THE wanton's charms, however bright,
Are like the false illusive light
Whose flattering unauspicious blaze
To precipices oft betrays.
But that sweet ray your beauties dart,
Which clears the mind and cleans the heart,
Is like the sacred queen of night
Who pours a lovely gentle light
Wide o'er the dark-by wanderers blest,
Conducting them to peace and rest.
A vicious love depraves the mind;
'Tis anguish, guilt, and folly joined;
But Seraphina's eyes dispense
A mild and gracious influence,
Such as in visions angels shed
Around the heaven-illumined head.
To love thee, Seraphina, sure
Is to be tender, happy, pure ;
'Tis from low passions to escape,
And woo bright virtue's fairest shape;
'Tis ecstasy with wisdom joined,
And heaven infused into the mind.
Huc ades, et tenerae morbos expelle puellae,
Huc ades, intonsa Phoebe superbe coma, &c.
Tibulli Lib. IV, Car. iv.
COME, healing god! Apollo, come and aid,
Moved by the tears of love, my tender maid !
No more let sickness dim those radiant eyes
Which never know to cheat or to disguise.
If e'er my verse has pleased thy listening ear,
O now be friendly, now propitious hear!
Bring every virtuous herb, each root and flower
Of cooling juice and salutary power.
Light is the task to touch a hand so fair,
Divine physician, will repay thy care.
My tears are fled; the god my suit approves ; He can't be wretched who sincerely loves. Protecting Heaven, with more than common care, Smiles on his hopes and guards him from despair. Raise from the pillow, raise thy languid head; Come forth, my love, and quit thy sickly bed! Come forth, my love! for thee the balmy Spring
for thee the zephyrs bring
Their healing gales; for thee the graces lead
The smiling hours, and paint the flowery mead. 20
As nature, drooping long beneath the reign
Of dreary winter, now revives again,
Calls all her beauties out, and charms us more
From what we suffered in their loss before ;
So from thy tedious illness shalt thou rise
More sweetly fair; and in those languid eyes
And faded cheeks returning health shall place
A fresher bloom and more attractive grace.
Then shall my bounding heart forget its woe,
And think it never more a pain can know ;
Then shall my muse thy charms more gaily sing,
And hail thee as the nightingale the spring.
АH! urged too late, from beauty's bondage free,
Why did I trust my liberty with thee?
And thou, why didst thou with inhuman art,
If not resolved to take, seduce my heart?
Yes, yes! you said-for lovers' eyes speak true;
You must have seen how fast my passion grew :
And, when your glances chanced on me to shine,
How my fond soul ecstatic sprung to thine !
But mark me, fair one! what I now declare Thy deep attention claims and serious care : ΙΟ It is no common passion fires my breast
I must be wretched, or I must be blest!
My woes all other remedy deny
Or pitying give me hope, or bid me die!
[These lines were first printed in Lord Buchan's Essay on Thomson.]
WITH A COPY OF 'THE SEASONS'
ACCEPT, loved Nymph, this tribute due
To tender friendship, love, and you;
But with it take what breathed the whole,
O take to thine the poet's soul.
If fancy here her power displays,
And if a heart exalts these lays,
You fairest in that fancy shine,
And all that heart is fondly thine.
[Written in 1727, published in January, 1729.]
-Et tantas audetis tollere moles ?
Quos ego-sed motos praestat componere fluctus.
Post mihi non simili poena commissa luetis.
Maturate fugam, regique haec dicite vestro:
Non illi imperium pelagi, saevumque tridentem,
Sed mihi sorte datum.
VIRGIL, Aeneid, i. 134.
As on the sea-beat shore Britannia sat,
Of her degenerate sons the faded fame
Deep in her anxious heart revolving sad-
Bare was her throbbing bosom to the gale,
That, hoarse and hollow, from the bleak surge błew ;
Loose flowed her tresses; rent her azure robe.
Hung o'er the deep from her majestic brow
She tore the laurel, and she tore the bay.
Nor ceased the copious grief to bathe her cheek;
Nor ceased her sobs to murmur to the main.
Peace discontented, nigh departing, stretched
Her dove-like wings; and War, though greatly roused,
Yet mourns his fettered hands; while thus the queen
Of nations spoke; and what she said the muse
Recorded faithful in unbidden verse :-
Even not yon sail, that from the sky-mixed wave Dawns on the sight, and wafts the royal youth, A freight of future glory, to my shore; Even not the flattering view of golden days,
And rising periods yet of bright renown,
Beneath the Parents, and their endless line
Through late revolving time, can soothe my rage;
While, unchastised, the insulting Spaniard dares
Infest the trading flood, full of vain war
Despise my navies, and my merchants seize ;
As, trusting to false peace, they fearless roam
The world of waters wild; made, by the toil,
And liberal blood of glorious ages, mine :
Nor bursts my sleeping thunder on their head.
Whence this unwonted patience? this weak doubt ?
This tame beseeching of rejected peace?
This meek forbearance? this unnative fear,
To generous Britons never known before?
And sailed my fleets for this-on Indian tides
To float, inactive, with the veering winds?
The mockery of war! while hot disease
And sloth distempered swept off burning crowds,
For action ardent; and amid the deep,
Inglorious, sunk them in a watery grave.
There now they lie beneath the rolling flood,
Far from their friends, and country, unavenged;
And back the drooping warship comes again,
Dispirited and thin; her sons ashamed
Thus idly to review their native shore;
With not one glory sparkling in their eye,
One triumph on their tongue. A passenger,
The violated merchant comes along-
That far sought wealth, for which the noxious gale
He drew, and sweat beneath equator suns—
By lawless force detained, a force that soon
Would melt away, and every spoil resign,
Were once the British lion heard to roar.
Whence is it that the proud Iberian thus
In their own well asserted element
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