Illuming e'en the clouds that roll
Along the darkness of my soul,
And bidding, with an angel's voice,
The heart, that knew no joy-rejoice.
Too late we met-too soon we part;
Yet dearer to my soul thou art
Than some whose love has grown with years,
Smiled with my smile, and wept my tears.
Farewell! but, absent, thou shalt seem
The vision of some heavenly dream,
Too bright on child of earth to dwell:
It must be so-my friend, farewell!
THRICE, oh, thrice happy shepherd's life and state,
When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns!
His cottage low, and safely humble gate,
Shuts out proud fortune, with her scorns and fawns;
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep;
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep;
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.
No Syrian worms he knows, that with their thread
Draw out their silken lives :-nor silken pride:
His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need,
Not in that proud Sidonian tincture dyed:
No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright;
No begging wants his middle fortune bite:
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite.
Instead of music and base flattering tongues,
Which wait to first-salute my lord's uprise,
The cheerful lark wakes him with early songs,
And birds' sweet whistling notes unlock his eyes.
In country plays is all the strife he uses;
Or sing, or dance unto the rural Muses;
And but in music's sports all difference refuses.
His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noontide's rage is spent:
His life is neither tost in boisterous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease:
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.
His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place:
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively picture of his father's face.
Never his humble house or state torment him;
Less he could like, it less his God had sent him; And when he dies, green turfs, with grassy tomb, content him.
PESTERED BY BAD POETS.
A passage in POPE's Epistle to Dr. ARBUTHNOT.
SHUT, shut the door, good John! fatigued I said,
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each band,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide? They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide. By land, by water, they renew the charge; They stop the chariot, and they board the barge. No place is sacred, not the church is free, Even Sunday shines no Sabbath day to me; Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, Happy! to catch me, just at dinner-time.
Is there a parson much bemused in beer,
A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,
A clerk fore-doomed his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a stanza when he should engross?
Is there who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls
With desperate charcoal round his darken'd walls?
All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain
Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain.
Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,
Imputes to me and my damn'd works the cause:
Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,
And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.
Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song,)
What drop or nostrum can this plague remove?
Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love?
A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped;
If foes, they write; if friends, they read me dead.
Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I?
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie :
To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace;
And to be grave, exceeds all power of face.
I sit with sad civility; I read
With honest anguish and an aching head;
And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,
This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years."
"Nine years!" cries he, who high in Drury-lane, Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends, Obliged by hunger,—and request of friends: "The piece, you think, is incorrect? why take it; “I'm all submission; what you'd have it, make it.'
Three things another's modest wishes bound, My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound. Pitholeon sends to me: "You know his grace; "I want a patron; ask him for a place." Pitholeon libelled me-"but here's a letter "Informs you, Sir, 'twas when he knew no better. "Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine; "He'll write a journal, or he'll turn divine."
Bless me! a packet.-"'Tis a stranger sues, "A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse." If I dislike it," furies, death and rage!" approve, "commend it to the stage."
There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends,
The players and I are, luckily, no friends.
Fired that the house reject him, "'Sdeath I'll print it,
"And shame the fools-your interest, Sir, with Lintot."
"Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much :”
"Not, Sir, if you revise it, and retouch."
All my demurs but double his attacks:
At last he whispers, " Do, and we go snacks."
Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door,
"Sir, let me see your works and you no more."
I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light
And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch :
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; the vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:
And war, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom : no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—m
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Ev'n dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands 'The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died,
Ev'n of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
|