Youth of the quick ancheated fight,
Thy walks, Observance, more invite !
O thou, who lov'ft that ampler range,
Where life's wide prospects round thee change,
And, with her mingled sons allied,
Throw'st the prattling page aside :
To me in converse sweet impart,
To read in man the native heart,
To learn, where Science fure is found,
From Nature as she lives around :
And gazing oft her mirror true,
By turns each shifting image view!
Till meddling Art's officious lore,
Reverse the lessons taught before,
Alluring from a safer rule,
To dream in her enchanted school;
Thou, heaven, whate'er of great we boast,
Haft bleft this focial science most.
Retiring hence to thoughtful cell, As Fancy breathes her potent spell,
Not vain the finds the charmful taky
In pageant quaint, in motley mask,
Behold, before her mafing eyes,
The countless Manners round her rise ;
While ever varying as they pafs,
To fome Contempt applies her glass :
With these the white-rob's Maids combine,
And those the laughing Satyrs join!
But who is he whom now the views,
In robe of wild contending hues ?
Thou by the paflions nurs’d; I greet
The comic sock that binds thy feet !
O Humour, thou whose name is knowny
To Britain's favour'd ifle alone :
Me too amidit thy band admit,
There where the young-eyed healthfal Wit,
(Whose jewels in his crisped hair
Are plac'd each other's beams to share,
Whom no delights from thee divide)
In laughter loos'd' attends thy fide !
By old Miletus * who fo long
Has ceas'd his love-inwoven song:
By all you taught the Tuscan maids,
In chang'd Italia's modern fhades :
By him t, whose Knight's distinguish'd namo:
Refind a nation's luft of fame;
Whose tales even now, with @hoes fweet,
Caftilia's Moorish hills
repeat :
Or him I, whom Seine's blue nymphs deplore;
In watchet weeds on Gallia's shore,
Who drew the fad Sicilian maid,
By virtues in her fire betray'd:
O Nature boon, from whom proceed
Each forceful thought, each prompted deed;
If but from thee I hope to feel,
On all my heart imprint thy feal!
* Alluding to the Milesian tales, some of the earlieft rad
+ Cervantes.
I Monsieur Le Sage, author of the incomparable adveno : tures of Gil Blas de Santillane, who died in Paris in the year 1745
Let some retreating Cynic find
Those oft-turn'd scrolls I leave behind,
The Sports aud I this hour agree,
To rove thy scene-full world with thee!
WHen Music, heavenly maid, was young,
, , ,
While yet in early Greece the sung,
The Pallions oft,. to hear her shell,
Throng'd around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Poffest beyond the Muse's painting ;
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbid, delighted, rais’d, refin'd.
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fir’d,
Fill'd with fury, rapt, inspir'd,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatch'd her instruments of sound,
And as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each, for madness ruld the hour,
Would prove his own expreflive power. .
F
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