And will, if young, repay the fondest care.
Sweet sets the sun of stormy life, and sweet
The morning shines, in Mercy's dews array'd.
Lo! how they rise, these families of Heaven!
That, chief (but why, ye bigots! why so late?)
Where blooms and warbles glad a rising age:
What smiles of praise! and, while their song ascends,
The listening seraph lays his lute aside.
"Hark! the gay Muses raise a nobler strain, With active nature, warm impassion'd truth, Engaging fable, lucid order, notes
Of various string, and heart-felt image fill'd.
Behold! I see the dread delightful school2
Of temper'd passions and of polish'd life
Restored. Behold! the well-dissembled scene
Calls from embellish'd eyes the lovely tear,
Or lights up mirth in modest cheeks again.
Lo! vanish'd monster-land. Lo! driven away
Those that Apollo's sacred walks profane :
Their wild creation scatter'd, where a world
Unknown to Nature, Chaos more confused,
O'er the brute scene its ouran-outangs pours;
Detested forms, that, on the mind impress'd,
Corrupt, confound, and barbarize an age!
"Behold, all thine again, the Sister-arts!
Thy Graces they, knit in harmonious dance.
Nursed by the treasure from a nation drain'd
Their works to purchase, they to nobler rouse
Their untamed genius, their unfetter'd thought;
Of pompous tyrants and of dreaming monks
The gaudy tools and prisoners no more.
"Lo! numerous domes a Burlington confess : For kings and senates fit, the palace see;
1 An hospital for foundlings.-2 School: theatre.
The temple, breathing a religious awe;
Even framed with elegance the plain retreat,
The private dwelling. Certain in his aim,
Taste, never idly working, saves expense.
"See Sylvan Scenes, where Art alone pretends
To dress her mistress, and disclose her charms!
Such as a Pope in miniature has shown;
A Bathurst o'er the widening forest1 spreads;
And such as form a Richmond, Chiswick, Stowe.
"August, around, what Public Works I see!
Lo! stately streets, lo! squares that court the breeze,
In spite of those to whom pertains the care:
Engulfing more than founded Roman ways,
Lo! ray'd from cities o'er the brighten❜d land,
Connecting sea to sea, the solid road.
Lo! the proud arch (no vile exactor's stand)
With easy sweep bestrides the chafing flood.
See! long canals and deepen'd rivers join
Each part with each, and with the circling main
The whole enliven'd isle. Lo! ports expand,
Free as the winds and waves, their sheltering arms.
Lo streaming comfort o'er the troubled deep,
On every pointed coast the lighthouse towers;
And, by the broad imperious mole repell'd,
Hark how the baffled storm indignant roars!"
As thick to view these varied Wonders rose,
Shook all my soul with transport, unassured,
The Vision broke; and on my waking eye
Rush'd the still Ruins of dejected Rome.
''Widening forest:' Okely Woods, near Cirencester.
THIS poem being writ in the manner of Spenser, the obsolete words, and a simplicity of diction in some of the lines which borders on the ludicrous, were necessary to make the imitation more perfect. And the style of that admirable poet, as well as the measure in which he wrote, are, as it were, appropriated by custom to all allegorical poems writ in our language; just as in French the style of Marot, who lived under Francis I., has been used in tales and familiar epistles by the politest writers of the age of Louis XIV.
EXPLANATION OF THE OBSOLETE WORDS USED IN THIS POEM.
The Castle hight of Indolence,
And its false luxury;
Where for a little time, alas!
We lived right jollily.
O MORTAL man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate :
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes, there is for it reason great;
For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail,
And curse thy star, and early drudge and late,
Withouten that would come an heavier bale,-
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.
In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,
Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
And there a season atween June and May,
Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half imbrown'd, A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.
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