Whom thunder's dismal noise,
And all that prophets and apostles louder spake,
And all the creatures' plain conspiring voice,

Could not, whilst they lived, awake,
This mightier sound shall make

When dead to' arise ;

And open tombs, and open eyes,
To the long sluggards of five thousand years !
This mightier sound shall make its hearers ears.
Then shall the scatter'd atoms crowding come

Back to their ancient home;
Some from birds, from fishes some;
Some from earth, and some from seas;
Some from beasts, and some from trees;
Some descend from clouds on high,

Some from metals upwards fly,
And, where the attending soul naked and shiver-

ing stands,

Meet, salute, and join their hands;
As dispersed soldiers, at the trumpet's call,

Haste to their colours all.
Unhappy most, like tortured men,
Their joints new set, to be new-rack'd again,

To mountains they for shelter pray,
The mountains shake, and run about no less con-

fused than they

Stop, stop, my Muse! allay thy vigorous heat,

Kindled at a hint so great;
Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,

Which does to rage begin, [course; And this steep hill would gallop up with violent ?Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse,

Fierce and unbroken yet,
Impatient of the spur or bit;

Now prances stately, and anon flies o'er the place; Disdains the servile law of any settled

pace, Conscious and proud of his own natural force.

'Twill no unskilful touch endure, But flings writer and reader too, that sits not sure.

THE MUSE.

Go, the rich chariot instantly prepare ;

The Queen, my Muse, will take the air: Unruly Fancy with strong Judgment trace;

Put in nimble-footed Wit,

Smooth-paced Eloquence join with it;
Sound Memory with young Invention place;

Harness all the winged race.
Let the postillion Nature mount, and let

The coachman Art be set;
And let the airy footmen, running all beside,

Make a long row of goodly pride,
Figures, Conceits, Raptures, and Sentences,
In a well-worded dress;

[ful Lies, And innocent Loves, and pleasant Truths, and use

In all their gaudy liveries. Mount, glorious Queen! thy travelling throne,

And bid it to put on; For long, though cheerful, is the way, And life, alas ! allows but one ill winter's day,

Where never foot of man, or hoof of beast,

The passage press'd; Where never fish did fly, And with short silver wings cut the low liquid sky;

Where bird with painted oars did ne'er Row through the trackless ocean of the air;

Where never yet did pry The busy morning's curious eye; The wheels of thy bold coach pass quick and free,

And all's an open road to thee !

Whatever God did say, Is all thy plain and smooth uninterrupted way! Nay, even beyond his works thy voyages are

known, Thou 'hast thousand worlds too of thine own. Thou speak'st, great Queen! in the same style as He; And a new world leaps forth when thou say’st,

“ Let it be.”

Thou fathom'st the deep gulf of ages past,
And canst pluck up

with ease The years which thou dost please; Like shipwreck'd treasures, by rude tempests cast

Long since into the sea, Brought up again to light and public use by thee. Nor dost thou only dive so low,

But fiy With an unwearied wing the other way on high,

Where Fates among the stars do grow; There into the close nests of Time dost peep,

And there, with piercing eye, Through the firm shell and the thick white, dost spy

Years to come a-forming lie,
Close in their sacred secundine asleep,

Till, hatch'd by the sun's vital heat,
Which o'er them yet does brooding set,

They life and motion get,
And, ripe at last, with vigorous might
Break through the shell, and take their everlasting
flight!

If

And sure we may The same too of the present say, past and future times do thee obey.

Thou stopp’st this current, and dost make This running river settle like a lake; Thy certain hand holds fast this slippery snake!

The fruit which does so quickly waste,

Men scarce can see it, much less taste,
Thou comfitest in sweets to make it last.

This shining piece of ice,
Which melts so soon away

With the sun's ray,
Thy verse does solidate and crystallize,

Till it a lasting mirror be!

Nay, thy immortal rhyme
Makes this one short point of time
To fill up half the orb of round eternity.

TO MR. HOBBES.

Vast bodies of philosophy

I oft have seen and read;

But all are bodies dead,
Or bodies by art fashioned;
I never yet the living soul could see,

But in thy books and thee!
'Tis only God can know
Whether the fair idea thou dost show
Agree entirely with his own or no.

This I dare boldly tell,
'Tis so like truth, 'twill serve our turn as well.
Just, as in Nature, thy proportions be,
As full of concord their variety,

As firm the parts upon their centre rest,
And all so solid are, that they, at least
As much as Nature, emptiness detest.

Long did the mighty Stagyrite retain
The universal intellectual reign,
Saw his own country's short-lived leopard slain;
The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly,
Oftener renew'd his age, and saw that die.
Mecca itself, in spite of Mahomet, possess'd,
And, chased by a wild deluge from the East,
His monarchy new planted in the West.
But, as in time each great imperial race
Degenerates, and gives some new one place:

So did this noble empire waste,

Sunk by degrees from glories past, And in the school-men's hands it perish'd quite at

Then nought but words it grew, [last:

And those all barbarous too: It perish’d, and it vanish'd there, The life and soul, breathed out, became but

empty air !

The fields, which answer'd well the ancients' plough,
Spent and out-worn, return no harvest now;
In barren age wild and unglorious lie,

And boast of past fertility,
The poor relief of present poverty.
Food and fruit we now must want,

Unless new lands we plant.
We break up tombs with sacrilegious hands;

Old rubbish we remove;
To walk in ruins, like vain ghosts, we love,

And with fond divining wands