The peopled rookery-all abroad on wing,
Each with their several families employ'd,
Training to industry their callow broods.
To man how moral! loud it speaks to man:
Man may learn here-that indolent!-his work,
His duties task: of helpless progeny
The care, and erudition's tender toil.
Man may learn here-that infidel!-to place
On Providence his trust: these all depend
On its free almonry:-wide dost thou stretch
Preserver kind, thy liberal shedding hand
Munificent, and with profusion fill
Of every living thing the large desire !
More useful lesson yet to man they teach,
To atheist man, that monster rational !
One obvious lesson, more important still :
Pray'r,-nature's instinct, innate to the soul,
A tax of homage on creation laid,
The general bond on universal life.
Their morning orisons, their vespers loud
These teach their young; the infant suppliants cry,
And ask their meat from God: how sweetly,-hark!
Sound their responses! how devout the charm!
And see the sporting minstrels! how in troops
They make excursion; now divide, now join
Their sable columns; travel and return;
Yet never jostle in their mazy flight.
While quick observing, through their lofty camp,
Their planted centinel gives warning signs.
Strange intuition !-cheaply tenanted,
Free and at ease they dwell: content each day
With nature's dole, and blest with careless sleep,
Hous'd in their skiey chambers, rock'd with winds.
Ah! happy freemen! ye, your fields of air
Hold common with ye all. Man, tyrant lord!
Parcels his speck of earth; to each small spot,
Counting mean self the whole, lays private claim,
And yokes in servile toils his vassal'd kind,
Distinguish'd scarcely from the vassal'd brute;
Pre-eminent alone, by birth, in woe.
Sun-set, and the approach of night.
But see, where now, thy own best parallel,
See where at length the downward-bearing sun
His low, broad orb of setting splendour rests
On the green pillow of yon western steep.
In smiling radiance bidding half our world
Farewell, on speed to visit nether skies.
Carrying morn, noon, and night in ceaseless change,
Each new, swift minute round the peopl❜d ball.
Look! how the rapid journier seems to bait
His slack'ning steeds, and loos'd to evening sports,
Shoots down obliquely his diverging beams!
That kindle on opposing hills the blaze
Of glitt❜ring turrets, and illumin'd domes;
A prospect all on fire; 'till sinking still,
More, and still sinking, while to sight quite lost,
His rays play upwards, in the fleecy clouds,
That swiftly pencil'd, dress a mimic scene
In fancy's eye, of groves, and whiten'd alps,
And towers romantic, rear'd complete, or waste
In ruin'd majesty: with interspace
Of golden ether, and Elysian plain :—
Then vanish quite as soon; and shift by turns
To tinctures of a thousand different dyes:
Till twilight last steps forth, her modest face
Half hid, beneath her gentler lucent vest.
She from their flow'ry prisons straight unlocks
The light-wing'd odours; that on sweetest range
Drop their rich nectar'd treasures as they fly;
Catch'd, vagrant, by the sultry-soothing gale.
'Tis solemn gloom, toil'd nature's grateful hour
Of universal solace, calm and still.
The little warbler of the cheerful day
The charmer-lark, has sung himself to rest.
Each feathery labourer has his vesper clos'd
Perch'd on his bough. But wakes in conscious man,—
Wakes still,--the deep solicitude of thought!
And now more deep, while mounted on her sphere,
Prime near attendant on her solar lord,
The star of eve lights up her diamond flames.
And the pale milder regent of the night,
Replenish'd from her brother's lucid urn,
In her fill'd orb, new ris'n, completely thron'd,
Pours through wide fields of sky her argent stream.
Queen of the shades, amid her lesser train
Of fix'd and planetary lustres join'd
In lumination mutual, slow she moves
Thro' her throng'd court; and heav'n's vast palace
With an infinitude of living fires.
Hark! 'tis the nightingale,―love's lonely bird!—
In the deep bosom of this dusky wood
Pathless of human foot, she sits secure
Her arbour; by the melancholy scene
Sweet'ning her note; while the soft lamp of night
Gleams on the burnish'd brook with liquid gold,
Cheering the shade; on whose tall topmost boughs,
Pal'd with the glim'ring rays, the rust'ling leaves
Join their low whispers; clos'd with cadence deep
From the drone beetle's sleep-exciting horn:
And off the sharp-brow'd cliff, in murmurs faint
From hence scarce heard, a distant water-fall
Add's its hoarse, solemn, dying harmony.
All, with confusion mix'd, with music rude,
Reverberated, from the cavern'd hill;
The cell where ever-waking echo keeps
Her still nocturnal watch.-'Tis pleasing thus
To wander, thoughtful, through the sylvan grove,
At fragrant morn, scorch'd noon, or dewy eve;
Oft as the season free occasion lends.-
Slow as the silent fowler roves, who steps
The fresh-plow'd glebe, and in each furrow quests
Some springing game-nor ceases this to please
The mind of nature fond in every dress,
E'en when she wears her virgin shroud of snows,
And weeping mists spread, sad, her funeral pall.
Each change affords delight. But mark! where north
Shot from the pole, a new Aurora breaks
With imitated dawn.-Mysterious light!-
Perhaps portentous of earth's hast'ning doom,
Vapour, and sanguine cloud, and pillar'd smoke,
As speaks the seer inspir'd. *--And now the moon
A curtain-fold of richest drapery draws
O'er her dim form, that warns to due repose.
JOHN HAWKESWORTH, L.L.D.
BORN 1715.-DIED 1773.
O! let me haste to yonder rustic seat
Which circles the huge trunk of that old oak
Upon the furzy heath, where memory flies
Back to the hour, when in my boyish time
I sat and listen'd to the voice of truth,
Reason and wit, and polish'd elegance,
Breath'd from the lips of one who aptly join'd
The sage's wisdom with the poet's lore.
My tutor, and my friend! and skill'd alike
To move the fancy, and to mend the heart.
'Twas to this bench we oft repair'd; yon spire
We oft have view'd together,—now alas!
It marks the church-yard where his reliques lie ;—
There will I speed, and bending o'er the sod,
Breathe from my grateful soul the prayer which oft
That soul has pour'd on HAWKESWORTH's undeck'd grave.
(PRATT.)
Of the family from which John Hawkesworth was descended we have no account; his father was probably a watchmaker, which may explain the assertion that has found its way into most of the biographical sketches extant of him, of his having been originally destined for that mechanical employment. He was born at Bromley,* in Kent, and according to his epitaph,
*So says Lempriere, upon what authority we know not: -The circustance of his being a native of Bromley is not mentioned by any other biographer that we are aware of; and being born among the dissenters, a reference to parish registers would not settle the point.
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