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Me lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
Of loving friend, delights; distress'd, forlorn,
Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
Or lover pendent on a willow-tree.
Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought,
And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose:
But if a slumber haply does invade
My weary limbs, my fancy's still awake,
Thoughtful of drink, and, eager, in a dream,
Tipples imaginary pots of ale,

In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.
Thus do I live, from pleasure quite debarr'd,
Nor taste the fruits that the sun's genial rays
Mature, john-apple, nor the downy peach,
Nor walnut in rough-furrow'd coat secure,
Nor medlar, fruit delicious in decay ;
Afflictions great! yet greater still remain:

My galligaskins, that have long withstood
The winter's fury, and encroaching frosts,
By time subdued (what will not time subdue!)
An horrid chasm disclosed with orifice
Wide, discontinuous; at which the winds
Eurus and Auster, and the dreadful force
Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian waves,
Tumultuous enter with dire chilling blasts,
Portending agues. Thus a well-fraught ship,
Long sail'd secure, or through th' Ægean deep,
Or the Ionian, till crusing near

The Lilybean shere, with hideous crush
On Scylla, or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!)
She strikes rebounding; whence the shatter'd oak,
So fierce a shock unable to withstand,
Admits the sea; in at the gaping side
The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage,
Resistless, overwhelming; horrors seize
The mariners; Death in their eyes appears,
They stare, they lave, they pump, they swear,
they pray;

(Vain efforts!) still the battering waves rush in, Implacable, till, deluged by the foam,

The ship sinks foundering in the vast abyss.*

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FROM "THE VIOLENCE OF LOVE, OR THE RIVAL SISTERS."

FAIR and soft, and gay and young,

All charm-she play'd, she danced, she sung:
There was no way to 'scape the dart,
No care could guard the lover's heart.
Ah, why, cried I, and dropp'd a tear,
Adoring, yet despairing e'er
To have her to myself alone,

Why was such sweetness made for one?

But, growing bolder, in her ear
I in soft numbers told my care:
She heard, and raised me from her feet,
And seem'd to glow with equal heat.
Like heaven's, too mighty to express,
My joys could but be known by guess;
Ay, fool, said I, what have I done,

To wish her made for more than one!

But long she had not been in view,
Before her eyes their beams withdrew;

[* This is by Sir Robert Ayton, and was among the poems of his in the Ayton MS. once in Mr. Heber's hands. See Note also at p. 141.]

Ere I had reckon'd half her charms,
She sunk into another's arms.
But she that once could faithless be,
Will favour him no more than me:
He too, will find he is undone,
And that she was not made for one.

SONG.

FROM THE SAME.

CELIA is cruel: Sylvia, thou,

I must confess, art kind; But in her cruelty, I vow,

I more repose can find.

For, oh! thy fancy at all games does fly, Fond of address, and willing to comply.

Thus he that loves must be undone,
Each way on rocks we fall;
Either you will be kind to none,

Or worse, be kind to all.

Vain are our hopes, and endless is our care, We must be jealous, or we must despair.

DR. WALTER POPE.

[Died, 1714.]

DR. WALTER POPE was junior proctor of Oxford, in 1668, when a controversy took place respecting the wearing of hoods and caps, which the reigning party considered as the relics of popery. Our proctor, however, so stoutly opposed the revolutionists on this momentous point, that the venerable caps and hoods continued to

THE OLD MAN'S WISH.

IF I live to grow old, for I find I go down,
Let this be my fate: in a country town,
May I have a warm house, with a stone at the gate,
And a cleanly young girl to rub my bald pate.

May I govern my passion with an absolute sway,
And grow wiser and better, as my strength
wears away,

Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay.

Near a shady grove, and a murmuring brook,
With the ocean at distance, whereon I may look ;
With a spacious plain, without hedge or stile,
And an easy pad-nag to ride out a mile.

May I govern, &c.

With Horace and Petrarch, and two or three more
Of the best wits that reign'd in the ages before;
With roast mutton, rather than ven'son or teal,
And clean, though coarse linen, at every meal.
May I govern, &c.

be worn till the Restoration. This affair he used to call the most glorious action of his life. Dr. Pope was, however, a man of wit and information, and one of the first chosen fellows of the Royal Society. He succeeded Sir Christopher Wren as Professor of Astronomy in Gresham College.

With a pudding on Sundays, with stout hum-
ming liquor,

And remnants of Latin to welcome the vicar;
With Monte Fiascone or Burgundy wine,
To drink the king's health as oft as I dine.
May I govern, &c.

With a courage undaunted may I face my last day,

And when I am dead may the better sort say,In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow,

He's gone, and [has] left not behind him his fellow :

For he govern'd his passion with an absolute

sway,

And grew wiser and better, as his strength

wore away,

Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay.

THOMAS PARNELL.

[Born, 1679. Died, 1717?]

THE Compass of Parnell's poetry is not extensive, but its tone is peculiarly delightful: not from mere correctness of expression, to which some critics have stinted its praises, but from the graceful and reserved sensibility that accompanied his polished phraseology. The curiosa felicitas, the studied happiness of his diction, does not spoil its simplicity. His poetry is like a flower that has been trained and planted by the skill of the gardener, but which preserves, in its cultured state, the natural fragrance of its wilder air.

deacon's orders under the canonical age, had the archdeaconry of Clogher conferred upon him by the bishop of that diocese, in his twenty-sixth year. About the same time he married a Miss Anne Minchin, an amiable woman, whose death he had to lament not many years after their union, and whose loss, as it affected Parnell, even the iron-hearted Swift mentions as a heavy misfortune.

Though born and bred in Ireland, he seems to have had too little of the Irishman in his local attachments. His aversion to the manners of his

His ancestors were of Congleton, in Cheshire. His father, who had been attached to the repub-native country was more fastidious than amiable. lican party in the civil wars, went to Ireland at the Restoration, and left an estate which he purchased in that kingdom, together with another at Cheshire, at his death, to the poet. Parnell was educated at the university of Dublin, and having been permitted, by a dispensation, to take

When he had once visited London, he became attached to it for ever. His zest or talents for society made him the favourite of its brightest literary circles. His pulpit oratory was also much admired in the metropolis; and he renewed his visits to it every year. This, however, was

only the bright side of his existence. His spirits were very unequal, and when he found them ebbing, he used to retreat to the solitudes of Ireland, where he fed the disease of his imagination, by frightful descriptions of his retirement. During his intimacy with the Whigs in England, he contributed some papers, chiefly Visions, to the Spectator and Guardian. Afterward his personal friendship was engrossed by the Tories, and they persuaded him to come over to their side in politics, at the suspicious moment when the Whigs were going out of power. In the frolics of the Scriblerus club, of which he is said to have been the founder, whenever literary allusions were required for the ridicule of pedantry, he may be

supposed to have been the scholar most able to supply them; for Pope's correspondence shows, that among his learned friends he applied to none with so much anxiety as to Parnell. The death of the queen put an end to his hopes of preferment by the Tories, though not before he had obtained, through the influence of Swift, the vicarage of Finglass, in the diocese of Dublin. His fits of despondency, after the death of his wife, became more gloomy, and these aggravated a habit of intemperance which shortened his days. He died, in his thirty-eighth year, at Chester, on his way to Ireland,* and he was buried in Trinity church, in that city, but without a memorial to mark the spot of his interment.

A FAIRY TALE, IN THE ANCIENT ENGLISH
STYLE.

IN Britain's isle, and Arthur's days,
When midnight fairies daunced the maze,
Lived Edwin of the Green;
Edwin, I wis, a gentle youth,
Endow'd with courage, sense, and truth,
Though badly shaped he been.

His mountain back mote well be said
To measure heighth against his head,
And lift itself above;

Yet, spite of all that Nature did
To make his uncouth form forbid,
This creature dared to love.

He felt the charms of Edith's eyes, Nor wanted hope to gain the prize,

Could ladies look within;

But one Sir Topaz dress'd with art, And if a shape could win a heart, He had a shape to win.

Edwin, if right I read my song,
With slighted passion paced along,
All in the moony light;
"Twas near an old enchanted court,
Where sportive fairies made resort

To revel out the night.

His heart was drear, his hope was cross'd, 'Twas late, 'twas far, the path was lost

That reach'd the neighbour town; With weary steps he quits the shades, Resolved, the darkling dome he treads

And drops his limbs adown.

But scant he lays him on the floor,
When hollow winds remove the door,
And trembling rocks the ground:
And, well I ween to count aright,
At once a hundred tapers light
On all the walls around.

[He is said to have died in 1717; but in the parish register the entry of his burial is the 18th October, 1718. See Goldsmith's Misc. Works by Prior, vol. iv. p. 512.]

Now sounding tongues assail his ear, Now sounding feet approachen near, And now the sounds increase: And from the corner where he lay, He sees a train profusely gay,

Come prankling o'er the place.

But (trust me, gentles!) never yet
Was dight a masking half so neat,

Or half so rich before;

The country lent the sweet perfumes, The sea the pearl, the sky the plumes, The town its silken store.

Now whilst he gazed, a gallant, drest
In flaunting robes above the rest,
With awful accent cried,
"What mortal of a wretched mind,
Whose sighs infect the balmy wind,
Has here presumed to hide ""

At this the swain, whose venturous soul
No fears of magic art control,

Advanced in open sight;

"Nor have I cause of dread," he said, "Who view, by no presumption led, Your revels of the night.

"'Twas grief, for scorn of faithful love, Which made my steps unweeting rove Amid the nightly dew." ""Tis well," the gallant cries again, "We fairies never injure men

Who dare to tell us true.

"Exalt thy love-dejected heart, Be mine the task, or ere we part,

To make thee grief resign;
Now take the pleasure of thy chaunce;
Whilst I with Mab, my partner, daunce,
Be little Mable thine."

He spoke, and all a sudden there
Light music floats in wanton air;

The monarch leads the queen:
The rest their fairy partners found:
And Mable trimly tript the ground
With Edwin of the Green.

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