ODE TO MISS SARAH FOWLER.
Toutesfois vous demeurant en ce lieu, mes tenebreuses ét tristes parolles n'en pourroient chasser les Graces, desquels vous me semblez estre l'unique simulachre, et moins les Muses qui vous recognoissent pour leur Minerve.
WHEN first Aurora's gorgeous car
Springs from night's dreary vault releas'd,
And beauty's consecrated star,
Retires behind the blushing east,
Can Titian's orient beams dispense
A more propitious influence
To animate th' exulting earth,
Than sheds bright Fancy o'er the mind,
When, from Care's grosser dregs refin'd;
It gives the fruits of genius birth.
Not in the solitary gloom,
By the dim taper's sickly ray,
Sunk in the rust of Greece and Rome
Does Genius point the doubtful way,
While in abstracted thought the Sage
Revolves the stern Socratic page;
Or by the tedious rules of art
In melancholy search pursues,
Yet finds the gay, the bashful Muse
Unseen and unattain'd depart.
Where Poesy erects her seat,
The myrtle's fragrant branches twine.
Beneath the Pleasures' nimble feet
Upstarts the new-born columbine.
Methinks I see the jocund band
Of Loves and Graces hand in hand
Their artless symphony inspire;
The Muses catch the dulcet sound,
They waft the sportive echoes round,
And wake the sympathetic lyre.
The rose's aromatic bloom
Adorns their wild fantastic grove,
And o'er the violet's perfume
Angelic forms delighted rove;
Fair Sappho in Elysian bowers
Beguiles the gently stealing hours,
And sooths entranc'd Despair to rest,
Her strains so feelingly express
The force of elegant distress,
Implanted in a female breast.
Carelessly tripping o'er the green
The sprightly Deshoulieres appears
With winning air and brow serene,
Unclouded by the frown of years;
Around the Nymph in graceful state,
A thousand smiling Cupids, wait,
And each performs his destin'd part;
Some give the cheeks a livelier glow,
Some tune the lyre, some twang the bow
To pierce the most obdurate heart,
The plaintive Rowe, whose warbling breath
Dispers'd the melancholy gloom
Which at her dear Alexis' death
O'erhung the sickening vales of Frome,
To the soft Cyprian lute recites
The fears, the hopes, the fond delights,
The tender blandishments of love,
Their mutual happiness completing,
Where Innocence and Pleasure meeting,
Have fixed them in the realms above;
Beside them Cytherea stands
In Virtue's snowy garb array'd,
And reunites their social hands
Sever'd by Death's remorseless blade:
The Loves with elegiac verse,
Meanwhile adorn the sable hearse
In which their mortal ashes lye,
And in due chaplet Phoebus weaves,
The laurel's never-fading leaves,
The pledge of immortality.
Yet not from these romantick shades,
Whene'er I wake the Teian string,
Will I invoke th' harmonious Maids
Tunlock Castalia's vaunted spring:
The palms of Genius thinly spread
Where cypress glooms o'er-arch the dead
Let others glean:-My raptur'd ear
Has caught the soul-enchanting strains,
That on Salopia's happy plains
The bright Sabrina joys to hear:
She, blameless Nymph, whose piteous doom
Poetic Annalists relate,
Immers'd in Severn's watery tomb
By Guendoline's remorseless hate
O'er the smooth current still presides,
And bids the spring-flowers on its sides
Diversify the broider'd green,
Where to the spheres' aerial sound
The light Fays trip their antic round
By meditating Shepherds seen:
If worn Tradition's specious tales,
In Fiction's gaudy mantle drest,
Were wont to celebrate her vales
With Nature's bounteous treasures blest;
Fame hiding more than half her blaze
Reserved to crown these later days
Her greatest, her most envied pride,
That while her banks thy numbers grace,
The Goddess sees thy fairer face
Reflected in her glassy tide.
Ask we on what terrestrial plain
The Graces condescend to dwell
When Thou, the loveliest of their train,
So aptly strik'st the chorded shell?
Whether from Bacchus' mighty race,
Or the dread Thunderer's stol'n embrace
Euphrosyne derived her birth
Regards not us:-Our dazzled sight
Struck with ineffable delight
Has found her parallel on earth.
INSCRIPTION ON A ROOT-HOUSE.
O, STRANGER! speed not on thy onward way,
But let this ivied shed thy step delay:
Lo! here the wand'ring sun-beam feebly falls,
And streaks with soften'd day the mossy walls;
Sweet here t
gaze the blue expanse of noon,
Or placid watch the Summer's cloudless moon
With rays of snowy light ascending glide
'Midst the dark elms and o'er the mountain side,
Nor yet repine, if in tempestuous hour,
The rain slant rushing in a wintry show'r,
Or snow-blast keen thy rapid feet compel
To the rude covert of this rustic cell:
Pleasant it were to muse, as o'er the steep
The tall trees rock with stormy murm'rings deep;
And hear the, rush of rain, the strife of hail
Unfelt commingle in the o'er-passing gale,-
In this abstracted melancholy mood
A solemn joy shall bless thy solitude:
Thoughts of the beautiful, the good, and great,
Thy lifted soul with influence pure dilate;
And if the Muses own thee for their child,
The Muses here shall weave their visions wild!,
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