On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste, sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn,
The spiry fir and stately box adorn:
To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed,
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.
The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,
And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead:
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,
And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake;
Pleased, the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongue shall innocently play.
Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise!
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes!
See, a long race thy spacious courts adorn;
See future sons and daughters yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabæan" springs.
For thee Idumé's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's13 mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze,
O'erflow thy courts: the Light himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks falls to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed His word, His saving power remains;
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns!
10 Basilisk, a species of serpent.
11 Sabæan, Arabian.
12 Idumé, or Idumæa, a country south of Palestine.
13 Ophir, a country from which Solomon imported gold, supposed to be the same as Zanguebar.
THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.
VITAL spark of heavenly flame:
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying;
Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
Hark, they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight?
Drowns my spirit, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes! it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?
SEE the wild waste of all-devouring years!
How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears,
With nodding arches, broken temples spread!
The very tombs now vanished like their dead!
Imperial wonders raised on nations spoiled,
Where, mixed with slaves, the groaning martyr toiled;
Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods,
Now drained a distant country of her floods:
Fanes, which admiring gods with pride survey;
Statues of men, scarce less alive than they!
Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age,
Some hostile fury, some religious rage.
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And papal piety, and Gothic's fire.
Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame,
Some buried marble half preserves a name;
That name the learned with fierce disputes pursue,
And give to Titus, old Vespasian's due.
16 Titus; the celebrated conqueror
15 Gothic, Rome was plundered by of Jerusalem; he succeeded his father the Goths.
Ambition sighed: she found it vain to trust
The faithless column, and the crumbling bust.
Huge moles, whose shadow stretched from shore to shore,
Their ruins perished, and their place no more!
Convinced, she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps:
Beneath her palm here sad Judea17 weeps.
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine,
And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;
A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled,
And little eagles wave their wings in gold.
The medal, faithful to its charge of fame,
Through climes and ages bears each form and name;
In one short view, subjected to our eye,
Gods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie.
With sharpened sight pale antiquaries pore,
The inscription value, but the rust adore:
This the blue varnish, that the green endears,
The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years!
To gain Pescennius13, one employs his schemes,
One grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams:
Poor Vadius, long with learned spleen devoured,
Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scoured;
And Curio, restless by the fair one's side,
Sighs for an Otho20, and neglects his bride.
17 Judea, see the accompanying medal struck to commemorate the conquest of Jerusalem, in which Judea is allegorically represented as a woman weeping beneath a palm tree, while a Roman soldier, standing by, mocks at her misery.
18 Pescennius; the coins struck in the consulship of Pescennius are rare. 19 Cecrops, an ancient king of Athens; his bust sometimes occurs on old Athenian coins.
20 Otho, coins struck in the reign of the Emperor Otho are rare.
Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine21:
Touched by thy hand, again Rome's glories shine:
Her gods and godlike heroes rise to view,
And all her faded garlands bloom anew,
Nor blush these studies thy regard engage:
These pleased thy fathers of poetic rage:
The verse and sculpture bore an equal part,
And art reflected images to art.
Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim,
Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame;
In living medals see her wars enrolled,
And vanquished realms supply recording gold?
Here, rising bold, the patriot's honest face;
There warriors frowning in historic brass;
Then future ages with delight shall see
How Plato's, Bacon's, Newton's, looks agree;
Or in fair series laurelled bards be shown,
A Virgil there, and here an Addison.
Then shall thy Craggs22 (and let me call him mine)
On the cast ore another Pollio23 shine:
With aspect open shall erect his head,
And round the orb in lasting notes be read,—
66 Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear;
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend:
Ennobled by himself, by all approved,
And praised, unenvied, by the Muse he loved."
THE CITY AND THE COUNTRY MOUSE.
ONCE on a time (so runs the fable)
A country mouse, right hospitable,
Received a town mouse at his board,
Just as a farmer might a lord.
A frugal mouse, upon the whole,
Yet loved his friend, and had a soul.
Knew what was handsome, and would do it,
On just occasion, "coute qui coute24"
He brought him bacon (nothing lean):
Pudding that might have pleased a dean!
21 thine, the poem is addressed to Mr. Addison, who wrote a learned dialogue on medals.
22 Craggs, Secretary of State in the reign of Queen Anne.
23 Pollio, a celebrated patron of learning in the age of Augustus Cæsar.
24 coute qui coute; cost what it may.
Cheese, such as men in Suffolk make,
But wished it Stilton for his sake;
Yet to his guest though no way sparing,
He ate himself the rind and paring.
Our courtier scarce could touch a bit,
But showed his breeding and his wit;
He did his best to seem to eat,
And cried, "I vow you're mighty neat.
But, Lord, my friend, this savage scene!
For God's sake, come and live with men:
Consider, mice, like men, must die,
Both small and great, both you and I:
Then spend your life in joy and sport;
(This doctrine, friend, I learned at court)."
The veriest hermit in the nation
May yield, God knows, to strong temptation.
Away they came, through thick and thin,
To a tall house in Lincoln's-inn:
('Twas on the night of a debate,
When all their Lordships had sat late).
Behold the place, where, if a poet
Shined in description, he might show it;
Tell how the moon-beam trembling falls,
And tips with silver all the walls;
Palladian walls, Venetian doors,
Grotesco roofs, and stucco floors,
But let it (in a word) be said,
The moon was up, and men a-bed,
The napkins white, the carpets red:
The guests withdrawn had left the treat,
And down the mice sate, tête-à-tête25,
Our courtier walks from dish to dish,
Tastes for his friend of fowl and fish;
Tells all their names, lays down the law,
"Que ça est bon! Ah goutez ça2 !”
"That jelly's rich, this malmsey healing,
Pray dip your whiskers and your tail in."
Was ever such a happy swain?
He stuffs and swills, and stuffs again.
"I'm quite ashamed-'tis mighty rude
To eat so much, but all's so good.
I have a thousand thanks to give-
My lord alone knows how to live."
25 tête-à-téte; face to face.
26 Que ça est bon! Ah goutez ça! "How good that is! Just taste this!"
The poet is ridiculing the affectation of using French phrases in conversation.
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