MR Prior's Poems were published, in a handsome folio, in the year 1718, during his own life. After his death, which event happened in Sept. 1721, his Manuscripts, as quell of a public as a private nature, were left, by our Author's will, to Lord Harley and Mr. Adrian Drift, his executors, with orders to destroy such as might not be proper for future inspection. In 1733-4. Mr. Samuel Humphreys of Hampstead published the Posthumous Poems of our Author, (probably at the request of his executors) at the same time obliging the world with the life of that excellent man and poet. From 1734 to these times various editions of Prior's Poems have poured from the press, but without any order or method observed in arranging the different pieces, epistles, tales, ballads, odes, epigrams, &c. being indiscriminately jumbled together, circumstances at the same time inconvenient and offensive to the reader of taste and judgment. To obviate a defect so apparent, we have ventered, in this edition of Prior's Works, to depart from the order observed by his former editors, the different pieces being here [classed and arranged according to their several kinds, so that the whole of the same species of writing falls under the reader's eye in one and the same department of the book only, in place of many departments, as formerly; an alteration of some conveniences to the reader, and such as can reflect no disgrace to the figure of our Author's poems, which here present themselves under a Bore uniform arrangement than usual.

AN ODE

ON EXODUS iii. 14. "I AM THAT I AM'

AN! foolish man!

Mscarce know it thou how thyself began,

Scarce haft thou thought enough to prove thou art,
Yet, fteel'd with study'd boldnefs, thou dar't try
To fend thy doubting Reafon's dazzled eye
Thro' the myfterious gulf of vaft immentity:
Much thou canft there difcern, much thence impart.
Vain wretch! fupprefs thy knowing pride,
Mortify thy learned luft:

Vain are thy thoughts while thou thyself art duft.

II.

Let wit her fails, her oars let Wisdom lend,
The helm let politic Experience guide;

Yet ceafe to hope thy fhort-liv'd bark shall ride
Down fpreading Fate's unnavigable tide.
What tho' ftill it farther tend?

Still 'tis farther from its end,

And, in the bosom of that boundless fea,

Still finds its error lengthen with its way.

III.

With daring pride and infolent delight,

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ΤΟ

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Your doubts refolv'd you boast, your labours crown'd, And, EYPHKA your God, forfooth, is found

Incomprehenfible and infinite.

But is he therefore found? vain fearcher! no:

Let

your imperfect definition show

That nothing you, the weak definer, know.

IV.

Say, why fhould the collected main

Itfelf within itself contain !

Why to its caverns fhould it fometimes creep,

And with delighted filence fleep

On the lov'd bofom of its parent deep,

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3.

Written 1688. as an exercife at St. John's college Cambridge.

Why should its numerous waters stay

In comely difcipline, and fair array,

Till winds and tides exert their high comman ds!
Then, prompt and ready to obey,

Why do the rifing furges fpread

Their opening ranks o'er earth's fubmiffive head, Marching through different paths to different lands?

Why does the conftant fun

V.

With meafur'd steps his radiant journies run ?
Why does he order the diurnal hours
To leave earth's other part, and rife in ours?
Why does he wake the correspondent moon,
And fill her willing lamp with liquid light,
Commanding her with delegated powers
To beautify the world, and blefs the night?
Why does each animated star

Love the juft limits of its proper fp de
Why does each confenting fign

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With prudent harmony combine

VI.

These unfathom'd wonders try:

In turns to move, and subsequent appear,
To gird the globe, and regulate the year?

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Man does with dangerous curiofity

With fancied rules and arbitrary laws

Matter and motion he reftrains;

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And ftudied lines and fictious circles draws:

Then with imagin'd fovereignty

Lord of his new hypothefis he reigns.

He reigns! How long? till fome ufurper rife!
And he, too, mighty thoughtful, mighty wife,
Studies new lines, and other circles feigns.
From this laft toil again what knowledge flows?
Juft as much, perhaps, as fhows

That all his predeceffor's rules

Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools:

That he on t'other's ruin rears his throne,

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And fhows his friend's mistake, and thence confirms

his own.

VII.

On earth, in air, amidst the feas and skies,
Mountainous heaps of wonders rife,
Whole tow'ring ftrength will ne'er fubmit
To Reafon's batt'ries or the mines of Wit:

Yet ftill inquiring, ftill mistaking man,

Each hour repuls'd, each hour dares onward prefs,
And, levelling at God his wand'ring guefs,

(That feeble engine of his reasoning war,

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Which guides his doubts and combats his despair)
Laws to his Maker the learn'd wretch can give,
Can bound that nature and prescribe that will
Whofe pregnant Word did either ocean fill,
Can tell us whence all beings are, and how they move
'Thro' either ocean, foolish man!

That pregnant Word fent forth again

Might to a world extend each atom there,

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[and live.

For ev'ry drop call forth a fea, a heav'n for ev'ry star.

VIII.

Let cunning earth her fruitful wonders hide,

And only lift thy ftaggering reafon up

To trembling Calvary's aftonifh'd top,

Then mock thy knowledge and confound thy pride.
Explaining how Perfection fuffer'd pain,
Almighty languifh'd, and Eternal dy'd;
How by her patient victor Death was flain,
And earth profan'd, yet blefs'd with Deicide.

Then down with all thy boasted volumes, down;

Only referve the facred one:

Low, reverently low,

Make thy stubborn knowledge bow;

Weep out thy reafon's and thy body's eyes;

Deject thyself that thou may'it rife:

To look to heav'n, be blind to all below.

IX.

Then Faith for Reafon's glimm'ring light fhall give

Her immortal perspective,

And Grace's prefence Nature's lofs retrieve;

Then thy enliven'd foul shall fee

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That all the volumes of philosophy,

With all their comments, never could invent
So politic an inftrument,

To reach the heav'n of heav'ns, the high abode
Where Mofes places his mysterious God,

As was the ladder which old Jacob rear'd,
When light divine had human darkness clear'd,
And his enlarg'd ideas found the road
Which faith had dictated and angels trod.

AN ODE.

WHILE blooming youth and gay delight

Sit on thy rofy cheeks confeft,

Thou haft, my dear, undoubted right
To triumph o'er this deftin'd breaft.
My reafon bends to what thy eyes ordain ;
For I was born to love, and thou to reign.
II.

But would you meanly thus rely

On power you know I must obey?
Exert a legal tyranny,

And do an ill because you may?

Still must I thee, as Atheifts Heaven, adore;
Not fee thy mercy, and yet dread thy power?

III.

Take heed, my dear: youth flies apace;

As well as Cupid, Time is blind :
Soon must thofe glories of thy face

The fate of vulgar beauty find:

The thoufand Loves, that arm thy potent eye,
Muft drop their quivers, flag their wings, and die.

IV.

Then wilt thou figh, when in each frown
A hateful wrinkle more appears;
And putting peevish humours on,
Seems but the fad effect of years:
Kindness itself too weak a charm will prove
To raife the feeble fires of aged love.