When in the valley of Jehofhaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate;
And there the last affizes keep,
For those who wake, and those who sleep:
When rattling bones together fly,
From the four corners of the fky;
When finews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those cloth'd with flesh, and life infpires the dead;
The facred poets first fhall hear the found,
And foremost from the tomb fhall bound,
For they are cover'd with the lightest ground;
And ftraight, with in-born vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning fing.
There thou, sweet Saint, before the quire fhall go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
which thou fo well haft learnt below.
Upon the Death of the EARL of DUNDEE. Tranflated from the Latin of Dr. PITCAIRN.
OH laft and beft of Scots! who didft maintain
Thy country's freedom from a foreign reign;
New people fill the land, now thou art gone,
New gods the temples, and new kings the throne.
Scotland and thou did each in other live;
Nor would'st thou her, nor could the thee furvive.
Farewell, who dying didit fupport the state,
And couldft not fall but with thy country's fate.
Small-beer and gruel are his meat and drink,
The diet he prescribes himfelf to think;
Rhyme next his heart he takes at the morn peep,
Some love-epiftles at the hour of fleep;
So betwixt elegy and ode we fee
Strephon is in a course of poetry:
This is the man ordain'd to do thee good,
The pelican to feed thee with his blood;
Thy wit, thy poet, nay thy friend, for he
Is fit to be a friend to none but thee.
Make fure of him and of his Mufe betimes,
For all his study is hung round with rhymes.
Laugh at him, justle him, yet still he writes,
In rhyme he challenges, in rhyme he fights;
Charg'd with the last, and bafeft infamy,
His business is to think what rhymes to lye;
Which found, in fury he retorts again,
Strephon's a very dragon at his pen ;
His brother murder'd, and his mother whor'd,
His mistress loft, and yet his pen 's his sword.
To the Memory of Mr. OLD HAM.
FAREWELL, too little and too lately known,
Whom I began to think, and call my own;
For fure our fouls were near allied, and thine
Caft in the fame poetic mould with mine.
One common note on either lyre did strike,
And knaves and fools we both adhorr'd alike.
To the fame goal did both our ftudies drive;
The laft fet out, the fooneft did arrive.
Thus Nifus fell upon the flippery place,
Whilft his young friend perform'd, and won the race.
O early ripe! to thy abundant ftore
What could advancing age have added more?
It might (what nature never gives the young)
Have taught the smoothness of thy native tongue.
But fatire needs not thofe, and wit will fine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
A noble error, and but seldom made,
When poets are by too much force betray'd.
VOL. II.
Thy generous fruits, though gather'd ere their prime, Still fhew'd a quickness; and maturing time
But mellows what we write, to the dull fweets of rhyme.
Once more, hail, and farewel; farewel, thou young,
But ah too short, Marcellus of our tongue!
Thy brows with ivy, and with laurels bound;
But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around.
To the pious Memory of the accomplished young Lady Mrs. ANNE KILLIGREW, excellent in the two Sifter-Arts of POESY and PAINTING.
THOU youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the bleft;
Whofe palms, new-pluck'd from paradife,
In fpreading branches more fublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the reft :
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'ft above us, in thy wandering race,
Or, in proceffion fix'd and regular,
Mov'd with the heaven majestic pace;
Or, call'd to more fuperior blifs,
Thou treadft, with feraphims, the vast abyss:
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial fong a little space;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.
Hear then a mortal Mufe thy praife rehearse,
In no ignoble verse;
But fuch as thy own voice did practise here,
When thy first fruits of Poefy were given ;
To make thyfelf a welcome inmate there:
While yet a young probationer,
And candidate of heaven.
If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the lefs to find
A foul fo charming from a stock fo good;
Thy father was transfus'd into thy blood:
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhaufted vein.
But if thy pre-exifting foul
Was form'd, at firft, with myriads more,
It did through all the mighty poets roll,
Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,
And was that Sappho laft, which once it was before. If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind! Thou haft no drofs to purge from thy rich ore: Nor can thy foul a fairer manfion find,
Than was the beauteous frame fhe left behind : Return
to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind.
May we prefume to fay, that, at thy birth, New joy was fprung in heaven, as well as here on earth."
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