With all the gifts that heaven and earth impart, The reddening orange, and the swelling grain: O Liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright, In ten degrees of more indulgent skies; Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine, Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine: 'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile. ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA. Died 1720. THIS lady was the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, of Sidmonton, in the county of Southampton, and was married to Heneage, Earl of Winchelsea. A collection of her poems was printed in 1713. "It is remarkable," says Wordsworth, "that excepting a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, and some delightful pictures in the poems of Lady Winchelsea, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and the Seasons, does not contain a single new image of external nature." THE ATHEIST AND THE ACORN. Methinks the world is oddly made, Behold, quoth he, that mighty thing, Whilst on this Oak a fruit so small, That who with sense surveys this all, Its ill contrivance knows. My better judgment would have hung And left this mast, thus slightly strung, No more the caviller could say, For, as he upwards gazing lay, Th' offended part with tears ran o'er, As punish'd for the sin; Fool! had that bough a pumpkin bore, Thy whimsies must have work'd no more, LIFE'S PROGRESS. How gayly is at first begun Our life's uncertain race! Whilst yet that sprightly morning sun, How smiling the world's prospect lies, How soft the first ideas prove, Which wander through our minds! Our sighs are then but vernal air, But, oh! too soon, alas! we climb, The gently-rising hill of Time, From whence with grief we see that prime And all its sweetness end. The die now cast, our station known, Fond expectation past: The thorns which former days had sown, Through which we toil at last. Whilst every care's a driving harm, And every look's a frown. Or the parentage of Prior very little is known. He was nephew of the keeper of a tavern at Charing Cross, where he was found by the Earl of Dorset, and sent, at his expense, to be educated at Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. By the same nobleman's influence, he went as secretary to the English ambassador at the Hague. In 1697 he was secretary of lega tion at the treaty of Ryswick, and the next year held the same office at the court of France. At fifty-three years of age he found himself, after all his important employments, with no other means of subsistence than his fellowship at Cambridge; but the publication of his poems by subscription, and the kindness of Lord Hasley, restored him to easy circumstances for the rest of his life. He died, after a lingering illness, in 1721, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. "Prior," says Campbell, "was one of the last of the race of poets who re lied for ornament on scholastic allusion and pagan machinery; but he used them like Swift, more in jest than earnest, and with good effect." His poetry has the qualities of ease, fluency, and correctness. We give one specimen:~ AN EPITAPH. Interr'd beneath this marble stone They walk'd, and eat, good folks: what 'hen: And sluttish plenty deck'd her table. Their beer was strong; their wine was port; Just when it grew not fit to eat. They paid the church and parish rate, For which they claim'd their Sunday's due, Of slumbering in a. riper pew. No man's defects sought they to know; No man's good deeds did they commend; That might decrease their present store; They neither added nor confoun'ed; Nor good nor bad, nor fools nor wise; They led-a kind of—as it were: Nor wish'd nor cared, nor laugh'd nor cried: THIS accomplished female is the well-known "Vanessa" of Deau Swift While the following beautiful ode will give an idea of her refined taste ara highly cultivated mind, the cold, heartless manner in which he treated her, must ever remain as a blot upon his character.' ODE TO SPRING. Hail, blushing goddess, beauteous Spring! Yet why should I thy presence hail? Comes fraught with sweets, no more the rose As when Cadenus blest the scene, 1 Consult Scott's, or Drake's, or Sheridan's Life of Swift. |