[Intended to have been inserted in the fourth act of Sophonisba, Thomson's first play, acted at Drury Lane, February 28, 1730.]
COME, gentle Venus! and assuage
A warring world, a bleeding age,
For nature lives beneath thy ray:
The wintry tempests haste away,
A lucid calm invests the sea,
Thy native deep is full of thee;
And flowering earth, where'er you fly,
Is all o'er spring, all sun the sky;
A genial spirit warms the breeze;
Unseen, among the blooming trees,
The feathered lovers tune their throat,
The desert growls a softened note,
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 woe,
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! red-smiling, tender, come!
And yet prevent our final doom.
For long the furious god of war
Has crushed us with his iron car,
Has raged along our ruined plains,
Has cursed them with his cruel stains,
Has sunk our youth in endless sleep,
And made the widowed 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.
Thy son too, Cupid, we implore
To leave the green Idalian shore.
Be he, sweet god! our only foe:
Long let him draw the twanging bow,
Transfix us with his golden darts,
Pour all his quiver on our hearts,
With gentler anguish make us sigh,
And teach us sweeter deaths to die.
AN ODE ON AEOLUS'S HARP
[First printed in 1748, in Dodsley's Collection of Poems, vol. iv, p. 129.]
ETHEREAL race, inhabitants of air,
Who hymn your God amid the secret grove, Ye unseen beings, to my harp repair,
And raise majestic strains, or melt in love.
Those tender notes, how kindly they upbraid! With what soft woe they thrill the lover's heart! Sure from the hand of some unhappy maid
Who died of love these sweet complainings part.
But hark! that strain was of a graver tone,
On the deep strings his hand some hermit throws ; Or he, the sacred Bard, who sat alone
In the drear waste and wept his people's woes.
Such was the song which Zion's children sung
When by Euphrates' stream they made their plaint; And to such sadly solemn notes are strung
Angelic harps to soothe a dying saint.
Methinks I hear the full celestial choir
Through Heaven's high dome their awful anthem raise;
Now chanting clear, and now they all conspire
To swell the lofty hymn from praise to praise. 20
Let me, ye wandering spirits of the wind,
Who, as wild fancy prompts you, touch the string, Smit with your theme, be in your chorus joined, For till you cease my muse forgets to sing.
[The sacred bard' of the third stanza is Jeremiah-as Thomson himself notes.]
ON THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER
YE fabled muses, I your aid disclaim,
Your airy raptures, and your fancied flame :
True genuine woe my throbbing breast inspires,
Love prompts my lays, and filial duty fires;
The soul springs instant at the warm design,
And the heart dictates every flowing line.
See where the kindest, best of mothers lies,
And death has shut her ever weeping eyes;
Has lodged at last in peace her weary breast,
And lulled her many piercing cares to rest.
No more the orphan train around her stands,
While her full heart upbraids her needy hands!
No more the widow's lonely fate she feels,
The shock severe that modest wants conceals,
The oppressor's scourge, the scorn of wealthy pride,
And poverty's unnumbered ills beside.
For see! attended by the angelic throng,
Through yonder worlds of light she glides along,
And claims the well-earned raptures of the sky.
Yet fond concern recalls the mother's eye;
She seeks the helpless orphans left behind-
So hardly left! so bitterly resigned!
Still, still is she my soul's divinest theme,
The waking vision, and the wailing dream :
Amid the ruddy sun's enlivening blaze
O'er my dark eyes her dewy image plays,
And in the dread dominion of the night
Shines out again the sadly pleasing sight.
Triumphant virtue all around her darts,
And more than volumes every look imparts-
Looks soft, yet awful; melting, yet serene ;
Where both the mother and the saint are seen.
But ah! that night, that torturing night remains-
May darkness dye it with its deepest stains,
May joy on it forsake her rosy bowers,
And screaming sorrow blast its baleful hours!
When on the margin of the briny flood,
Chilled with a sad presaging damp I stood,
Took the last look, ne'er to behold her more,
And mixed our murmurs with the wavy roar,
Heard the last words fall from her pious tongue,
Then wild into the bulging vessel flung-
Which soon, too soon, conveyed me from her
sight,
Dearer than life, and liberty, and light!
Why was I then, ye powers, reserved for this,
Nor sunk that moment in the vast abyss ?
Devoured at once by the relentless wave,
And whelmed for ever in a watery grave ?
Down, ye wild wishes of unruly woe!
I see her with immortal beauty glow;
The early wrinkle, care-contracted, gone,
Her tears all wiped, and all her sorrows flown;
The exalting voice of Heaven I hear her breathe,
To soothe her soul in agonies of death.
I see her through the mansions blest above,
And now she meets her dear expecting love.
Heart-cheering sight! but yet, alas! o'erspread
By the damp gloom of grief's uncheerful shade.
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