture, where exact design, And curious pains, and strength and sweetness join: Where the free thought its pleasing grace bestows, And each warm stroke with living colour grows: Soft without weakness, without labour fair; Wrought up at once with happiness and care!
How bless'd the man that from the world removes To joys that Mordaunt, or his Pope approves; Whose taste exact each author can explore, And live the present and past ages o'er: Who free from pride, from penitence, or strife, Move calmly forward to the verge of life:
Such be my days, and such my fortunes be,
To live by reason, and to write by thee!
Nor deem this verse, though humble, thy disgrace: All are not born the glory of their race:
Yet all are born to' adore the great man's name,
And trace his footsteps in the paths to fame.
The Muse who now this early homage pays,
First learn'd from thee to animate her lays:
A muse as yet unhonour'd, but unstain'd,
Who prais'd no vices, no preferment gain'd:
Unbiass'd or to censure or commend,
Who knows no envy, and who grieves no friend;
Perhaps too fond to make those virtues known,
And fix her fame immortal on thy own.
CONTENTMENT, INDUSTRY, AND ACQUIESCENCE
(Written in the Alpine parts of Carniola, 1749.)
"The wilderness and solitary place shall be glad for them (the children of the Lord :) and the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.'
WHY dwells my unoffending eye
On yon blank desert's trackless waste;
All dreary earth, or cheerless sky,
Like ocean wild, and bleak, and vast?
There Lysidor's enamour'd reed
Ne'er taught the plains Eudosia's praise;
here herds were rarely known to feed,
Or birds to sing, or flocks to graze.
Yet does my soul complacence find;
All, all from thee,
Supremely gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!*
The high-arch'd church is lost in sky,
The baset with thorns and briars bound:
The yawning fragments nod from high,
With close-encircling ivy crown'd:
Heart-thrilling echo multiplies
Voice after voice, creation new!
Beasts, birds obscene, unite their cries:
Graves ope, and spectres free the view.
Yet nought dismays; and thence we find
'Tis all from thee,
Supremely gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
Earth's womb, half dead to Ceres' skill,
Can scarce the cake of offering give;
Five acres' corn can hardly fill
The peasant's wain, and bid him live.
The starving beldam gleans in vain,
In vain the hungry chough succeeds:
They curse the unprolific plain,
The scurf-grown moss, and tawdry weeds.
* "To be satisfied, is the highest pitch of art man can arrive
Yet still sufficiency we find;
All, all from thee,
Supremely gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!
December's Boreas issues forth,
In sullen gloom and horror dress'd,
Charg'd with the nitre of the north,
Abhor'd by man, by bird, and beast.
All nature's lovely tint embrown'd,
Sickens beneath the putrid blast:
Destruction withers up the ground,
Like parchment into embers cast.
Yet health and strength, and ease we find :
All, all from thee,
Supremely gracious Deity,
Composer of the mind!
Tremble, and yonder Alp behold,
Where half-dead nature gasps below:
Victim of everlasting cold,
Entomb'd alive in endless snow,
The northern side is horror all;
Against the southern Phoebus plays;
In vain the' innoxious glimmerings fall,
The frost outlives, outshines the rays.
Yet consolation still I find;
And all from thee,
Supremely gracious Deity,
Corrector of the mind!.
Bless me! how doubly sharp it blows,
From Zemblan and Tartarian coasts!
In sullen silence fall the snows;
The only lustre nature boasts:
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