Let the low crowd who love unwholesome fare, When in thy words the breath of angels flows, Like gross-fed spirits sick in purer air, Their earthly souls by their dull taste disclose ! Thy dazzling genius shines too bright! And they, like spectres, shun the streams of light. But while in shades of ignorance they stray, Round thee rays of knowledge play, [And show thee glittering in abstracted day.]
POLLY, from me, though now a love-sick youth,
Nay, though a poet, hear the voice of truth!
Polly, you're not a beauty, yet you're pretty;
So grave, yet gay; so silly, yet so witty;
A heart of softness, yet a tongue of satire;
You've cruelty, yet, e'en with that, good-nature :
Now you are free, and now reserv'd awhile;
Now a forc'd frown betrays a willing smile.
Reproach'd for absence, yet your sight denied;
My tongue you silence, yet my silence chide.
How would you praise me, should your sex defame!
Yet, should they praise, grow jealous, and exclaim.
If I despair, with some kind look you bless;
But if I hope, at once all hope suppress.
You scorn; yet should my passion change or fail,
Too late you'd whimper out a softer tale.
You love; yet from your lover's wish retire;
Doubt, yet discern; deny, and yet desire.
Such, Polly, are your sex-part truth, part fiction,
Some thought, much whim, and all a contradiction.
OCCASIONED BY THE VICE-PRINCIPAL OF ST. MARYHALL, OXFORD, BEING PRESENTED BY THE HON. MRS. KNIGHT TO THE LIVING OF GOSFIELD IN ESSEX.
WHILE by mean arts, and meaner patrons, rise
Priests, whom the learned and the good despise ;
This sees fair Knight, in whose transcendent mind
Are wisdom, purity, and truth, enshrin'd.
A modest merit now she plans to lift,
Thy living, Gosfield, falls her instant gift.
'Let me (she said) reward alone the wise,
And make the church-revenue virtue's prize.'
She sought the man of honest, candid breast,
In faith, in works of goodness, full exprest;
Though young, yet tutoring academic youth
To science moral, and religious truth.
She sought where the disinterested friend,
The scholar, sage, and free companion, blend;
The pleasing poet, and the deep divine,
She sought, she found, and, Hart! the prize was thine.
SENT TO MRS. BRIDGET JONES, WITH THE WANDERER, A POEM: ALLUDING TO AN EPISODE, WHERE A YOUNG MAN TURNS HERMIT FOR THE LOSS OF HIS WIFE
WHEN with delight fond Love on Beauty dwelt,
While this the youth, and that the fair exprest,
Faint was his joy compar'd to what I felt,
When in my angel Biddy's presence blest.
Tell her, my Muse, in soft, sad, sighing breath,
If she his piercing grief can pitying see,
Worse than to him was his Olympia's death,
From her each moment's absence is to me.
AN EPISTLE TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS FREDERIC PRINCE OF WALES. 1737.
Of reservoirs, and their use; of draining fens, and building bridges, cutting canals, repairing harbours, and stopping inundations, making rivers navigable, building light-houses; of agriculture, gardening, and planting for the noblest uses; of commerce; of public roads; of public buildings, viz. squares, streets, mansions, palaces, courts of justice, senate houses, theatres, hospitals, churches, colleges, the variety of worthies produced by the latter; of colonies. The slave trade censured, &c.
GREAT hope of Britain!-here the Muse essays
A theme, which, to attempt alone, is praise.
Be hers a zeal of Public Spirit known!
A princely zeal!—a spirit all your own!
Where never science beam'd a friendly ray,
Where one vast blank neglected Nature lay;
From Public Spirit there, by arts employ'd,
Creation, varying, glads the cheerless void.
Hail arts, where safety, treasure, and delight,
On land, on wave, in wondrous works unite!
Those wondrous works, O Muse, successive raise,
And point their worth, their dignity, and praise!
What though no streams, magnificently play'd, Raise a proud column, fall a grand cascade; Through nether pipes, which nobler use renowns, Lo! ductile rivulets visit distant towns!
Now vanish fens, whence vapours rise no more,
Whose aguish influence tainted heaven before.
The solid isthmus sinks a watry space,
And wonders, in new state, at naval grace.
Where the flood, deepening, rolls, or wide extends,
From road to road, yon arch, connective, bends.
Where ports were chok'd, where mounds, in vain,
There harbours open, and there breaches close; To keels, obedient, spreads each liquid plain, And bulwark moles repel the boisterous main. When the sunk sun no homeward sail befriends, On the rock's brow the lighthouse kind ascends, And from the shoaly, o'er the gulfy way,
Points to the pilot's eye the warning ray.
Count still, my Muse, (to count what Muse can cease?)
The works of Public Spirit, freedom, peace!
By them shall plants, in forests, reach the skies;
Then lose their leafy pride, and navies rise :
(Navies, which to invasive foes explain,
Heaven throws not round us rocks and seas in vain,
The sail of commerce in each sky aspires,
And property assures what toil acquires.
Who digs the mine or quarry, digs with glee;
No slave !-his option and his gain are free:
Him the same laws the same protection yield,
Who ploughs the furrow, as who owns the field.
Unlike, where tyranny the rod maintains
O'er turfless, leafless, and uncultur'd plains.
VOL. XIX.
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