Even round the sprightly muse it flies,
And taints the numbers as they rise.

If life you want undashed with woe,
Serene enjoy the instant now;
Nor ills you left behind deplore,
Nor eye the giant grief before;
If Fortune shines, enjoy the ray,
And smile her very gloom away :
Let tempests sweep and billows roar,
The storm of life shall soon be o'er.

Some perish in their youthful bloom;

With age some wither to the tomb;
Heaven, as a curse, to some supplies
The years to others it denies ;
What can the longest liver do,

But see a greater train of woe?

Be yours in public life to shine,

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HORACE,

ODE X. BOOK 2. IMITATED.

TO A FRIEND.

WHEN tempests sweep and billows roll,

And winds contend along the pole;
When o'er the deck ascends the sea,
And half the sheet is torn away;

Shew me the man among the crew,

Who would not change his place with you;
Prefer the quiet of the plain

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And Pitt shall tumble from his sphere,

In privacy secluded, you

Scarce feel which way the tempest blew.

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Storms rend the lofty tower in twain,
And bow the poplar to the plain ;
The hills are wrapt in clouds on high,
And feel th' artillery of the sky;
When not a breath the valley wakes,
Or curls the surface of the lakes.

When storms on Fortune's ocean lowr,
And rolling billows lash the shore;
When loved allies return to clay,
And paltry riches wing their way;
The faithless mobs, the perjured whore,
That hovered round thy pelf before,
Fall gradual down the ebbing tide;
Thy dog, the last, forsakes thy side:
Retire within; enjoy thy mind;
There, what they all denied thee, find.
When Fortune threats to fly, be gay,
And puff the fickle thing away.
Nor still it lowrs; the tempest flies,
The golden sun descends the skies;
The gale is living in the grass,
In gentler surges roll the seas1.

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The golden sun descends the skies;

The gale is living in the grass,

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In gentler surges roll the seas.] These lines alone would be sufficient to appropriate the poem to the father of Ossian, were it not evident that the piece proceeds from the same pen with the former translation.

THE CHOICE.

DID Fortune, what to few she'll give,
Allow me make my choice to live;
I would not seek an envied seat,
Or daily visits of the great;
Nor yet would my ambition fall
To meagre Want's deserted hall ';
To each extreme alike a foe,

Too low for high, too high for low.

For use, not shew, my house would stand

Amid a spot of fertile land;

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A lake below; around a wood;

Here bend a rock; there rush a flood.

A mountain would in prospect rise,

And bear the grey mist to the skies.
When in some dark retreat I sit,
Be near a friend, a man of wit,

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To meagre Want's deserted hall.] In this, as in the preceding poem, the phraseology of "Want's deserted hall" is sufficient to authenticate the verses as Macpherson's; independently of the following description, which is altogether Ossian's :

A lake below; around a wood;

Here bend a rock; there rush a flood.

A mountain would in prospect rise,

And bear the grey mist to the skies.

Of heart sincere, and converse free,

The lover of mankind and me;

Who, should the world tumultuous roar,
Could calmly see the storm ashore,
Nor e'er admit a longing sigh

To vex my privacy and I.

Here would I pass my blameless days,
Beloved of virtue, and of ease;
Here die in peace, and lie unknown
Without a monument or stone.

My friend might shed one pious tear;
My image in his bosom bear;

Might breathe, in verse, his tender moan,
But breathe unto himself alone;

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