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Such beauty and beneficence combin'd;
Shade, unperceiv'd, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole;
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not thee, marks not the mighty hand,
That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ;
Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the Spring:
Flings from the Sun direct the flaming day;
Feeds every creature; hurls the tempests forth;
And, as on Earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.

Nature, attend! join every living soul,
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
In adoration join; and, ardent, raise
One general song! To him, ye vocal gales,
Breathe soft, whose Spirit in your freshness breathes:
Oh, talk of him in solitary glooms;

Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine
Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.
And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,
Who shake th' astonish'd world, lift high to Heaven
Th' impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
And let me catch it as I muse along.

Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound;
Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself,

Sound his stupendous praise; whose greater voice
Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and
flowers,

In mingled clouds to him; whose Sun exalts,
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil

paints.

Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to him;
Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
As home he goes beneath the joyous Moon.
Ye that keep watch in Heaven, as Earth asleep
Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,
Ye constellations, while your angels strike,
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,
On Nature write with every beam his praise.
The thunder rolls: be hush'd the prostrate world;
While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
Bleat out afresh, ye hills: ye mossy rocks,
Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,
Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns;
And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.
Ye woodlands all, awake: a boundless song
Burst from the groves! and when the restless day,
Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep,
Sweetest of birds! sweet Philomela, charın
The listening shades, and teach the night his praise.
Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles,
At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all,
Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast,
Assembled men, to the deep organ join
The long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear,
At solemn pauses, through the swelling base;
And, as each mingling flame increases each,
In one united ardour rise to Heaven.
Or if you rather chuse the rural shade,
And find a fame in every secret grove;
There let the shepherd's flute, the virgin's lay,

The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre,
Still sing the God of Seasons, as they roll.
For me, when I forget the darling theme,
Whether the blossom blows, the Summer-ray
Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams;
Or Winter rises in the blackening east;
Be my tongue mute, my fancy paint no more,
And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat.

Should Fate command me to the farthest verge
Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes,
Rivers unknown to song; where first the Sun
Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam
Flames on th' Atlantic isles; 'tis nought to me;
Since God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste, as in the city full;
And where he vital breathes, there must be joy.
When ev'n at last the solemn hour shall come,
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I cheerful will obey: there, with new powers,
Will rising wonders sing: I cannot go
Where Universal Love not smiles around,
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns;
From seeming evil still educing good,
And better thence again, and better still,
In infinite progression. But I lose
Myself in him, in Light ineffable;
Come then, expressive Silence, muse his praise.

THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

AN ALLEGORICAL POEM.

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This poem being writ in the manner of Spenser, the obsolete words, and a simplicity of diction in some of the lines, which borders on the ludicrous, were necessary, to make the imitation more perfect. And the style of that admirable poet, as well as the measure in which he wrote, are, as it were, appro priated by custom to allegorical poems writ in our language; just as in French the style of Mart, who lived under Francis I., has been used in tales, and familiar epistles, by the politest writers of the age of Louis XIV.

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O MORTAL man, who livest here by toil, Do not complain of this thy hard estate; That like an emmet thou must ever moil, Is a sad sentence of an ancient date; And, certes, there is for it reason great; For, tho' sometimes it makes thee weep and wail, And curse thy star, and early drudge and late, Withouten that would come an heavier bale, Loose life, unruly passions and diseases pale.

In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,

With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,

a

Than whom a fiend more fell is no where found.
It
was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground; &
And there a season atween June and May,
Half prankt with spring, with summer half em-

brown'd,

A listless climate made, where, sooth to say, No living wight could work, ne cared ev'n for play.

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458

THOMSON.

What youthful bride can equal her array?
Who can with her for easy pleasure vie?
From mead to mead with gentle wing to stray,
From flower to flower on balmy gales to fly,
Is all she has to do beneath the radiant sky.

"Behold the merry minstrels of the morn,
The swarming songsters of the careless grove,
Ten thousand throats! that from the flowering
thorn

Hymn their good God, and carol sweet of love,
Such grateful kindly raptures them emove:
They neither plow, nor sow; ne, fit for flail,
E'er to the barn the nodden sheaves they drove ;
Yet theirs each harvest dancing in the gale,
Whatever crowns the hill, or smiles along the vale.

"Outcast of Nature, man! the wretched thrall
Of bitter dropping sweat, of sweltry pain,
Of cares that eat away thy heart with gall,
And of the vices, an inhuman train,
That all proceed from savage thirst of gain :
For when hard-hearted Interest first began
To poison Earth, Astræa left the plain;
Guile, violence, and murder, sciz'd on man,
And, for soft milky streams, with blood the rivers

ran.

"Come, ye, who still the cumberous load of life
Push hard up hill; but as the farthest steep
You trust to gain, and put an end to strife,
Down thunders back the stone with mighty sweep,
And hurls your labours to the valley deep,
For ever vain: come, and, withouten fee,
I in oblivion will your sorrows steep,
Your cares, your toils, will steep you in a sea'
Of full delight: O come, ye weary wights, to me!

"With me, you need not rise at early dawn
To pass the joyless day in various stounds:
Or, louting low, on upstart Fortune fawn,
And sell fair honour for some paltry pounds;
Or through the city take your dirty rounds,
To cheat, and dun, and lye, and visit pay,
Now flattering base, now giving secret wounds:
Or prowl in courts of law for human prey,
In venal senate thieve, or rob on broad highway.
V

"No cocks, with me, to rustic labour call,
From village on to village sounding clear:
To tardy swain no shrill-voic'd matrons squall;
No dogs, no babes, no wives, to stun your car;
No hammers thump; no horrid blacksmith sear,
Ne noisy tradesmen your sweet slumbers start,
With sounds that are a misery to hear :
But all is calm, as would delight the heart
Of Sybarite of old, all nature, and all art. ◄

"Here nought but candour reigns, indulgent ease,
Good-natur'd lounging, sauntering up and down:
They who are pleas'd themselves must always

please;

On others' ways they never squint a frown,
Nor heed what haps in hamlet or in town:
Thus, from the source of tender indolence,
With milky blood the heart is overflown,

Is sooth'd and sweeten'd by the social sense;
For Interest, Envy, Pride, and Strife, are banish'd

hence.

"What, what is virtue, but repose of mind,
A pure ethereal calm, that knows no storin;
Above the reach of wild ambition's wind,
Above the passions that this world deform,
And torture man, a proud malignant worm?
But here, instead, soft gales of passion play,.
And gently stir the heart, thereby to form
[gay.
A quicker sense of joy ; as breezes stray
Across th' enliven❜d skies, and make them still more

"The best of men have ever lov'd repose:
They hate to mingle in the filthy fray;
Where the soul sours, and gradual rancour grows,
Embitter'd more from peevish day to day.
Ev'n those whom Fame has lent her fairest ray,
The most renown'd of worthy wights of yore,
From a base world at last have stol'n away:
So Scipio, to the soft Cumaan shore
Retiring, tasted joy he never knew before.

"But if a little exercise you chuse,

Some zest for ease, 'tis not forbidden here.
Amid the groves you may indulge the Muse,
Or tend the blooms, and deck the vernal year;
Or softly stealing, with your watery gear,
Along the brook, the crimson spotted fry
You may delude: the whilst, amus'd, you hear
Now the hoarse stream, and now the Zephyr's
sigh,

Attuned to the birds, and woodland melody.

"O grievous folly! to heap up estate,

Losing the days you see beneath the Sun;
When, sudden, comes blind unrelenting Fate,
And gives th' untasted portion you have won,
With ruthless toil, and many a wretch undone,
To those who mock you gone to Pluto's reign,
There with sad ghosts to pine, and shadows dun
But sure it is of vanities most vain,

To toil for what you here untoiling may obtain."

He ceas'd. But still their trembling ears retain'd
The deep vibrations of his witching song;
That, by a kind of magic power, constrain'd
To enter in, pell-mell, the listening throng.
Heaps pour'd on heaps, and yet they slipt along
In silent ease: as when beneath the beam
Of summer-moons, the distant woods among,
Or by some flood all silver'd with the gleam,
The soft-embodied Fays through airy portal stream

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For whomsoe'er the villain takes in hand, Their joints unknit, their sinews melt apace; As lithe they grow as any willow-wand, And of their vanish'd force remains no trace: So when a maiden fair, of modest grace, In all her buxom blooming May of charms, Is seized in some losel's hot embrace, She waxeth very weakly as she warms, Then sighing yields her up to love's delicious harms.

Wak'd by the crowd, slow from his bench arose A comely full-spread porter, swoln with sleep: His calin, broad, thoughtless aspect, breath'd

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With all the lodges that thereto pertain❜d, No living creature could be seen to stray; While solitude and perfect silence reign'd: So that to think you dreamt you almost was constrain'd.

As when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles,
Plac'd far amid the melancholy main,
(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles;
Or that aërial beings sometimes deign
To stand embodied, to our senses plain,)
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain,
A vast assembly moving to and fro :

Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.

Ye gods of quiet, and of sleep profound! Whose soft dominion o'er this castle sways, And all the widely-silent places round, Forgive me, if my trembling pen displays What never yet was sung in mortal lays. But how shall I attempt such arduous string, I, who have spent my nights, and nightly days, In this soul-deadening place, loose-loitering? Ah! how shall I for this uprear my moulted wing?

Come on, my Muse, nor stoop to low despair, Thou imp of Jove, touch'd by celestial fire! Thou yet shalt sing of war, and actions fair, Which the bold sons of Britain will inspire; Of ancient bards thou yet shalt sweep the lyre; Thou yet shalt tread in tragic pall the stage, Paint love's enchanting woes, the hero's ire, The sage's calm, the patriot's noble rage, Dashing corruption down through every worthless age.

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The rooms with costly tapestry were hung, Where was inwoven many a gentle tale; Such as of old the rural poets sung, Or of Arcadian or Sicilian vale: Reclining lovers, in the lonely dale, Pour'd forth at large the sweetly-tortur'd heart; Or, sighing tender passion, swell'd the gale, And taught charm'd echo to resound their smart; While flocks, woods, streams, around, repose and peace impart.

Those pleas'd the most, where, by a cunning hand,

Depainted was the patriarchal age;

What time Dan Abraham left the Chaldee land, And pastur'd on from verdant stage to stage, Where fields and fountains fresh could best engage.

Toil was not then. Of nothing took they heed, But with wild beasts the sylvan war to wage, And o'er vast plains their herds and flocks to feed: Blest sons of Nature they! true golden age indeed!

Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls,
Bade the gay bloom of vernal landskips rise,
Or Autumn's varied shades imbrown the walls:

When sleep was coy, the bard in waiting there, Cheer'd the lone midnight with the Muse's love: Composing music bade his dreams be fair, And music lent new gladness to the morning air.

Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran Soft-tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell, And sobbing breezes sigh'd, and oft began (So work'd the wizard) wintery storms to swell, As Heaven and Earth they would together mell: At doors and windows, threatening, seem'd to call

The demons of the tempest, growling fell, Yet the least entrance found they none at all; Whence sweeter grew our sleep, secure in massy hall.

And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams,
Raising a world of gayer tinct and grace;
O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian gleams,
That play'd, in waving lights, from place to
place,

And shed a roseate smile on Nature's face."
Not Titian's pencil e'er could so array,
So fierce with clouds the pure ethereal space;
Ne could it e'er such melting forms display,

Now the black tempest strikes th' astonish'd eyes, | As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay.
Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies;
The trembling Sun now plays o'er Ocean blue,
And now rude mountains frown amid the skies;
Whate'er Lorraine light-touch'd with softening
hue,

Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew.

Each sound, too, here, to languishment inclin'd, Lull'd the weak bosom, and induced ease, Aerial music in the warbling wind, At distance rising oft by small degrees, Nearer and nearer came, till o'er the trees It hung, and breath'd such soul-dissolving airs, As did, alas! with soft perdition please : Entangled deep in its enchanting snares, The listening heart forgot all duties and all cares.

A certain music, never known before, Here lull'd the pensive melancholy mind; Full easily obtain'd. Behoves no more, But sidelong, to the gently-waving wind, To lay the well-tun'd instrument reclin'd; From which, with airy flying fingers light, Beyond each mortal touch the most refin'd, The god of winds drew sounds of deep delight: Whence, with just cause, the harp of Æolus it hight.

Ah me! what hand can touch the string so fine?
Who up the lofty diapason roll

Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine,
Then let them down again into the soul?
Now rising love they fann'd; now pleasing dole
They breath'd, in tender musings, through the
heart;

And now a graver sacred strain they stole,
As when seraphic hands an hymn impart,
Wild-warbling Nature all above the reach of Art!

Such the gay splendour, the luxurious state,
Of caliphs old, who on the Tigris' shore,
In mighty Bagdat, populous and great,
Held their bright court, where was of ladies store;
And verse, love, music, still the garland wore:

No, fair illusions! artful phantoms, no!
My Muse will not attempt your fairy-land:
She has no colours that like you can glow :
To catch your vivid scenes too gross her hand.
But sure it is, was ne'er a subtler band

Than these same guileful angel-seeming sprites, Who thus in dreams, voluptuous, soft, and bland, Pour'd all th' Arabian Heaven upon her nights, And bless'd them oft besides with more refin'd delights.

They were in sooth a most enchanting train,
Ev'n feigning virtue; skilful to unite
With evil, good, and strew with pleasure, pain.
But for those fiends, whom blood and broils delight,
Who hurl the wretch, as if to Hell outright,
Down, down black gulphs, where sullen waters
sleep,

Or hold him clambering all the fearful night
On beetling cliffs, or pent in ruins deep;
They, till due time should serve, were bid far
hence to keep.

Ye guardian spirits, to whom man is dear,
From these foul demons shield the midnight
gloom :

Angels of fancy and of love, be near,
And o'er the blank of sleep diffuse a bloom:
Evoke the sacred shades of Greece and Rome,
And let them virtue with a look impart:
But chief, awhile, O! lend us from the tomb
These long-lost friends for whom in love we
smart,

And fill with pious awe and joy-mixt woe the heart.

Or are you sportive - Bid the morn of youth
Rise to new light, and beam afresh the days
Of innocence, simplicity, and truth;
To cares estrang'd, and manhood's thorny ways.
What transport, to retrace our boyish plays,

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