FOR ST. CECILIA's DAY, AT OXFORD.
ECILIA, whose exalted hymns
With joy and wonder fill the bleft,
In choirs of warbling seraphims
Known and distinguish'd from the rest
Attend, harmonious faint, and fee
Thy vocal fons of harmony;
Attend, harmonious faint, and hear our prayers;
Enliven all our earthly airs,
And, as thou fing'st thy God, teach us to fing of thee:
Tune every string and every tongue,
Be thou the Muse and subject of our fong.
Let all Cecilia's praife proclaim,
Employ the echo in her name.
Hark how the flutes and trumpets raise,
At bright Cecilia's name, their lays;
The organ labours in her praise.
Cecilia's name does all our numbers grace,
From every voice the tuneful accents fly,
In foaring trebles now it rifes high,
And now it sinks, and dwells upon the base.
Cecilia's name through all the notes we fing,
The work of
fkilful tongue,
The found of every trembling string,
The found and triumph of our fong.
For ever confecrate the day,
To mufic and Cecilia;
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.
Mufic can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love;
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
When Orpheus ftrikes the trembling lyre,
The ftreams ftand ftill, the ftones admire;
The liftening favages advance,
The wolf and lamb around him trip,
The bears in aukward measures leap,
And tigers mingle in the dance.
The moving woods attended as he play'd,
And Rhodope was left without a shade.
Mufic religious heats infpires,
It wakes the foul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with fublime defires,
And fits it to befpeak the Deity.
Th' Almighty liftens to a tuneful tongue,
And feems well-pleas'd and courted with a fong.
Soft moving founds and heavenly airs
Give force to every word, and recommend our prayers.
When time itself fhall be no more,
And all things in confufion hurl'd,
Mufic fhall then exert its power,
And found furvive the ruins of the world:
Then faints and angels shall agree
In one eternal jubilee :
All heaven shall echo with their hymns divine,
And God himself with pleasure fee
The whole creation in a chorus join.
Confecrate the place and day,
To mufic and Cecilia.
Let no rough winds approach, nor dare
Invade the hallow'd bounds,
Nor rudely shake the tuneful air,
Nor spoil the fleeting founds.
Nor mournful figh nor groan be heard,
But gladness dwell on every tongue; Whilft all, with voice and ftrings prepar'd,
Keep up the loud harmonious fong.
And imitate the bleft above,
In joy, and harmony, and love.
A short account of all the Muse-poffeft,
That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times,
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes;
Without more preface, writ in formal length,
To speak the undertaker's want of strength,
I'll try to make their several beauties known,
And fhow their verfes worth, though not my own.
Long had our dull forefathers flept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine;
Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and profe.
But age has rusted what the Poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obfcur'd his wit:
In vain he jefts in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenfer next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barbarous age;
An age that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where-e'er the poet's fancy led, pursued
Through pathlefs fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods.
But now the myftic tale, that pleas'd of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-fpun allegories fulfome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleas'd at diftance all the fights,
Of arms and palfries, battles, fields, and fights,
But when we look too near, the fhades decay,
And all the pleasing landskip fades away.
Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote,
O'er-run with wit, and lavish of his thought:
His turns too closely on the reader prefs :
He more had pleas'd us, had he pleas'd us less,
One glittering thought no fooner strikes our eyes.
With filent wonder, but new wonders rife.
As in the milky-way a fhining white
O'erflows the heavens with one continued light;
That not a fingle star can fhew his rays,
Whilft jointly all promote the common blaze.
Pardon, great Poet, that I dare to name
Th' unnumber'd beauties of thy verse with blame;
Thy fault is only wit in its excefs :
But wit like thine in any shape will please.
What Mufe but thine can equal hints infpire,
And fit the deep-mouth'd Pindar to thy lyre
Pindar, whom others in a labour'd strain,
And forc'd expreffion, imitate in vain ?-
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