Glad o'er the meads the cattle bound,
And love and harmony go round.
But chief into the human heart
You strike the dear delicious dart;
You teach us pleasing pangs to know,
To languish in luxurious wo,
To feel the generous passions rise,
Grow good by gazing, mild by sighs;
Each happy moment to improve,
And fill the perfect year with love.
Come, thou delight of heaven and earth
To whom all creatures owe their birth:
Oh, come, sweet smiling! tender, come!
And yet prevent our final doom.
For long the furious god of war
Has crush'd us with his iron car,
Has raged along our ruin'd plains,
Has foil'd them with his cruel stains,
Has sunk our youth in endless sleep,
And made the widow'd virgin weep.
Now let him feel thy wonted charms,
Oh, take him to thy twining arms!
And, while thy bosom heaves on his,
While deep he prints the humid kiss,
Ah, then! his stormy heart control,
And sigh thyself into his soul.
TO AMANDA.*
COME, dear Amanda, quit the town, And to the rural hamlets fly; Behold! the wintry storms are gone: A gentle radiance glads the sky.
The birds awake, the flowers appear, Earth spreads a verdant couch for thee; 'Tis joy and music all we hear,
'Tis love and beauty all we see.
Come, let us mark the gradual spring, How peeps the bud, the blossom blows; Till Philomel begins to sing,
And perfect May to swell the rose.
E'en so thy rising charms improve,
As life's warm season grows more bright; And opening to the sighs of love,
Thy beauties glow with full delight.
UNLESS with my Amanda bless'd,
In vain I twine the woodbine bower;
• This song was obligingly contributed to this edition by William Henry, present Lord Lyttelton, from a copy in Thomson's own hand, and is printed for the first time.
Unless to deck her sweeter breast,
In vain, I rear the breathing flower.
Awaken'd by the genial year,
In vain the birds around me sing;
In vain the freshening fields appear :-
Without my love there is no Spring.
TO FORTUNE.
FOR ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove,
An unrelenting foe to love,
And when we meet a mutual heart,
Come in between, and bid us part:
Bid us sigh on from day to day
And wish, and wish the soul away;
Till youth and genial years are flown,
And all the love of life is gone?
But busy, busy still art thou,
To bind the loveless joyless vow,
The heart from pleasure to delude,
And join the gentle to the rude.
For pomp, and noise, and senseless show
To make us Nature's joys forego,
Beneath a gay dominion groan,
And put the golden fetter on!
For once, O Fortune, hear my prayer.
And I absolve thy future care;
All other blessings I resign,
Make but the dear Amanda mine.
COME, GENTLE GOD.
COME, gentle God of soft desire,
Come and possess my happy breast,
Not fury-like in flames and fire,
Or frantic folly's wildness drest ;*
But come in friendship's angel-guise; Yet dearer thou than friendship art, More tender spirit in thy eyes,
More sweet emotions at thy heart.
O, come with goodness in thy train,
With peace and pleasure void of storm.
And wouldst thou me for ever gain,
Put on Amanda's winning form.
*A MS. copy of this song has the following variation
In rapture, rage, and nonsense dreet.
These are the vain disguise of love,
And, or bespeak dissembled pains
Or else a fleeting fever prove,
The frantic passion of the veing
FELL me, thou soul of her I love,
Ah! tell me whither art thou fled;
To what delightful world above,
Appointed for the happy dead?
Or dost thou, free, at pleasure, roam, And sometimes share thy lover's wo; Where, void of thee, his cheerless home Can now, alas! no comfort know?
Oh! if thou hover'st round my walk, While, under every well known tree, I to thy fancied shadow talk,
And every tear is full of thee:
Should then the weary eye of grief,
Beside some sympathetic stream,
In slumber find a short relief,
Oh, visit thou my soothing dream!
TO THE GOD OF FOND DESIRE.
ONE day the God of fond desire,
On mischief bent, to Damon said, 'Why not disclose your tender fire, Not own it to the lovely maid?'
The shepherd mark'd his treacherous art,
And, softly sighing, thus replied:
'Tis true, you have subdued my heart,
But shall not triumph o'er my pride.
'The slave, in private only bears
Your bondage, who his love conceals; But when his passion he declares,
You drag him at your chariot-wheels.'
HARD is the fate of him who loves,
Yet dares not tell his trembling pain,
But to the sympathetic groves,
But to the lonely listening plain.
Oh! when she blesses next your shade, Oh! when her footsteps next are seen In flowery tracts along the mead,
In fresher mazes o'er the green:
Ye gentle spirits of the vale,
To whom the tears of love are dear, From dying lilies waft a gale, And sigh my sorrows in her ear.
Oh! tell her what she can not blame,
Though fear my tongue must ever bind;
Oh, tell her, that my virtuous flame
Is, as her spotless soul, refined.
Not her own guardian-angel eyes
With chaster tenderness his care,
Not purer her own wishes rise,
Not holier her own sighs in prayer.
But if, at first, her virgin fear
Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship sooth her earTrue love and friendship are the same.
TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
O NIGHTINGALE, best poet of the grove,
That plaintive strain can ne'er belong to thee,
Bless'd in the full possession of thy love:
O lend that strain, sweet Nightingale, to me!
'Tis mine, alas! to mourn my wretched fate:
I love a maid who all my bosom charms,
Yet lose my days without this lovely mate;
Inhuman fortune keeps her from my arms.
You, happy birds! by nature's simple laws
Lead your soft lives, sustain'd by nature's fare;
You dwell wherever roving fancy draws,
And love and song is all your pleasing care:
But we, vain slaves of interest and of pride,
Dare not be bless'd, lest envious tongues should
blame :
And hence, in vain, I languish for my bride!
O mourn with me, sweet bird, my hapless flame.
Their lustre then again reveal, And let me, Myra, die of thee!
"FROM THOSE ETERNAL REGIONS."
• The Masque of Alfred was the joint composition of Thomson and Mallet; hence the authorship of the following songs Is somewhat doubtful.
FROM those eternal regions bright,
Where suns that never set in night,
Diffuse the golden day:
Where Spring, unfading, pours around,
O'er all the dew-impearled ground,
Her thousand colours gay:
O whether on the mountain's flowery side,
Whence living waters glide,
Or in the fragrant grove,
Whose shade embosoms peace and love,
New pleasures all our hours employ,
And ravish every sense with every joy!
Great heirs of empire! yet unborn,
Who shall this island late adorn;
A monarch's drooping thought to cheer,
Appear! appear! appear'
TO THE REV. PATRICK MURDOCK,
RECTOR OF STRADISHALL, IN SUFFOLK. 1738.
THUS safely low, my friend, thou canst not fall:
Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er all;
No noise, no care, no vanity, no strife;
Men, woods, and fields, all breathe untroubled life.
Then keep each passion down, however dear:
Trust me, the tender are the most severe.
Guard, while 'tis thine, thy philosophic ease,
And ask no joy but that of virtuous peace;
That bids defiance to the storms of fate;
High bliss is only for a higher state!
ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES.
WHILE Secret-leaguing nations frown around,
Ready to pour the long-expected storm;
While she, who wont the restless Gaul to bound,
Britannia, drooping, grows an empty form;
While on our vitals selfish parties prey,
And deep corruption eats our soul away:
Yet in the Goddess of the Main appears
A gleam of joy, gay-flushing every grace, As she the cordial voice of millions hears,
Rejoicing, zealous, o'er thy rising race: Straight her rekindling eyes resume their fire, The Virtues smile, the Muses tune the lyre.
TO DR. DE LA COUR, IN IRELAND.
ON HIS PROSPECT OF POETRY."
HAIL gently warbling De la Cour, whose fame,
Spurning Hibernia's solitary coast,
Where small rewards attend the tuneful throng,
Pervades Britannia's well discerning isle:
In spite of all the gloomy-minded tribe
That would eclipse thy fame, still shall the
High soaring o'er the tall Parnassian mount
With spreading pinions-sing thy wondrous
praise,
In strains attuned to the seraphic lyre.
Sing unappall'd, though mighty be the theme!
O! could she in thy own harmonious strain,
Where softest numbers smoothly flowing glide
In trickling cadence; where the milky maze
Devolves in silence; by the harsher sound
Of hoarser periods still unruffled, could
Her lines but like thine own Euphrates flow-
Then might she sing in numbers worthy thee.
But what can language do, when fancy finds
Herself unequal to the lovely task?
Can feeble words thy vivid colours paint,
Or show the sweets which inexhaustive flow?
Hearken, ye woods, and long-resounding groves;
Listen, ye streams, soft purling through the meads
And hymning horrid, all ye tempests, roar.
Awake, ye woodlands! sing, ye warbling, larks,
In wildly luscious notes! But most of all,
Attend, ye grateful fair, attend the youth
Who sweetly sings of nature and of you:
From you alone his conscious breast expects
Its soft rewards, by sordid love of gain
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