The guests withdrawn had left the treat, Our courtier walks from dish to dish, 200 205 210 Or gods to save them in a trice! 215 AGAIN?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. 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; 5 Noble and young, who strike 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, 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, Shall call the smiling loves, and young desires; For me the vernal garlands bloom no more. The still-believing, still-renew'd desire; Steals down my cheek the involuntary tear ? Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee? Thee, dress'd in Fancy's airy beam, Absent I follow through the extended dream; Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms, And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms, 5 [Murray's chambers were at this time in King's Bench Walks, No. 5.] And swiftly shoot along the Mall, PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK. L verse EST you should think that Though daring Milton sits sublime, Sages and chiefs long since had birth, Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! 238 ON RECEIVING FROM THE RIGHT HON. THE LADY FRANCES SHIRLEY A STANDISH AND TWO PENS. [Warburton states that the poet was threatened with a prosecution in the House of Lords for the Epilogue to the Satires. In great resentment, he began a Third Dialogue, more severe and sublime than the first and second," which, becoming known, led to a compromise. The prosecution was dropped, and the poet agreed to leave the Third Dialogue unfinished and suppressed. "This affair," adds Warburton, " occasioned this little beautiful poem, to which it alludes throughout, but more especially in the four last stanzas." Lady Frances Shirley was a daughter of Earl Ferrers, who had at that time a house at Twickenham. She died unmarried in 1762.] YES, I beheld the Athenian queen Descend in all her sober charms; Secure the radiant weapons wield; Awed, on my bended knees I fell, "What well? what weapon ?" (Flavia cries) 1 [Bertrand's was a toy-shop at Bath.] 239 But, friend, take heed whom you attack; You'd write as smooth again on glass, Athenian queen! and sober charms! Come, if you'll be a quiet soul, Of those that sing of these poor eyes."3 2 [Lambeth would seem to be here meant. In the Epilogue to the Satires, Dial. I., ver. 120, Pope had hazarded an allusion to a scandal, that the Archbishop of Canterbury had "pocketed" the will of George I. Walpole, however, states that the Archbishop produced the will, and that George II. carried it off. Pope's frequent satires on the Court prelates must have given great offence, and Lord Hervey alludes to the cabals and combinations of the bishops about this time, to oppose and influence the transactions of Parliament.] 8 [One that sung of Lady Frances Shirley was Chesterfield "When Fanny, blooming fair, First met my ravish'd sight, I gazed with strange delight." Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in one of his light satires, alludes to the intimacy between Chesterfield and Fanny, and "That eternal whisper, which begun Ten years ago, and never will be done." |