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Heroic champions caught the clarion's call,
And throng'd the feast in Edward's banner'd hall;
While chiefs, like George, approv'd in worth
alone,

Unlock'd chaste Beauty's adamantine zone.
Lo! the fam'd isle, which hails thy chosen sway,
What fertile fields her temp'rate suns display!
Where Property secures the conscious swain,
And guards, while Plenty gives, the golden grain:
Hence with ripe stores her villages abound,
Her airy downs with scatter'd sheep resound;
Fresh are her pastures with unceasing rills,
And future navies crown her darksome hills.
To bear her forinidable glory far,
Behold her opulence of hoarded war?
See, from her ports a thousand banners stream;
On ev'ry coast her vengeful lightnings gleam!
Meantime, remote from Ruin's armed hand,
In peaceful majesty her cities stand;
Whose splendid domes and busy streets declare
Their firmest fort, a king's parental care.
And oh! blest Queen, if e'er the magic pow'rs
Of warbled truth have won thy musing hours;
Here Poesy, from awful days of yore,

Has pour'd her genuine gifts of raptur'd lore.
Mid oaken bow'rs, with holy verdure wreath'd,
In Druid songs her solemu spirit breath'd :
While cunning Bards at antient banquets sung
Of paynim foes defied, and trophies hung.
Here Spenser tun'd his mystic minstrelsy,
And dress'd in fairy robes a Queen like Thee.
Here, boldly mark'd with ev'ry living hue,
Nature's unbounded portrait Shakspeare drew:
But chic the dreaded group of human woes
The daring artist's tragic pencil chose;
Explor'd the pangs that rend the royal breast,
Those wounds that lurk beneath the tissued vest.
Lo! this the land, whence Milton's Muse of fire
High soar'd to steal from heaven a seraph's lyre;
And told the golden ties of wedded love
In sacred Eden's amaranthine grove.

Thine too! majestic Bride, the favor'd clime,
Where Selence sits enshrin'd in roofs sublime.
O mark, how green her wood of antient bays
O'er Isis' marge in many a chaplet strays!
Thither, if haply some distinguish'd flow'r
Ofthese mix'd blooms from that ambrosial bow'r
Mightcatch thy glance, and, rich in Nature's hue,
Entwine thy diadem with honor due;
If seemly gifts the train of Phoebus pay,
To deck imperial Hymen's festive day;
Thither thyself shall haste, and mildly deign
To tread withnymph-like step theconsciousplain;
Pleas'd in the Muse's nook, with decent pride,
To throw the sceptred pall of state aside.
Nor from the shade shall George be long away,
WhichclaimsCharlotta'slove, and courts her stay.
These are Britannia's praises. Deign to trace
With rapt reflection Freedom's fav'rite race!
But though the gen'rous isle, in arts and arms,
Thus stand supreme in Nature's choicest charms,
Tho' George and Conquest guard her sea-girt
throne,

One happier blessing still she calls her own;

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That grac'd its gorgeous festivals of yore;
Say,conscious Dome, ife'er thy marshall'd knights
So nobly deck'd their old majestic rites
As when, high-thron'd amid thy trophy'd shrine,
George shone the leader of the garter'd line?

Yet future triumphs, Windsor, still remain;
Still may thy bow'rs receive as brave a train:
For lo! to Britain and her favor'd Pair
Heaven's high command has sent a sacred Heir!
Him the bold pattern of his patriot sire
Shall fill with early fame's immortal fire:
In life's fresh spring ere buds the promis'd prime,
His thoughts shallmounttovirtue's meed sublime:
The patriot fire shall catch, with sure presage,
Each lib'ral omen of his op'ning age;
Then to thy courts shall lead, with conscious joy,
In stripling beauty's bloom, the princely boy;
There firmly wreathe the Braid of heavenly dye,
True valor's badge, around his tender thigh.

Meantime, thy royal piles that rise elate
With many an antique tow'r, in massy state,
In the young champion's musing mind shall raise
Vast images of Albion's elder days;
While, as around his cager glance explores
Thychambers, roughwithwar'sconstructedstores,
Rude helms, and bruised shields, barbaric spoils
Of antient chivalry's undaunted toils;
Amid the dusky trappings hung on high,
Young Edward's sable mail shall strike his eye;
Shall fire the youth to crown his riper years
With rival Cressys, and a new Poitiers;
On the same wall, the same triumphal base,
His own victorious monuments to place.

Nor can a fairer kindred title move
His emulative age to glory's love
Than Edward, laureate prince. In letter'd truth,
Oxford, sage mother, school'd his studious youth:
Her simple institutes and rigid lore
The royal nursling unreluctant bore;
Nor shunn'd, at pensive eve, with lonesome pace,
Thecloister's moon-light-chequer'd floor totrace;
Nor scorn'd to make the sun, at inatins due,
Stream through the storied windows holy hue.
Andoh, young Prince, be thine his moralpraise;
Nor seek in fields of blood his warrior bays.

Wat

War has its charms terrific. Far and wide
When stands th'embattled host in banner'd pride;
O'er the vext plain when the shrill clangors run,
And the long phalanx flashes in the sun;
When now no dangers of the deathful day
Mar the bright scene, nor break the firm array;
Full oft too rashly glows with fond delight
The youthful breast, and asks the future fight;
Nor knows that Horror's form, a spectre wan,
Stalks yet unseen, along the gleamy van.
May no such rage be thine! no dazzling ray
Of specious fame thy stedfast feet betray!
Be thine domestic glory's radiant calm,
Be thine the sceptre wreath'd with many a palm:
Be thine the throne with peaceful embleishung,
The silver lyre to milder conquests strung!

Instead of glorious feats achiev'd in arms,
Bid rising arts display their mimic charms :
Just to thy country's fame, in tranquil days,
Record the past, and rouse the future praise :
Before the public eye,in breathing brass,
Bid thy fam'd father's mighty triumphs pass:
Swell the broad arch with haughty Cuba's fall,
And clothe with Minden's plain th 'historic hall.
Then mourn not, Edward's Dome, thine
tient boast,

Nor haunt the crowd, nor tempt the main,
For splendid care and guilty gain!

When morning's twilight tinctur'd beam
Strikes their low thatch with slanting glean,
They rove abroad in ether blue,
To dip the scythe in fragrant dew;
The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell,
That nodding shades a craggy dell.

'Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear,
Wild nature's sweetest notes they hear;
On green untrodden banks they view
The hyacinth's neglected hue:
In their lone haunts and woodland rounds,
They spy the squirrel's airy bounds;
And startle from her ashen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore
Of solitude's sequester'd store,
For them the moon with cloudless ray
Mounts, to illume their homeward way:
Their weary spirits to relieve,

The meadows incense breathe at eve.
No riot mars the simple fare
That o'er a glimm'ring hearth they snare:
an-But when the curfew's measur'd roar
Duly, the dark'ning valleys o'er,
Has echo'd from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet-down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.

Thy tournaments and listed combats lost!
From Arthur's Board, no more, proud castle,

mourn

Adventurous Valor's gothic trophies torn!
Those elfin charms, that held in inagic night
Its elder fame, and dimm'd its genuine light
At length dissolve in Truth's ineridian ray,
And the bright Order burst to perfect day:
The mystic round, begirt with bolder peers,
On Virtue's base its rescued glory rears;
Sees civil Prowess mightier acts achieve;
Sees meek Humanity distress relieve;
Adopts the Worth that bids the conflict cease,
And claims its honors from the Chiefs of Peace.

§ 65. Ode to Sleep. T. WARTON.
On this my pensive pillow, gentle Sleep!
Descend, in all thy downy plumage drest:
Wipe with thy wing these eyes that wake toweep,
And place thy crown of poppies on my breast
O steep my senses in oblivion's balm,
And sooth my throbbing puise with lenient hand;
This tempest of my boiling blood becalm!
Despair grows mild at thy supreme command.
Yet ah! in vain, familiar with the gloom,
And sadly toiling through the tedious night,
I seek sweet slumber, while that virgin bloom,
For ever hov'ring, haunts my wretched sight.
Nor would the dawning day my sorrows charm:
Black midnight, and the radiant noon, alike
To me appear, while with uplifted arm
Death stands prepar'd, but still delays, to strike.

§ 66. The Hamlet, written in Whichwood Forest.

T. WARTON.

THE hinds how blest, who ne'er beguil'd
To quit their hamlet's hawthorn-wild,

Their little sons, who spread the bloom
Of health around the clay-built room,
Or through the primros'd coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hay;
Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine;
Or hasten from the sultry hill
To loiter at the shady rill;
Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest
To rob the raven's antient nest.

Their humble porch with honeyed flow'rs
The curling woodbine's shade embow'rs.
From the trim garden's thymy mound
Their bees in busy swarms resound.
Nor fell Disease, before his time,
Hastes to consume life's golden prime ;
But when their temples song have wore

The silver crown of tresses hoar;
As studious still calm peace to keep,
Beneath a flow'ry turf they sleep.

§ 67. Ode. The First of April. T. WARTON.
WITH dalliance rude young Zephyr woos
Coy May. Full oft with kind excuse
The boist rous boy the Fair denies,
Or with a scornful smile complies.

Mindful of disaster past,
And shrinking at the northern blast,
The sleety storm returning still,
The morning hoar and ev'ning chill;
Reluctant comes the timid Spring.
Scarce a bee, with airy ring,
Murmurs the blossom'd boughs around,
That clothe the garden's southern bound:
Ff4

Scarce

Scarce a sickly straggling flow'r
Decks the rough castle's rifted tow'r :
Scarce the hardy primrose peeps
From the dark dell's entangled steeps:
O'er the field of waving broom:
Slowly shoots the golden bloom:
And, but by fits, the furze-clad dale
Tinctures the transitory gale:
While from the shrubb'ry's nak'd maze,
Where the vegetable blaze

Of Flora's brightest 'broidery shone,
Ev'ry chequer'd charm is flown;
Save that the lilac hangs to view
Its bursting gems in clusters blue.
Scant along the ridgy land

The beans their new-born ranks expand:
The fresh-turn'd soil with tender blades
Thinly the sprouting barley shades:
Fringing the forest's devious edge,
Half-rob'd appears the haw-thorn hedge;
Or to the distant eye displays
Weakly green its budding sprays,

The swallow, for a moment seen,
Skims in haste the village green:
From the grey moor, on feeble wing,
The screaming plovers idly spring:
The butterfly, gay-painted soon,
Explores awhile the tepid noon,
And fondly trusts its tender dyes
To fickle suns and flatt'ring skies.
Fraught with a transient, frozen show'r,
If a cloud should haply low'r,
Sailing o'er the landscape dark,
Mute on a sudden is the lark;
But when gleams the sun again
O'er the pearl-besprinkled plain,
And from behind his wat ry veil
Looks through the thin-descending hail,
She mounts, and less'ning to the sight,
Salutes the blythe return of light,
And high her tuneful track pursues
Mid the dim rainbow's scatter'd hues.
Where in venerable rows
Widely waving oaks inclose
The moat of youder antique hall,
Swarm the rooks with clam'rous call;
And, to the toils of nature true,
Wreath their capacious nests anew.
Musing through the lawny park,
The lonely poet loves to mark
How various greens in faint degrees
Tinge the tall groups of various trees :
While, careless of the changing year,
The pine cerulean, never fear,
Tow'rs distinguish'd from the rest,
And proudly yaunts her winter vest.
Within some whispering osier isle,
Where Glym's low banks neglected smile;
And each trim meadow still retains
The wint'ry torrent's oozy stains:
Beneath a willow, long forsook,
The fisher seeks his custom'd nook
And bursting thro' the crackling sedge
That crowns the current's cavern'd edge,

He startles from the bordering wood
The bashful wild-duck's carly brood.

O'er the broad downs, a novel race,
Frisk the lambs, with faltering pace,
Add with eager bleetings fill
The foss that skirts the beacon'd hill.

His free-born vigor yet unbroke
To lordly man's usurping yoke,
The bounding colt forgets to play:
Basking beneath the nootide ray,
And stretch'd among the daisies, pride
Of a green dingle's sloping side:
While far beneath, where nature spreads
Her boundless length of level meads,
In loose luxuriance taught to stray
A thousand tumbling rills inlay
With silver veins the vale, or pass
Redundant thro the sparkling grass.
Yet in these presages rude,
'Midst her pensive solitude,
Fancy, with prophetic glance,
Sees the teeming months advance;
The field, the forest, green and gay,
The dappled slope, the tedded hay;
Sees the reddening orchard blow,
The harvest wave, the vintage flow;
Sees June unfold his glossy robe
Of thousand hues o'er all the globe;
Sees Ceres grasp her crown of corn,
And plenty load her ample horn.

$68. Ode. The Suicide. T. Warton.
BENEATH the beech, whose branches bare
Smit with the lightning's vivid glare,
O'erhang the craggy road,

And whistle hollow as they wave;
Within a solitary grave,

A wretched Suicide holds his accurs'd abode.
Lower'd the grin morn, in murky dies
Damp mists involved the scowling skies,
And dimmi'd the struggling day;

As by the brook that ling'ring laves
Yon rush-grown moor with sable waves
Full of the dark resolve he took his sullen way.
I mark'd his desultory pace,

His gestures strange, and varying face,
With many a mutter'd sound;

And ah! too late aghast I view'd
The reeking blade, the hand embru'd;

He fell, and groaning grasp'd in agony the ground.
Full many a melancholy night

He watch'd the slow return of light;
And sought the pow'rs of sleep,

To spread a momentary calm

O'er his sad couch, and in the balm (steep,
Of bland oblivion's dews his burning eyes to
Full oft, unknowing and unknown,
He wore his endless, noons alone,
Amid the autumnal wood:

Oft was he wont in hasty fit,
Abrupt the social board to quit,

And gaze with eager glance upon the tumbling

flood.

Beck'ning

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Is this,' mistaken Scorn will cry,

Is this the youth, whose genius high
Could build the genuine rhyme?

Whose bosom mild the fav'ring Muse

Had stor'd with all her ample views,

'Parent of fairest deeds, and purposes sublime?

Ah! from the Muse that bosom mild
By treach'rous magic was beguil'd,

[woe.

To strike the deathful blow:
She fill'd his soft ingenuous mind
With many a feeling too refin'd,
And rous'd to livelier pangs his wakeful sense of
Though doom'd hard penury to prove,
And the sharp stings of hopeless love,
To griefs congenial prone,

More wounds than nature gave he knew,
While misery's form his fancy drew
In dark ideal hues, and horrors not its own,
Then wish not o'er his earthly tomb
The baleful nightshade's lurid bloom
To drop its deadly dew;

Nor, oh! forbid the twisted thorn,
That rudely binds his turf forlorn,
With spring's green-swelling buds to
What though no marble-piled bust
Adorn his desolated dust,

[anew. vegetate

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Forbear, fond bard, thy partial praise; Nor thus for guilt in specious lays The wreath of glory twine : In vain with hues of gorgeous glow Gay Fancy gives her vest to flow, [confine. Unless Truth's matron-hand the floating folds Just Heaven, man's fortitude to prove, Permits through life at large to rove The tribes of hell-born woe; Yet the same pow'r that wisely sends Life's fiercest ills, indulgent lends

[foe.

* Religion's golden shield to break th' embattled

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Yon foul self-murtherer's throbbing breast,
And stay'd the rising storm :
Had bade the sun of hope appear

To gild the darken'd hemisphere,

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And give the wonted bloom to nature's blasted

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• Vain man! 'tis Heaven's prerogative To take, what first it deign'd to give, !

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Thy tributary breath:

In awful expectation plac'd,

Await thy doom, nor impious haste To pluck from God's right hand his instruments of death,'

$69. Ode. Sent to a Friend on his leaving a fa
vorite Village in Hampshire. T. WARTON.
AH, mourn thy lov'd retreat! No more
Shall classic steps thy scenes explore!
When morn's pale rays but faintly peep
O'er yonder oak-crown'd airy steep,
Who now shall climb its brows, to view
Thy length of landscapes ever new;
Where summer flings, in careless pride,
Her varied yesture far and wide?
Who mark, beneath, each village-charm,
Or grange, or elm-encircled farm:
The flinty dove-cote's crowded roof,
Watch'd by the kite that sails aloof:
Darkens the long-deserted hall:
The tufted pines whose umbrage tail
The vet'ran beech, that on the plain
Collects at eve the playful train:
The cot that smokes with early fire,
The low-roof'd fane's embosom'd spire
Who now shall indolently stray
Through the deep forest's tangled way:
Pleas'd at his custom'd task to find
The well-known hoary-tressed hind,
That toils with feeble hands to glean
Of wither'd boughs his pittance mean?
Who mid thy nooks of hazle sit,
Lost in some melancholy fit;
And list'ning to the raven's croak,
The distant flail, the falling oak?

Who, through the sunshine and the show'r
Descry the rainbow-painted tow'r?
Who, wandering at return of May,
Catch the first cuckow's vernal lay?
Who, musing waste the summer hour,
Where high o'er-arching trees embow'r
The grassy lane so rarely pac'd,
With azure flow'rets idly grac'd?
Unnotic'd now, at twilight's dawn
Nor fond attention loves to note.
Returning reapers cross the lawn:

The wether's bell from folds remote :
While own'd, by no poetic eye,
Thy pensive evening shade the sky!

For lo! the bard who rapture found
From ev'ry rural sight or sound;
Whose genius warm, and judgement chaste,
No charm of genuine nature pass'd;

Who

Who felt the Muse's purest fires,
Far from thy favor'd haunt retires :
Who peopled all thy vocal bow'rs
With shadowy shapes and airy pow'rs.
Behold, a dread repose resumes,
As erst, thy sad sequester'd glooms!
From the deep dell, where shaggy roots
Fringe the rough brink with wreathed shoots,
Th' unwilling genius flies forlorn,
His primrose-chaplet rudely torn.
With hollow shriek the nymphs forsake
The pathless copse, and hedge-row brake.
Where the delv'd mountain's headlong side
Its chalky entrails opens wide,

On the green summit, ambush'd high,
No longer echo loves to lie,

No pearl-crown'd maid, with wily look,
Rise beck'ning from the reedy brook.
Around the glow-worm's glimm'ring bank,
No fairies run in fiery rank;
Nor brush, half seen, in airy tread,
The violet's unprinted head.
But Fancy, from the thickest brown,
The glades that wear a conscious frown,
The forest-oaks, that pale and lone
Nod to the blast with hoarser tone,
Rough glens, and sullen waterfalls,
Her bright ideal offspring calls.

So by some sage inchanter's spell,
(As old Arabian fables tell)
Amid the solitary wild,
Luxuriant gardens gaily smil'd:

From sapphire rocks the fountain stream'd,
With golden fruit the branches beam'd;
Fair forms, in ev'ry wondrous wood,
Or lightly tripp'd, or solemn stood;
And oft, retreating from the view,
Betray'd at distance, beauties new;
While gleaming o'er the crisped bow'rs
Rich spires arose, and sparkling tow'rs.

If bound on service new to go,
The master of the magic show
His transitory charm withdrew.
Away th' illusive landscape flew :
Dun clouds obscur'd the groves of gold,
Blue lightning smote the blooming mold;
In visionary glory rear'd,
The gorgeous castle disappear'd:
And a bare heath's unfruitful plain
Usurp'd the wizard's proud domain.

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Whether thou wanton'st on the western gale, Or shak'st the rigid pinions of the north, Diffusest life and vigor thro' the tracts Of air, thro' earth, and ocean's deep domain. When thro' the blue serenity of heaven Thy pow'r approaches, all the wasteful host Of pain and sickness, squalid and deform'd, Confounded sink into the loathsome gloom, Where in deep Erebus involv'd the fiends Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death, Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe, Swarm thro' the shuddering air: whatever plagues Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings Rise from the putrid wat'ry element, The damp waste forest, motionless and rank, That smothers earth and all the breathless winds, Or the vile carnage of th' inhuman field; Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south; Whatever ills, th' extremes of sudden change Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce; They fly their pure effulgence: they, and all The secret poisons of avenging Heaven, And all the pale tribes halting in the train Of vice and needless pleasure: or if aught The comet's glare and the burning sky, Mournful eclipse, or planets ill combin'd, Portend disastrous to the vital world, Thy salutary pow'r averts their rage, Averts the general bane: and but for thee Nature would sicken, nature soon would die. Without thy cheerful active energy No rapture swells the breast, no poet sings, No more the maids of Helicon delight. Come then with me, O goddess, heavenly-gay! Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow, And let it wisely teach thy wholesome laws: How best the fickle fabric to support Of mortal man; in healthful body how A heathful mind the longest to maintain. "Tis hard, in such a strife of rules to choose The best, and those of most extensive use; Harder in clear and animated song Dry philosophic precepts to convey. Yet with thy aid the secret wilds I trace Of Nature, and with daring steps proceed Thro' paths the Muses never trod before.

Nor should I wander doubtful of my way, Had I the lights of that sagacious mind Which taught to check the pestilential fire, And quell the deadly Python of the Nile. O thou, belov'd by all the graceful arts, Thou, long the fav'rite of the healing pow'rs, Indulge, O Mead! a well design'd essay, Howe'er imperfect; and permit that I My little knowledge with my country share, Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock, And with new graces dignify the theme.

Ye who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind, Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air;

Hygeia, the goddess of Health, was, according to the genealogy of the heathen deities, the daughter of Æsculapius; who, as well as Apollo, was distinguished by the name of Pæan.

Breathe

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