Secure they trust th' unfaithful field beset, eager 106 from the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings: Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground. Ah! what avail his głoły, varying dyes, 115 His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes, The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold? Nor yet, when moist Arcturus clouds the sky, The woods and fields their pleasing toils deny. 120 To plains with well-breath'd beagles we repair, And trace the mazes of the circling hare: (Beasts, urg'd by us, their fellow-beasts pursue, And learn of man each other to undo.) 124 With E 3 VARIATIONS: Pleas'd, in the Gen'ral's fight, the hot lie down IMITATIONS. nec te tua plurima, Pantheu, Labentem pietas, vel Apollinis infula texit. Virg. With slaught'ring guns th' unweary'd fowler roves, When frosts have whiten'd all the naked groves ; Where doves in flocks the leafless trees o'er hade, And lonely woodcocks haunt the wat’ry glade. He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye'; Strait a short thunder breaks the frozen sky: 130 Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clam'rous Lapwings feel the leaden death : Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare, They fall, and leave their little lives in air. In genial spring, beneath the quiv’ring shade, Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead, The patient fisher takes his filent stand, 137 Intent, his angle trembling in his hand: With looks unmov'd, he hopes the scaly breed, And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed. Our plenteous streams a various race supply, 141 The bright-ey'd perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes rolld, The yellow carp, in scales bedrop'd with gold, Swift trouts, diverfify’d with crimson stains, 145 And pykes, the tyrants of the watry plains. Now Cancer glows with Phoebus' fiery car: The youth rush eager to the sylvan war, Swarm VARIATIONS, Ver. 126. O'er rustling leaves around the naked : groves. VER. 129. The fowler lifts his levell'd tube on high. P. IMITATION s. VER. 134. Præcipites alta vitam sub nube relinguunt, 154 Swarm o'er the lawns, the forest walks surround, Here too, 'tis sụng, of old Diana stray'd, 165 Here VER. 162. Queen ANNE. IMITATIONS, VER. 151. Tb' impatient courfer, etc.} Translated from Statius, Stare adeo miferum eft, pereunt veftigia mille Ante fugam, abfentemque ferit gravis ungula campum. These lines Mr. Dryden, in his preface to his translation of Fresnoy's Art of painting, calls wonderfully fine, and says they would cost him an hour, if be had the leisure to translate them, there is so much of beauty in the original ; which was the reason, I suppose, why Mr. P. tried his strength with them. VER. 158. and earth rolls back] He has improved his original, terræque urbes que recedunt. Virg. Here was she seen o'er airy wastes to rove, Above the rest a rural nymph was fam'd, Thy offspring; Thames! the fair Lodona nam'd; (Lodona's fate, in long oblivion cast, The Muse shall sing, and what she sings shall last.) Scarce could the Goddess from her nymph be known, 175 But by the crescent and the golden zone. She scorn'd the praise of beauty, and the care ; A belt her waist, a fillet binds her hair; A painted quiver on her shoulder sounds, And with her dart the flying deer she wounds. It chanc'd, as eager of the chace, the maid Beyond the forest's verdant limits stray'd, 189 Pan saw. and lov’d, and burning with desire Pursu'd her flight, her flight increas'd his fire. Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly, When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky; Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves, When thro' the clouds he drives the trembling doves; As from the God she flew with furious pace, Or as the God, more furious, urg'd the chace. Now 185 IMITATIONS. Nec pofitu variare comas ; ubi fibula vejiem, Ovid, VER. 183, 136. Ut fugere accipitrem penna trepidante columbæ, Now fainting, sinking, pale, the nymph appears ; and murmur there, She said, and melting as in tears she lay, In a soft, filver stream diffolv'd away. The silver stream her virgin coldness keeps, For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps ; Still bears the name the hapless virgin bore, 205 And bathes the forest where she rang'd before. In her chaste current oft the Goddess laves, And with celestial tears augments the waves. Oft in her glass the musing shepherd spies The headlong mountains and the downward skies, The watry landskip of the pendant woods, And abfent trees that tremble in the floods; In 200 211 Ver. 205. Still bears the name] The River Loddon. Ver. 209. Oft in her. glass, etc.] These fix lines were added after the first writing of this poem. P. IMITATIONS. Sol erat a tergo: vidi precedere longam |