LOOM of beauty, early flower
Of the blissful bridal bower,
Thou, thy parents pride and care,
Faireft offspring of the fair,
Lovely pledge of mutual love,
Angel feeming from above,
Was it not thou day by day
Doft thy very fex betray,
Female more and more appear,
Female, more than angel dear,
How to speak thy face and mien,
(Soon too dangerous to be feen)
How fhall I, or fhall the Mufe,
Language of resemblance chufe?
Language like thy mien and face,
Full of fweetness, full of grace!
By the next returning spring,
When again the linnets fing,
When again the lambkins play,
Pretty Sportlings full of May,
When the meadows next are feen,
Sweet enamel! white and green,
And the year in fresh attire,
Welcomes every gay defire,
Blooming on fhalt thou appear
More inviting than the year,
And another round of time,
Circling, ftill improves thy prime :
And, beneath the vernal skies,
Yet a verdure more fhall rife,
Ere thy beauties, kindling flow,
In each finish'd feature glow,
Ere, in fmiles and in difdain,
Thou exert thy maiden reign,
Abfolute to fave, or kill,
Fond beholders, at thy will.
Then the taper-moulded wafte
With a span of ribbon brac'd,
And the fwell of either breaft,
And the wide high-vaulted cheft,
Who, in courtship greatly sped,
Wins the damfel to his bed,
Bears the virgin-prize away,
Counting life one nuptial day!
For the dark-brown dusk of hair,
Shadowing thick thy forehead fair,
Down the veiny temples growing,
O'er the floping fhoulders flowing,
And the finoothly pencil'd brow,
Mild to him in every vow,
And the fringed lid below,
Thin as thinneft bloffoms blow,
And the hazely-lucid eye,
Whence heart-winning glances fly,
And that cheek of health, o'erspread
With foft-blended white and red,
And the witching fmiles which break
Round thofe lips, which fweetly fpeak,
And thy gentleness of mind,
Thefe endowments, heavenly dower!
Gentle from a gentle kind,
Brought him in the promis'd hour,
Shall for ever bind him to thee,
Shall renew him ftill to woo thee.
On the DEATH of the RIGHT HONOURABLE
WILLIAM EARL COWPER. 1723.
STROPHE I.
WAKE the British harp again,
To a fad melodious ftrain;
Wake the harp, whofe every string,
When Halifax refign'd his breath,
Accus'd inexorable death;
For I, once more, muft in affliction fing,
One fong of forrow more bestow,
The burden of a heart o'ercharg'd with woe:
Yet, O my foul, if aught may bring relief,
Full many, grieving, fhall applaud thy grief,
The pious verfe, that Cowper does deplore,
Whom all the 'boasted powers of verse cannot restore.
ANTIS TROPHE I.
Not to her, his fondest care,
Not to his lov'd offspring fair,
Nor his country ever dear,
From her, from them, from Britain torn :
With her, with them, does Britain mourn :
His name, from every eye, calls forth a tear
And, intermingling, fighs with praise,
All good men with the number of his days
Had been to him twice told, and twice again,
In that feal'd book, where all things which pertain To mortal man, whatever things befall,
Are from eternity confirm'd, beyond recall:
E PODE I.
Where every lofs, and every gain,
Where every grief, and every joy,
Every pleasure, every pain,
Each bitter, and each sweet alloy,
To us uncertain though they flow,
Are pre-ordain'd, and fix'd, above.
Too wretched state, did man foreknow
Thefe ills, which man cannot remove!
Vain is wisdom for preventing
What the wifeft live lamenting.
STROPHE II.
Hither fent, who knows the day
When he shall be call'd away?
Various is the term affign'd:
An hour, a day, fome months, or years,
The breathing foul on earth appears :
The strength of cities, or of courts the grace,
But, through the fwift fucceffion of mankind,
Swarm after fwarm! a bufy race,
Or who in camps delight, or who abide
Diffus'd o'er lands, or float on oceans wide,
Of them, though many here long-lingering dwell,
And fee their children's children, yet, how few excel! 46
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