By Lucy warn'd, of flattering swains
Take heed, ye easy fair:
Of vengeance due to broken vows,
Ye perjur'd swains, beware.
Three times, all in the dead of night,
A bell was heard to ring;
And shrieking at her window thrice,
The raven flapp'd his wing.
Too well the love-lorn maiden knew
The solemn boding sound:
And thus, in dying words, bespoke
The virgins weeping round:
"I hear a voice, you cannot hear,
Which says, I must not stay;
I see a hand, you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.
By a false heart, and broken vows,
In early youth I die :
Was I to blame, because his bride
Was thrice as rich as I?
"Ah, Colin! give not her thy vows,
Vows due to me alone:
Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
Nor think him all thy own.
To-morrow, in the church to wed,
Impatient, both prepare!
But know, fond maid; and know, false man,
That Lucy will be there!
"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,
This bridegroom blithe to meet,
He in his wedding-trim so gay,
I in my winding-sheet."
She spoke, she dy'd, her corse was borne,
The bridegroom blithe to meet,
He in his wedding trim so gay,
She in her winding-sheet.
Then what were perjur'd Colin's thoughts?
How were these nuptials kept?
The bridesmen flock'd round Lucy dead,
And all the village wept.
Confusion, shame, remorse, despair,
At once his bosom swell :
The damps of death bedew'd his brow,
He shook, he groan'd, he fell.
From the vain bride, ah, bride no more!
The varying crimson fled,
When, stretch'd before her rival's corse,
She saw her husband dead.
Then to his Lucy's new-made grave,
Convey'd by trembling swains,
One mould with her, beneath one sod,
For ever he remains.
Oft at this grave, the constant hind
And plighted maid are seen;
With garlands gay, and true-love knots.
They deck the sacred green;
But swain forsworn, whoe'er thou art,
This hallow'd spot forbear;
Remember Colin's dreadful fate,
And fear to meet him there.
To Whitton's shades, and Hounslow's airy plain,
Thou, Kneller, tak'st thy summer flights in vain,
In vain thy wish gives all thy rural hours
To the fair villa, and well-order'd bowers;
To court thy pencil early at thy gates,
Ambition knocks, and fleeting Beauty waits;
The boastful Muse, of others' fame so sure,
Implores thy aid to make her own secure;
The great, the fair, and, if aught nobler be,
Aught more belov'd, the Arts solicit thee.
How canst thou hope to fly the world, in vain
From Europe sever'd by the circling main;
Sought by the kings of every distant land,
And every hero worthy of thy hand?
Hast thou forgot that mighty Bourbon fear'd
He still was mortal, till thy draught appear❜d?
That Cosmo chose thy glowing form to place,
Amidst her masters of the Lombard race?
See, on her Titian's and her Guido's urns,
Her falling arts forlorn Hesperia mourns;
While Britain wins each garland from her brow,
Her wit and freedom first, her painting now.
Let the faint copier, on old Tiber's shore,
Nor mean the task, each breathing bust explore,
Line after line, with painful patience trace,
This Roman grandeur, that Athenian grace:
Vain care of parts; if, impotent of soul,
Th' industrious workman fails to warm the whole,
Each theft betrays the marble whence it came,
And a cold statue stiffens in the frame.
Thee Nature taught, nor Art her aid deny❜d,
The kindest mistress, and the surest guide,
To catch a likeness at one piercing sight,
And place the fairest in the fairest light;
Ere yet thy pencil tries her nicer toils
Or on thy palette lie the blended oils,
Thy careless chalk has half achiev'd thy art,
And her just image makes Cleora start.
A mind that grasps the whole is rarely found,
Half learn'd, half painters, and half wits abound;
Few, like thy genius, at proportion aim,
All great, all graceful, and throughout the same.
Such be thy life, O since the glorious rage
That fir'd thy youth, flames unsubdued by age!
Though wealth, nor fame, now touch thy sated mind,
Still tinge the canvas, bounteous to mankind;
Since after thee may rise an impious line,
Coarse manglers of the human face divine,
Paint on, till Fate dissolve thy mortal part,
And live and die the monarch of thy art.
ON THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF
CADOGAN.
Or Marlborough's captains, and Eugenio's friends, The last, Cadogan, to the grave descends:
Low lies each hand, whence Blenheim's glory
The chiefs who conquer'd, and the bards who sung,
From his cold corse though every friend be fled,
Lo! Envy waits, that lover of the dead:
Thus did she feign o'er Nassau's hearse to mourn;
Thus wept insidious, Churchill, o'er thy urn;
To blast the living, gave the dead their due,
And wreaths, herself had tainted, trimm'd anew,
Thou, yet unnam'd to fill his empty place,
And lead to war thy country's growing race,
Take every wish a British heart can frame,
Add palm to palm, and rise from fame to fame.
An hour must come, when thou shalt hear with
Thyself traduc'd, and curse a thankless age:
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