Britannia watch!-remember peerless Rome, Her high-tower'd head dash'd meanly to the ground;

Remember, Freedom's guardian, Grecia's doom,
Whom weeping the despotic Turk has bound;
May ne'er thy oak-crown'd hills, rich meads and
(Fame, virtue, courage, property, forgot) [down,
Thy peaceful villages, and busy towns,
Be doom'd some death-dispensing tyrant's lot:
On deep foundations may thy freedom stand,
Long as the surge shall lash thy sea-encircled land.
Joseph Warton.

TO SUPERSTITION.

HENCE to some Convent's gloomy isles, Where cheerful daylight never smiles: Tyrant ! from Albion haste, to slavish Rome; There by dim tapers' livid light, At the still solemn hours of night, In pensive musings walk o'er many a sounding

[tomb,

Thy clanking chains, thy crimson steel, Thy venom'd darts, and barbarous wheel, Malignant fiend! bear from this isle away,

Nor dare in Error's fetters bind One active, free-born British mind; That strongly strives to spring indignant from thy

[sway..

Thou bad'st grim Moloch's frowning priest Snatch screaming infants from the breast, Regardless of the frantic mother's woes; Thou led'st the ruthless sons of Spain To wond'ring India's golden plain, From deluges of blood where tenfold harvests rose.

But lo! how swiftly art thou fled,
When Reason lifts his radiant head!
When his resounding, awful voice they hear,
Blind Ignorance, thy doting sire,
Thy daughter, trembling Fear, retire;
And all thy ghastly train of terrors disappear.

So by the Magi hail'd from far,

When Phoebus mounts his early car,

The shrieking ghosts to their dark charnels flock;
The full-gorg'd wolves retreat ; no more
The prowling lionesses roar,
But hasten with their prey to some deep-cavern'd

[rock.

Hail then, ye friends of Reason, hail,
Ye foes to Mystery's odious veil !

To Truth's high temple guide my steps aright,
Where Clarke and Wollaston reside,
With Locke and Newton by their side,
While Plato sits above enthron'd in endless light.
Joseph Warton.

TO ADVERSITY.

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best.
Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on Earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
And from her own she learn'd to melt at others' wo.

Scar'd at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse; and with them go
The summer friend, the flattering foe:
By vain Prosperity receiv'd,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believ'd.

Wisdom, in sable garb array'd,

Immers'd in rapturous thought profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend:
Warm Charity, the general friend,
With Justice, to herself severe,
And Pity, drooping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chast'ning hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Not circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen) With thundering voice, and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty :

VOL. III.

5

Thy form benign, oh goddess! wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there

To soften, not to wound my heart. The generous spark extinct revive, Teach me to love, and to forgive, Exact my own defects to scan, What others are to feel, and know myself a man.

Gray.

THE SUICIDE.

BENEATH the beech, whose branches bare,
Smit with the lightning's livid glare,

O'erhang the craggy road,

And whistle hollow as they wave;
Within a solitary grave,

A slayer of himself holds his accurs'd abode.

Lour'd the grim morn, in murky dies Damp mists involv'd the scowling skies, And dimm'd the struggling day; As by the brook, that lingering laves Yon rush-grown moor with sable waves, Full of the dark resolves he took his sullen way.

Full many a melancholy night
He watch'd the slow return of light;

And sought the powers of sleep,

4

I mark'd his desultory pace,

His gestures strange, and varying face,
With many a mutter'd sound;

And ah! too late aghast I view'd
The reeking blade, the hand embrued;
He fell, and groaning grasp'd in agony the ground.

To spread a momentary calm

O'er his sad couch, and in the balm Of bland oblivion's dews his burning eyes to steep.

Full oft, unknowing and unknown,

He wore his endless noons alone;
Amid th' autumnal wood

Oft was he wont, in hasty fit,

Abrupt the social board to quit,

And gaze with eager glance upon the tumbling flood.
Beckoning the wretch to torments new,
Despair, for ever in his view,

A spectre pale, appear'd;

While, as the shades of eve arose, And brought the day's unwelcome close, More horrible and huge her giant-shape she rear'd.

'Is this,' mistaken Scorn will cry, "Is this the youth whose genius high Could build the genuine rbyme? Whose bosom mild the favouring Muse Had stor❜d with all her ample views, Parent of fairest deeds, and purposes sublime.'

Ah! from the Muse that bosom mild By treacherous magic was beguil'd, To strike the deathful blow: She fill'd his soft ingenuous mind With many a feeling too refin’d, And rous'd to livelier pangs his wakeful sense of

[wo.

Though doom'd hard penury to prove,

And the sharp stings of hopeless love:

To griefs congenial prone,