There was a time, I heard her say,
Ere females were seduc'd by play,
When Beauty was her throne;
But now, where dwelt the soft Desires,
The Furies light forbidden fires,

To Love and her unknown.

From these th' indignant goddess flies,
And where the spires of Science rise,
A while suspends her wing;

But pedant Pride and Rage are there,
And Faction tainting all the air,
And pois'ning every spring.

Long through the sky's wide pathless way
The Muse observ'd the wand'rer stray,
And mark'd her last retreat;
O'er Surrey's barren heaths she flew,
Descending like the silent dew
On Esher's peaceful seat.

There she beholds the gentle Mole
His pensive waters calmly roll,
Amidst Elysian ground:

There through the windings of the grove
She leads her family of Love,

And strews her sweets around.

I hear her bid the daughters fair
Oft to yon gloomy grot repair,

Her secret steps to meet:

"Nor thou," she cries, "these shades forsake,

But come, lov'd consort, come and make
The husband's bliss complete."

Yet not too much the soothing ease
Of rural indolence shall please

My Pelham's ardent breast;

The man whom Virtue calls her own
Must stand the pillar of a throne,
And make a nation blest.

Pelham! 'tis thine with temp'rate zeal
To guard Britannia's public weal,
Attack'd on every part:

Her fatal discords to compose,
Unite her friends, disarm her foes,
Demands thy head and heart.

When bold Rebellion shook the land,
Ere yet from William's dauntless hand
Her barbarous army fled;

When Valour droop'd, and Wisdom fear'd,
Thy voice expiring Credit heard,

And rais'd her languid head.

Now by thy strong assisting hand,
Fix'd on a rock I see her stand,
Against whose solid feet,

In vain, through every future age,

The loudest, most tempestuous rage
Of angry war shall beat.

And grieve not if the sons of Strife
Attempt to cloud thy spotless life,
And shade its brightest scenes;
Wretches, by kindness unsubdu'd,
Who see, who share the common good,
Yet cavil at the means.

Like these, the metaphysic crew,
Proud to be singular and new,
Think all they see deceit ;
Are warm'd and cherish'd by the day,
Feel and enjoy the heavenly ray,
Yet doubt of light and heat.

JOHN DYER.

BORN 1700.-DIED 1758.

DYER was the son of a solicitor at Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire. He was educated at Westminster school, and returned from thence to be instructed in his father's profession, but left it for poetry and painting; and having studied the arts of design under a master, was for some time, as he says, an itinerant painter in Wales. Dividing his affections, however,

between the sister Muses, he indited his Grongar Hill amidst those excursions. It was published about his twenty-seventh year. He afterwards made the tour of Italy in the spirit both of an artist and poet, and, besides studying pictures and prospects, composed a poem on the Ruins of Rome. On his return to England he married a lady of the name of Ensor, a descendant of Shakspeare, retired into the country, and entered into orders. His last preferment was to the living of Kirkley on Bane. The witticism on his Fleece, related by Dr. Johnson, that its author, if he was an old man, would be buried in woollen, has perhaps been oftener repeated than any passage in the poem itself.

GRONGAR HILL.

SILENT nymph, with curious eye!
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man;
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
Come, with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister Muse;
Now, while Phoebus riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky!

Grongar Hill invites my song,
Draw the landscape bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells,

Sweetly musing, Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,

Sat upon a flowery bed,

With my

While stray'd my eyes o'er Towy's flood,

Over mead, and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill,
Till contemplation had her fill.

2

About his chequer'd sides I wind, And leave his brooks and meads behind, And groves, and grottos where I lay, And vistos shooting beams of day: Wide and wider spreads the vale; As circles on a smooth canal: The mountains round, unhappy fate, Sooner or later, of all height,

Withdraw their summits from the skies,

And lessen as the others rise:

Still the prospect wider spreads,

Adds a thousand woods and meads;

Still it widens, widens still,

And sinks the newly-risen hill.

Now I gain the mountain's brow,

What a landscape lies below!