Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear
In faffron robe with taper clear, And pomp, and feaft, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry. Such fights as youthful poets dream On fummer eves by haunted ftream. Then to the well-trod ftage anon, If Johnson's learned fock be on, Or sweetest Shakespear, fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild. And ever against eating cares, Lap me in foft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting, foul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning; The melting voice thro' mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden foul of harmony:
That Orpheus' felf may heave his head From golden flumber on a bed
Of heap'd Elyfian flowers, and hear Such ftrains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regain'd Eurydice.
Thefe delights if thou canft give, Mirth, with thee I mean to live,
HENCE, vain deluding joys,
The brood of folly without father bred! How little you befted,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! Dwell in fome idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy fhapes poffefs, As thick and numberlefs
As the gay motes that people the fun-beams, Or likeft hovering dreams,
The fickle penfioners of Morpheus' train. But hail, thou Goddefs, fage and holy, Hail, divineft Melancholy,
Whofe faintly vifage is too bright
To hit the fenfe of human fight;
And therefore to our weaker view, O'erlaid with black, ftaid wisdom's hue, Black, but fuch as in efteem
Prince Memnon's fifter might beseem, Or that starr'd Ethiope queen that ftrove To set her beauties praise above
The fea nymphs, and their powers offended: Yet thou art higher far descended,
The bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore To folitary Saturn bore;
His daughter the (in Saturn's reign Such mixture was not held a stain) Oft in glimmering bowers, and glades He met her, and in fecret fhades Of woody Ida's inmost grove, While yet there was no fear of Jove. Come, penfive nun, devout and pure, Sober, ftedfaft, and demure, All in a robe of darkeft grain, Flowing with majestic train, And fable stole of cypress lawn, O'er thy decent fhoulders drawn, Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and mufing gait, And looks cominercing with the skies, Thy rapt foul fitting in thine eyes: There held in holy paffion ftill, Forget thyself to marble, till
With a fad leaden downward caft,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare Faft, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hear the Muses in a ring,
Ay round about Jove's altar fing. And add to these retired Leifure, That in trim gardens takes his pleafure; But first, and chiefeft, with thee bring, Him that yon foars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery wheeled throne, The Cherub Contemplation: And the mute filence hift along, 'Lefs Philomel will deign a fong, In her sweetest, faddeft plight Smoothing the rugged brow of night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke, Gently o'er the accuftom'd oak;
Sweet bird, that fhunn'ft the noise of folly,, Moft mufical, moft melancholy!
Thee, chauntrefs, oft the woods among, I woo to hear thy ev'ning fong: And miffing thee, I walk unfeen On the dry smooth-fhaven green,, To behold the wandering moon,... Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led aftray Through the heav'n's wide pathlefs way;
And oft as if her head the bow'd, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
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