As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems that singly charm the sight, Together dart their intermingled rays,
And dazzle with a luxury of light.
Enough for me, if to some feeling breast
My lines a secret sympathy 'impart ;'
And as their pleasing influence 'flows confest,'
A sigh of soft reflection 'heaves the heart.'
SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER.
WRITTEN IN 1761, AND FOUND IN ONE OF HIS OWN POCKET-BOOKS.
Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,
He had not the method of making a fortune :
Could love and could hate, so was thought somewhat
No very great wit ;-he believed in a God.
A post or a pension he did not desire,
But left Church and State to Charles Townshend and
WITH beauty, with pleasure surrounded, to languish-
To weep, without knowing the cause of my anguish ;
To start from short slumbers, and wish for the
morning-
To close my dull eyes when I see it returning;
Sighs sudden and frequent, looks ever dejected—
Words that steal from my tongue, by no means con
Ah! say, fellow-swains, how these symptoms befell
They smile, but reply not-sure Delia will tell me!
PROPERTIUS, LIB. III. ELEG. V. v. 19.
"Me juvat in prima coluisse Helicona juventa," &c.
LONG as of youth the joyous hours remain,
Me may Castalia's sweet recess detain,
Fast by the umbrageous vale lull'd to repose,
Where Aganippe warbles as it flows;
Or roused by sprightly sounds from out the trance,
I'd in the ring knit hands, and join the Muses' dance.
Give me to send the laughing bowl around,
My soul in Bacchus' pleasing fetters bound;
Let on this head unfading flowers reside,
There bloom the vernal rose's earliest pride;
And when, our flames commissioned to destroy,
Age step 'twixt Love and me, and intercept the joy;
When my changed head these locks no more shall know,
And all its jetty honours turn to snow;
Then let me rightly spell of Nature's ways;
To Providence, to HIM my thoughts I'd raise,
Who taught this vast machine its stedfast laws,
That first, eternal, universal Cause;
Search to what regions yonder star retires
That monthly waning hides her paly fires,
And whence, anew revived, with silver light
Relumes her crescent orb to cheer the dreary night:
How rising winds the face of ocean sweep,
Where lie th' eternal fountains of the deep,
And whence the cloudy magazines maintain
Their wintry war, or pour the autumnal rain;
How flames perhaps, with dire confusion hurl'd,
Shall sink this beauteous fabric of the world;
What colours paint the vivid arch of Jove;
What wondrous force the solid earth can move,
When Pindus' self approaching ruin dreads,
Shakes all his pines, and bows his hundred heads ;
Why does yon orb, so exquisitely bright,
Obscure his radiance in a short-lived night;
Whence the Seven Sisters' congregated fires,
And what Boötes' lazy waggon tires;
How the rude surge its sandy bounds control;
Who measured out the year, and bade the seasons roll
If realms beneath those fabled torments know,
Pangs without respite, fires that ever glow,
Earth's monster brood stretch'd on their iron bed,
The hissing terrors round Alecto's head,
Scarce to nine acres Tityus' bulk confined,
The triple dog that scares the shadowy kind,
All angry heaven inflicts, or hell can feel,
The pendent rock, Ixion's whirling wheel,
Famine at feasts, or thirst amid the stream;
Or are our fears the enthusiast's empty dream,
And all the scenes, that hurt the grave's repose,
But pictured horror and poetic woes.
These soft inglorious joys my hours engage;
Be love my youth's pursuit, and science crown my age.
PROPERTIUS, LIB. II. ELEG. I. v. 17.
"Quod mihi si tantum, Mæcenas, fata dedissent," &c.
YET would the tyrant Love permit me raise
My feeble voice, to sound the victor's praise,
To paint the hero's toil, the ranks of war,
The laurell'd triumph and the sculptur'd car;
No giant race, no tumult of the skies,
No mountain-structures in my verse should rise,
Nor tale of Thebes, nor Ilium there should be,
Nor how the Persian trod the indignant sea;
Not Marius' Cimbrian wreaths would I relate,
Nor lofty Carthage struggling with her fate.
Here should Augustus great in arms appear,
And thou, Mæcenas, be my second care;
Here Mutina from flames and famine free,
And there the ensanguined wave of Sicily,
And scepter'd Alexandria's captive shore,
And sad Philippi, red with Roman gore:
Then, while the vaulted skies loud ïos rend,
In golden chains should loaded monarchs bend,
And hoary Nile with pensive aspect seem
To mourn the glories of his sevenfold stream;
While prows, that late in fierce encounter met,
Move through the sacred way and vainly threat.
Thee too the Muse should consecrate to fame,
And with her garlands weave thy ever-faithful name.
But nor Callimachus' enervate strain
May tell of Jove, and Phlegra's blasted plain;
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