Placid emotion. Who can forbear to smile with nature? Can Solitude.* O sacred solitude; divine retreat! Choice of the prudent! envy of the great! Presume not on to-morrow. In human hearts what bolder thoughts can rise, Dum vivimus vivamus. Whilst we live let us live. "Live, while you live," the epicure would say, DODDRIDGE. By folitude here is meant, a temporary feclufion from the world SECTION IV. Verses in various forms. The security of virtue. LET coward guilt, with pallid fear, And justly dread the vengeful fate, Protected by that hand, whose law, Resignation. And O! by error's force subdu'd, Not to my wish, but to my want, Compassion. I have found out a gift for my fair; I have found where the wood-pigeons breed: But let me that plunder forbear! She will say, 'tis a barbarous deed. For he ne'er can be true, she averr'd, Epitaph. Here rests his head upon the lap of earth, Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere ; He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. Joy and sorrow connected. Still, where rosy pleasure leads, The hues of bliss more brightly glow, The golden mean. He that holds fast the golden mean, The little and the great, Feels not the wants that pinch the poor, The tallest pines feel most the pow'r The bolts that spare the mountain's side, Moderate views and aims recommended. With passions unruffled, untainted with pride, The wants of my nature are cheaply supplied; Virtue's address to Pleasure*. Vast happiness enjoy thy gay allies! Vice wastes their vigour, and their mind impairs. Vain, idle, delicate, in thoughtless ease, Reserving woes for age, their prime they spend; All wretched, hopeless, in the evil days, With sorrow to the verge of life they tend. Griev'd with the present, of the past asham'd, They live and are despis'd; they die, nor more are nam'd. * Senfual pleasure, SECTION V. Verses in which sound corresponds to signification. Smooth and rough verse. SOFT is the strain when zephyr gently blows, Slow motion imitated. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow. Swift and easy motion. Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Loud sounds the axe, redoubling strokes on strokes ; Sound of a bow-string. Twang'd short and sharp, like the shrill swallow's cry. The Pheasant. See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings. Scylla and Charybdis. Dire Scylla there a scene of horror forms, |