THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.*

I.

VITAL spark of heavenly flame !
Quit, O, quit this mortal frame :
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying;
O, the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

II.

Hark! they whisper; angels say,
'Sister spirit, come away!'
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

III.

The world recedes; it disappears :
Heaven opens on my eyes. My ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?

10

* Suggested by the following lines composed by the Emperor Adrian during his last illness :

'Animula vagula, blandula,
Hospes, comesque corporis,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca,
Pallidula, rigida, nudula?
Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos.'

ODE ON SOLITUDE.*

HAPPY the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air

In his own ground:

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire ;

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

In winter fire.

Bless'd, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,

Quiet by day;

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mix'd; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please

With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone

10

Tell where I lie. 20

IMITATIONS OF HORACE.

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.

* This was one of Pope's very early productions, written when he was not quite twelve years old.

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 injured to defend,

To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend. He, with a hundred arts refined,

10

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

21

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 the involuntary tear?

Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,

30

Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee?

*Murray's chambers were at No. 5, in King's-bench

walk.

Thee, dress'd in fancy's airy beam,

Absent I follow through the extended dream;

Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,

41

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.

BOOK IV. PART OF ODE IX.

A FRAGMENT.

LEST you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught on the wings of truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;

Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay.

Sages and chiefs long since had birth,

10

Ere Cæsar was, or Newton named ;
Those raised new empires o'er the earth,
And these new heavens and systems framed.

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride :
They had no poet, and they died.

In vain they schemed, in vain they bled:
They had no poet, and are dead.

TWO CHORUSES

TO THE TRAGEDY OF BRUTUS.

I.

CHORUS OF ATHENIANS.

STROPHE I.

YE shades, where sacred truth is sought;
Groves, where immortal sages taught;
Where heavenly visions Plato fired,
And Epicurus lay inspired!

In vain your guiltless laurels stood
Unspotted long with human blood.

War, horrid war, your thoughtful walks invades,
And steel now glitters in the Muses' shades.

ANTISTROPHE I.

O, heaven-born sisters! source of art!
Who charm the sense, or mend the heart; 10
Who lead fair Virtue's train along,

Moral Truth, and mystic Song!

To what new clime, what distant sky,
Forsaken, friendless, shall ye fly?

Say, will ye bless the bleak Atlantic shore?
Or bid the furious Gaul be rude no more?

STROPHE II.

When Athens sinks by fates unjust,
When wild barbarians spurn her dust;
Perhaps e'en Britain's utmost shore
Shall cease to blush with strangers' gore, 20
See arts her savage sons control,

And Athens rising near the pole;

Till some new tyrant lifts his purple hand,
And civil madness tears them from the land.