Canst thou exclude that habitant divine,
To place some meaner idol in her shrine ?
O task, for feeble reason too severe !
O lesson, nought could teach me but despair!
Must I forbid my eyes that heavenly sight,
They 've view'd so oft with languishing delight?
Must my ears shun that voice, whose charming sound
Seem'd to relieve, while it increas'd, my wound?
O Waller! Petrarch! you who tun'd the lyre
To the soft notes of elegant desire;
Though Sidney to a rival gave her charms,
Though Laura dying left her lover's arms,
Yet were your pains less exquisite than mine,
'Tis easier far to lose, than to resign!
FOR A BUST OF LADY SUFFOLK;
DESIGNED TO BE SET UP IN A WOOD AT STOWE.
HER wit and beauty for a court were made: But truth and goodness fit her for a shade.
SULPICIA TO CERINTHUS,
IN HER SICKNESS.
(SENT TO A FRIEND, IN A LADY'S NAME.) SAY, my Cerinthus, does thy tender breast Feel the same feverish heats that mine molest? Alas! I only wish for health again, Because I think my lover shares my pain: For what would health avail to wretched me, If you could, unconcern'd, my illness see?
SULPICIA TO CERINTHUS.
I'm weary of this tedious dull deceit;
Myself I torture, while the world I cheat:
Though Prudence bids me strive to guard my fame,
Love sees the low hypocrisy with shame;
Love bids me all confess, and call thee mine,
Worthy my heart, as I am worthy thine:
Weakness for thee I will no longer hide;
Weakness for thee is woman's noblest pride.
CATO'S SPEECH TO LABIENUS,
IN THE NINTH BOOK OF LUCAN,
(Quid quæri, Labiene, jubes, &c.)
WHAT, Labienus, would thy fond desire,
Of horned Jove's prophetic shrine inquire?
Whether to seek in arms a glorious doom,
Or basely live, and be a king in Rome?
If life be nothing more than death's delay;
If impions force can honest minds dismay,
Or probity may Fortune's frown disdain;
If well to mean is all that virtue can;
And right, dependant on itself alone,
Gains no addition from success-Tis known:
Fix'd in my heart these constant truths I bear,
And Ammon cannot write them deeper there.
Our souls, allied to God, within them feel
The secret dictates of the almighty will:
This is his voice, be this our oracle.
When first his breath the seeds of life instill'd,
All that we ought to know was then reveal'd.
Nor can we think the omnipresent mind
Has truth to Libya's desert sands confin'd,
There, known to few, obscur'd, and lost, to lie-
Is there a temple of the Deity,
Except earth, sea, and air, yon azure pole;
And chief, his holiest shrine, the virtuous soul?
Where'er the eye can pierce, the feet can move,
This wide, this boundless universe is Jove. "
Let abject minds, that doubt because they fear,
With pious awe to juggling priests repair;
I credit not what lying prophets tell-
Death is the only certain oracle.
Cowards and brave must die one destin'd hour-
This Jove has told; he needs not tell us more.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1734.
Go on, my friend, the noble task pursue,
And think thy genius is thy country's due;
To vulgar wits inferior themes belong,
But liberty and virtue claim thy song.
Yet cease to hope, though grac'd with every charm,
The patriot verse will cold Britannia warm ;
Vainly thou striv'st our languid bearts to raise,
By great examples drawn from better days:
No longer we to Sparta's fame aspire,
What Sparta scorn'd, instructed to admire;
Nurs'd in the love of wealth, and form'd to bend
Our narrow thoughts to that inglorious end:
No generous purpose can enlarge the mind,
No social care, no labour for mankind,
Where mean self-interest every action guides,
In camps commands, in cabinets presides;
Where Luxury consumes the guilty store,
And bids the villain be a slave for more.
Hence, wretched nation, all thy woes arise,
Avow'd corruption, licens'd perjuries,
Eternal taxes, treaties for a day,
Servants that rale, and senates that obey.
O people, far unlike the Grecian race,
That deems a virtuous poverty disgrace,
That suffers public wrongs and public shame,
In council insolent, in action tame!
Say, what is now th' ambition of the great?
Is it to raise their country's sinking state;
Her load of debt to ease by frugal care,
Her trade to guard, her harass'd poor to spare?
Je it, like honest Somers, to inspire
The love of laws, and freedom's sacred fire?
Is it, like wise Godolphin, to sustain
The balane'd world, and boundless power restrain?
Or is the mighty aim of all their toil,
Only to aid the wreek, and share the spoil?
On each relat on, friend, dependant, pour,
With partial wantonness, the golden shower,
And, fene'd by strong corruption, to despise
An injur'd nation's unavailing erics!
Rouze, Britons, rouze! if sense of shame be weak,
Let the loud voice of threatening danger speak.
Lo! France, as Persia once, o'er every land
Prepares to stretch her all-oppressing hand.
Shall England sit regardless and sedate,
A calm spectatress of the general fate;
Or call forth all her virtue, and oppose,
Like valiant Greece, her own and Europe's foes?
O let us seize the moment in our power,
Our follies now have reach'd the fatal hour;
No later term the angry gods ordain;
This crisis lost, we shall be wise in vain.
And thou, great poet, in whose nervous lines
The native majesty of freedom shines,
Accept this friendly praise; and let me prove
My heart not wholly void of public love;
Though not like thee I strike the sounding string
To notes which Sparta might have deign'd to sing,
But, idly sporting in the secret shade,
With tender trifles soothe some artless maid.
TO WILLIAM PITT, ESQUIRE,
ON HIS LOSING HIS COMMISSION,
LONG had thy virtues mark'd thee out for fame,
Far, far superior to a cornet's name ;
This generous Walpole saw, and griev'd to find
So mean a post disgrace that noble mind.
The servile standard from thy freeborn hand
He took, and bade thee lead the patriot band.
Yet, if to those whom most on Earth he lov'd,
From whom his pious care is now remov'd,
With whom his liberal hand, and bounteous heart,
Shar'd all his little fortune could impart;
If to those friends your kind regard shall give
What they no longer can from his receive; ·
That, that, ev'n now, above yon starry pole,
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul.
EPILOGUE TO LILLO'S ELMERICK.
You, who, supreme o'er every work of wit,
In judgment here, unaw'd, unbiass'd, sit,
The palatines and guardians of the pit ;
If to your minds this merely modern play
If fustian here, through each unnatural scene,
No useful sense, no generous warmth convey;
In strain'd conceits sound high, and nothing mean;
If lofty dullness for your vengeance call:
Like Elmerick judge, and let the guilty fall.
But if simplicity, with force and fire,
Unlabour'd thoughts and artles words inspire:
If, like the action which these scenes relate,
The whole appear irregularly great;
If master-strokes the nobler passions move;
Then, like the king, acquit us, and approve.
PROLOGUE TO THOMSON'S CORIOLANUS.
I COME not here your candour to implore
For scenes, whose author is, alas! no more;
He wants no advocate his ecause to piead;
You will yourselves be patrons of the dead.
No party his benevolence contin'd,
No seet-alike it flow'd to all mankind.
He lov'd his friends (forgive this gushing tear:
Alas! I feel I am no actor here)
He lov'd his friends with such a warmth of heart,
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,
Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal,
No words can speak it: but our tears inay tell.—
O candid truth, O faith without a stain,
O manners gently firm, and nobly plain,
O sympathizing love of others' bliss,
Where will you find another breast like his?
Such was the man--the poet well you know:
Oft has he touch'd your hearts with tender woe:
Oft in this crowded house, with just applause,
You heard him tea sh fair Virtu. 's purest laws;
For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire,
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line, which dying he could wish to blot.
Oh! may to-night your favourable doom Another laurel add, to grace his tomb: Whilst he, superior now to praise or blame, Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.
ON A VIEW FROM AN ALCOVE.
........ VIRIDANTIA TEMPE! TEMPE, QVAE SYLVAE CINGVNT SVPERIMPENDENTES.
EGO LAVDO RURIS AMOENI, RIVOS, ET MVSCO CIRIMLITA SAXA NEMVSQVE.
TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM SHENSTONE, ESQUIRE; IN WHOSE VERSES WERE ALL THE NATURAL GRACES, AND IN WHOSE MANNERS WAS ALL THE AMIABLE SIMPLICITY, OF PASTORAL POETRY, WITH THE SWEPT TENDERNESS OF THE ELEGIAC.
ON THE PEDESTAL OF AN URN.
ALEXANDRO POPE;
POFTARAM ANGLICANORVM ELEGANTISSIMO DVLCISSIMOQVE;
A Doric portico in another part of the park is honoured with the name of Pope's Building, and inscribed, QVIETI ET MYSIS.
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