The fibrous labyrinths by just degrees
Stretch their fwoln cells, replete with future trees,
By time evolv'd, the spreading branches rise,
Yield their rich fruits, and fhoot into the fkies.
O! lovely babe, what luftre shall adorn
Thy noon of beauty, when so bright thy morn?
Shine forth advancing with a brighter ray,
And may no vice o'ercloud thy future day!
With nobler aims inftruct thy foul to glow,
Than thofe gay trifles, titles, wealth, and show:
May valour, wisdom, learning crown thy days!
Thofe fools admire---thefe heaven and angels praise !
With riches bleft, to heaven thofe riches lend, The poor man's guardian, and the good man's friend :
*To brace the mind to dignity of thought,
To emulate what godlike Tully wrote,
Be this thy early with! The garden breeds,
If unimprov'd, at least but gaudy weeds :
And stubborn youth, by culture anfubdued,
Lies wildly barren, or but gayly rude.
Yet, as fome Phidias gives the marble life,
While Art with Nature holds a dubious strife,
Adorns a rock with graces not its own,
And calls a Venus from the rugged stone;
So culture aids the human foul to rife,
To fcorn the fordid earth, and mount the skies,
Till by degrees the noble gueft refines,
Claims her high birthright, and divinely fhines.
Bid virtuous forrow fmile, fcorn'd merit chear,
And o'er affliction pour the generous tear.
Some, wildly liberal, fquander, not bestow,
And give unprais'd, because they give for fhow:
To fanctify thy wealth, on worth employ
Thy gold, and to a blessing turn the toy :
Thus offerings from th' unjust pollute the skies,
The good, turn fimoke into a facrifice.
As when an artist plans a favourite draught,
The structures rife refponfive to the thought;
A palace grows beneath his forming hands,
Or worthy of a God a temple stands :
Such is thy rifing frame! by heaven design'd
A temple, worthy of a godlike mind;
Nobly adorn'd, and finish'd to display
A fuller beam of heaven's æthereal ray.
May all thy charms increase, O lovely boy!
Spare them, ye pains, and age alone destroy!
So fair thou art, that if great Cupid be
A child, the God might boast to look like thee !
When young Iülus' form he deign'd to wear,
Such were his fimiles, and fuch his winning air:
Ev'n Venus might mistake thee for her own,
Did not thy eyes proclaim thee not her son;
Thence all the lightning of thy mother's flies,
A Cupid, grac'd with Cytherea's eyes!
Yet ah! how short a date the powers decree
To that bright frame of beauties and to thee!
Pass a few days, and all those beauties fly!
Pass a few years, and thou alas! fhalt die !
Then all thy kindred, all thy friends shall see
With tears, what now thou art, and they must be;
A pale, cold, lifelefs lump of earth deplore!
Such fhalt thou be, and kings shall be no more!
But oh! when, ripe for death, fate calls thee hence, Sure lot of every mortal excellence!
When, pregnant as the womb, the teeming earth
Refigns thee quicken'd to thy fecond birth,
Rife, cloath'd with beauties that shall never die !
A faint on earth! an angel in the skyk
The Forty-third Chapter of Ecclefiafticus.
A PARAPHRASE.
HE fun that rolls his beamy orb on high,
Pride of the world and glory of the sky,
Illuftrious in his course, in bright array
Marches along the heavens, and scatters day
O'er earth, and o'er the main, and through th' ethe-
He in the morn renews his radiant round,
And warms the fragrant bofom of the ground;
But ere the noon of day, in fiery gleams
He darts the glory of his blazing beams;
Beneath the burnings of his fultry ray,
Earth to her centre pierc'd admits the day;
Huge vales expand, where rivers roll'd before,
And leffen'd feas contract within their fhore.
O! Power fupreme! O! high above all height! Thou gav'ft the fun to shine, and thou art light: Whether he falls or rifes in the fkies,
He by thy voice is taught to fall or rife ;
Swiftly he moves, refulgent in his sphere,
And measures out the day, the month, and year;
He drives the hours along with flower pace,
The minutes rufh away impetuous in their race:
He wakes the flowers that fleep within the earth,
And calls the fragrant infants out to birth;
The fragrant infants paint th' enamel'd vales,
And native incenfe loads the balmy gales,
The balmy gales the fragrancy convey
To heaven, and to their God an offering pay.
By thy command the moon, as day-light fades,
Lifts her broad circle in the deepening fhades;
Array'd in glory, and enthron'd in light,
She breaks the folemn terrors of the night;
Sweetly inconftant in her varying flame,
She changes ftill, another, yet the same !
Now in decrease by flow degrees the shrouds
Her fading luftre in a veil of clouds ;
Now at increafe, her gathering beams difplay
A blaze of light, and give a paler day;
Ten thoufand' ftars adorn her glittering train,
Fall when the falls, and rife with her again;
And o'er the deferts of the sky unfold
Their burning spangles of fidereal gold:
Through the wide heavens she moves ferenely bright, Queen of the gay attendants of the night;
Orb above orb in fweet confufion lies,
And with a bright diforder paints the skies.
The Lord of Nature fram'd the showery bow,
Turn'd its gay arch, and bade its colours glow;
Its radiant circle compaffes the skies,
And sweetly the rich tinctures faint, and rise;
It bids the horrors of the ftorm to cease,
Adorns the clouds, and makes the tempest please.
He, when deep-rolling clouds blot out the day,
And thunderous ftorms a folemn gloom display;
Pours down a watery deluge from on high,
And opens all the fluices of the sky ;
High o'er the shores the rushing furge prevails,
Bursts o'er the plain, and roars along the vales:
Dafhing abruptly, dreadful down it comes,
Tumbling through rocks, and toffes, whirls and foams:
Mean time, from every region of the sky,
Red burning bolts in forky vengeance fly;
Dreadfully bright o'er feas and earth they glare,
And bursts of thunder rend th' encumber'd air;
At once the thunders of th' Almighty found,
Heaven lours, defcend the floods, and rocks the ground.
He gives the furious whirlwind wings to fly,
To rend the earth, and wheel along the sky;
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