Perhaps some doctor, of tremendous paunch, Awful and deep, a black abyss of drink, Outlives them all, and from his bury'd flock Retiring, full of rumination sad,
Laments the weakness of these latter times.
But if the rougher sex by this fierce sport Is hurried wild, let not such horrid joy E'er stain the bosom of the British Fair. Far be the spirit of the chace from them! Uncomely courage, unbeseeming skill; To spring the fence, to rein the prancing steed; The cap, the whip, the masculine attire; In which they roughen to the sense, and all The winning softness of their sex is lost. In them 'tis graceful to dissolve at woe; With every motion, every word to wave Quick o'er the kindling cheek the ready blush; And from the smallest violence to shrink Unequal, then the loveliest in their fears; And by this silent adulation, soft To their protection more engaging Man. O may their eyes no miserable sight, Save weeping lovers, see! a nobler game, Thro' Love's enchanting wiles pursu'd, yet fled, In chace ambiguous. May their tender limbs Float in the loose simplicity of dress! And, fashion'd all to harmony, alone Know they to seise the captivated soul, In rapture warbled from love-breathing lips; To teach the late to languish; with smooth step,
Disclosing motion in its every charm; To swim along, and swell the mazy dance; To train the foliage o'er the snowy lawn; To guide the pencil, turn the tuneful page; To lend new flavor to the fruitful year, And heighten Nature's dainties: in their race To rear their graces into second life; To give Society its highest taste; Well-order'd home, Man's best delight to make; And by submissive wisdom, modest skill, With every gentle care-cluding art, To raise the virtues, animate the bliss, And sweeten all the toils of human life: This be the female dignity and praise.
Ye swains now hasten to the hazel-bank: Where down yon dale, the wildly-winding
Falls hoarse from steep to steep. In close array, Fit for the thickets and the tangling shrub,
Ye virgins come. For you their latest song The woodlands raise; the clustering nuts for you
The lover finds amid the secret shade; And, where they burnish on the top-inost bough, With active vigor crushes down the tree; Or shakes them ripe from the resigning husk, A glossy shower, and of an ardent brown, As are the ringlets of Melinda's hair: Melinda! form'd with every grace complete; Yet these neglecting, above beauty wise, And far transcending such a vulgar praise.
Hence from the busy joy-resounding fields, In cheerful error, let us tread the maze Of Autumn, unconfin'd; and taste, reviv'd, The breath of orchard big with bending fruit. Obedient to the breeze and beating ray, From the deep-loaded bough a mellow shower Incessant melts away. The juicy pear Lies, in a soft profusion, scatter'd round. A various sweetness swells the gentle race, By Nature's all-refining hand prepar'd, Of temper'd sun, and water, earth, and air, In ever-changing composition mix'd. Such, failing frequent from the chiller night, The fragrant stores, the wide-projected heaps Of apples, which the lusty-handed year, Innumerous, o'er the blushing orchard shakes. A various spirit, fresh, delicious, keen, Dwells in their gelid pores; and, active, points The piercing cyder for the thirsty tongue : Thy native theme, and boon inspirer too, Phillips, Pomona's bard, the second thon Who nobly durst, in rhyine-unfetter'd verse, With British freedom sing the British song: How, from Silurian vats, high-sparkling wines Foam in transparent floods; some strong, to
The wiut'ry revels of the laboring hind; And tasteful some, to cool the summer hours.
In this glad season, while his sweetest beanis The sun sheds equal o'er the meeken'd day; Oh lose me in the green delightful walks Of Dodington, thy seat, serene and plain; Where simple Nature reigns, and every view, Diffusive spreads the pure Dorsetian downs, In boundless prospect; yonder shagg'd with wood,
Here rich with harvest, and there white with flocks!
Meantime the grandeur of thy lofty dome, Far splendid, seises on the ravish'd eye. New beauties rise with each revolving day; New columns swell; and still the fresh Spring
Warm from the heart, to learn the moral song. As when of old (so sung the Hebrew Bard) Here, as I steal along the sunny wall,
Where Autumn basks with fruit-empurpled deep,
My pleasing theme continual prompts my thought:
Presents the downy peach; the shining plum; The ruddy, fragrant nectarine; and dark, Beneath his ample leaf, the luscious fig. The vine too here her curling tendrils shoots, Hangs out her clusters, glowing to the south, And scarcely wishes for a warnier sky.
Turn we a moment Fancy's rapid flight To vigorous soils, and climes of fair extent; Where, by the potent sun elated high, The vineyard swells refulgent on the day; Spreads o'er the vale, or up the mountain climbs, Profuse, and drinks amid the sunny rocks; From cliff to cliff, increas'd, the heighten'd blaze.
Low bend the weighty boughs, the clusters clear, Half thro' the foliage seen, or ardent flame, Or shine transparent; while perfection breathes White o'er the turgent film the living dew. As thus they brighten with exalted juice, Touch'd into flavor by the mingling ray ; The rural youth and virgins o'er the field, Each fond for each to cull th' autumnal prime, Exulting rove, and speak the vintage nigh. Then comes the crushing swain; the country floats,
And foams unbounded with the mashy flood; That by degrees fermented, and refin'd, Round the rais'd nation, pours the cup of joy; The claret smooth, red as the lip we press, In sparkling fancy, while we drain the bowl; The mellow-tasted burgundy, and quick, As is the wit it gives, the gay champaign. Now by the cool declining year condens'd, Descend the copious exhalations, check'd As up the middle sky unseen they stole, And roll the doubling fogs around the hill. No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime, Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides, And high between contending kingdoms rears The rocky long division, fills the view With great variety; but in a night Of gathering vapor, from the baffled sense Sinks dark and dreary. Thence expanding far The huge dusk, gradual, swallows up the plain: Vanish the woods; the dim-seen river seems Sullen, and slow, to roll the misty wave. Even in the height of noon opprest, the sun Sheds weak, and blunt his wide-refracted ray; Whence glaring oft' with many a broaden'd orb, He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth, Seen thro' the turbid air, beyond the life Objects appear; and, wilder'd, o'er the waste The shepherd stalks gigantic. Till at last Wreath'd dun around, in deeper circles still Successive closing sits the general fog Unbounded o'er the world; and, mingling thick,
A formless grey confusion covers all.
Light, uncollected, thro' the chaos urg'd Its infant way; nor order yet had drawn His lovely train from out the dubious gloom. These roving mists, that constant now begin To smoke along the hilly country, these, With weighty rains, and melted Alpine snows The mountain cisterns fill, those ample stores Of water scoop'd among the hollow rocks; Whence gush the streains, the ceaseless foun- tains play,
And their unfailing wealth the rivers draw. Some sages say, that where the numerous wave For ever lashes the resounding shore, Drill'd thro' the sandy stratum every way, The waters with the sandy stratuni rise; Amid whose angles infinitely strain'd, They joyful leave their jaggy salts behind, And clear and sweeten, as they soak along. Nor stops the restless fluid, mounting still, Tho' oft' amidst th' irriguous vale it springs; But to the mountain courted by the sand, That leads it darkling on in faithful maze, Far from the parent-main, it boils again Fresh into day; and all the glittering hill Is bright with sporting rills. But hence this vain
Amusive dream! why should the waters love To take so far a journey to the hills, When the sweet valleys offer to their toil Inviting quiet, and a nearer bed? Or if, by blind ambition led astray, They must aspire; why should they sudden stop Among the broken mountain's rushy dells, And, ere they gain its highest peak, desert Th' attractive sand that charin'd their course along?
Besides the hard agglomerating salts, The spoil of ages would impervious choke Their secret channels; or, by slow degrees, High as the hills protrude the swelling vales: Old ocean too suck'd thro' the porons globe, Had long ere now forsook his horrid bed, And brought Deucalion's wat'ry times again.
Say then, where lurk the vast eternal springs, That like Creating Nature, lie conceal'd' From mortal eye, yet with their lavish stores Refresh the globe and all its joyous tribes ?
thou pervading Genius, given to man, To trace the secrets of the dark abyss, O lay the mountains bare! and wide display Their hidden structure to th' astonished view? Strip from the branching Alps their piny load ; The huge incumbrance of horrific woods From Asian Taurus, from Iinaus stretch'd Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds! Give opening Hemus to my searching eye, And high Olympus pouring many a stream! O from the sounding summits of the north, The Dofrine hills, thro' Scandinavia roll'd To farthest Lapland and the frozen main ! From lofty Caucasus, far seen by those Who in the Caspian and black Euxine toil; From cold Riphean rocks, which the wild Russ
Believes the stony girdle of the world; And all the dreadful mountains wrapt in storm, Whence wide Siberia draws her lonely floods; O sweep th'eternal snows! Hung o'er the deep, That ever works beneath his sounding base; Bid Atlas, propping heaven, as Pocts feign, His subterranean wonders spend! unveil The miny caverns, blazing on the day Of Abyssinia's cloud-compelling cliffs, And of the bending mountains of the moon! O'ertopping all these giant sons of earth. Let the dire Andes, from the radiant line Stretch'd to the snowy seas that thunder round The southern pole, their hideous deeps unfold! Amazing scene! Behold! the glooms disclose! I see the rivers in their infant beds! Deep, deep, I hear them laboring to get free! I see the leaning strata, artful strang'd; The gaping fissures to receive the rains, The melting snows, and ever-dripping fogs. Strow'd bibulous above, I see the sands, The pebbly gravel next, the layers then Of mingled moulds, of more retentive earths, The gutter'd rocks, and mazy running clefts; That, while the stealing moisture they transmit, Retard its motion, and forbid its waste. Beneath the incessant weeping of these drains, I see the rocky siphons stretch'd immense, The mighty reservoirs of harden'd chalk, Or stiff-compacted clay; capacious form'd. O'erflowing thence the congregated stores, The crystal treasures of the liquid world, Thro' the stirr'd sands a bubbling passage burst; And welling out, around the middle steep, Or from the bottom of the bosom'd hills, In pure effusion flow. United thus, Th' exhaling sun, the vapor-burden'd air, The gelid mountains, that to rain condens'd These vapors in continual current draw, And send them o'er the fair-divided earth, In bounteous rivers to the deep again, A social commerce hold, and firm support The full-adjusted harmony of things.
When Autumn scatters his departing gleams, Warn'd of approaching Winter, gather'd, play The swallow-people; and toss'd wide around, O'er the calm sky, in convolution swift, The feather'd eddy floats; rejoicing once, Ere to their wint'ry slumbers they retire; In clusters clung, beneath the mould'ring bank, And where, unpierc'd by frost, the cavern
Unconquerable hand of Liberty,
The stork assembly meets; for many a day, Consulting deep, and various, ere they take Their arduous voyage thro' the liquid sky. And now their route design'd," their leaders chose,
Their tribes adjusted, clean'd their vigorous wings:
And many a circle, many a short essay. Wheel'd round, and round in congregation full, The figur'd flight ascends; and, riding high The aerial billows, mixes with the clouds.
Or where the Northern ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked melancholy isles Of farthest Thule, and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the storiny Hebrides; Who can recount what transmigration there Are annual made? what nations come and go? And how the living clouds on clouds arise? Infinite wings! till all the plume-dark air, And rude-resounding shore are one wild cry.
Here the plain harmless native his small flock, And herd diminutive of many hues, fends on the little island's verdant swell, The shepherd's sea-girt reign; or, to the rocks
Dire-clinging, gathers his ovarious food; Or sweeps the fishy shore'; or treasures up The plumage, rising full, to form the bed Of luxury. And here awhile the Muse, High-hovering o'er the broad cerulean scene, Sees Caledonia in romantic view: Her airy mountains, from the waving main, Invested with a keen diffusive sky, Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge, Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand Planted of old; her azure lakes between, Pour'd out extensive, and of wat'ry wealth Full; winding deep, and green, her fertile vales;
With many a cool translucent briming flood Wash'd lovely, from the Tweed (pure parent
Whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric
With sylvan Jed, thy tributary brook) To where the north-inflated tempest foams O'er Orca's or Betubium's highest peak : Nurse of a people in misfortune's school Train'd up to hardy deeds; soon visited By Learning, when before the Gothic rage She took her western flight. A manly race, Of unsubmitting spirit, wise and brave; What still thro' bleeding ages struggled hard, (As well unhappy Wallace can attest, Great patriot hero! ill-requited chief!) To hold a generous undiminish'd state; Too much in vain! Hence of unequal bounds Impatient, and by tempting glory borne O'er every land, for every land their life
The Muscovites call the Riphean mountains Weliki Camenypops, that is, the great stony girdle: because they suppose them to encompass the whole earth.
A range of mountains in Africa, that surround almost all Monomopata.
Has flow'd profuse, their piercing genius And thro' their lucid veil his soften'd force Shed o'er the peaceful world. Then is the time
And swell'd the pomp of peace
As from their own clear north, in radiant
Bright over Europe bursts the Boreal Morn. Oh is there not some patriot, in whose power
That best, that godlike Luxury is plac'd, Of blessing thousands, thousands yet unborn Thro' late posterity? some, large of soul, To cheer dejected industry? to give A double harvest to the pining swain? And teach the lab'ring hand the sweets of toil? How, by the finest art, the native robe To weave; how, white as hyperborean snow, To form the lucid lawn; with venturous oar How to dash wide the billow; nor look on, Shamefully passive, while Batavian fleets Defraud us of the glittering finny swarms, That heave our friths, and crowd upon our shores;
How all-enlivening trade to rouse, and wing The prosperous sail, from every growing port, Uninjur'd, round the sea-incircled globe; And thus, in soul united as in name, Bid Britain reign the mistress of the deep? Yes, there are such. And full on thee, Argyle,
Her hope, her stay, her darling, and her boast, From her first patriots and her heroes sprung, Thy fond imploring country turns her eye; In thee, with all a mother's triumph, sees Her every virtue, every grace combin'd, Her genius, wisdom, her engaging turn, Her pride of honor, and her courage try'd Calm, and intrepid, in the very throat Of sulphurous war, on Tenier's dreadful field. Nor less the palm of peace inwreaths thy row? For, powerful as thy sword, from thy rich tong Persuasion flows, and wins the high debate; While mix'd in thee combine the charms of youth,
The force of manhood, and the depth of age. Thee, Forbes, too, whom every worth attends As truth sincere, as weeping friendship kind, Thee, truly generous, and in silence great, Thy country feels thro' her reviving arts, Plann'd by thy wisdom, by thy soul inform'd, And seldom has she known a friend like thee. But see the fading many-color'd woods, Shade deepening over shade, the country round Imbrown a crouded unbrage, dusk and dun, Of every hue, from wan-declining green To sooty dark. These now the lonesome Muse, Low whispering, lead into their leaf-strown walks,
And give the season in its latest view.
Meantime, light shadowing all, a sober calm Fleeces unbounded ether; whose least wave Stands tremulous, uncertain where to turn The gentle current: while illumin'd wide, The dewy skirted clouds imbibe the sun,
For those whom wisdom and whom Nature charm
To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd, And soar above this little scene of things; To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their
To sooth the throbbing passions into peace; And woo lone Quiet in her silent walks.
Thus solitary, and in pensive guise, Oft' let me wander o'er the russet mead, And thro' the sadden'd grove, where scarce is heard
One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil. Haply some widow'd songster pours his plaint, Far, in faint warblings, thro' the tawny copse. While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks, And each wild throat, whose artless strains so late
Swell'd all the music of the swarming shades, Robb'd of their tuneful souls, now shivering sit On the dead tree, a dull respondent flock; With not a brightness waving o'er their plumes, And nought save chattering discord in their
O let not, aim'd from some inhuman eye, The gun the music of the coming year Destroy, and harmless, unsuspecting harm, Lay the weak tribes a miserable prey, In mingled murder, fluttering on the ground!
The pale descending year, yet pleasing still, A gentle mood inspires; for now the leaf Incessant russels from the mournful grove;' Oft' startling, such as studious walk below, And slowly circles thro' the waving air. But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams; Till chok'd, and matted with the dreary shower,
The forest-walks, at every rising gale, Roll wide the wither'd waste, and whistle bleak.
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields; And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race Their sunny robes resign. Even what remain'd Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree; And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around
The desolated prospect thrills the soul.
He comes! he comes! in every breeze the Power
Of Philosophic Melancholy comes! His near approach the sudden-starting tear, The glowing check, the mild dejected air, The soften'd feature, and the beating heart, Piere'd deep with many a virtuous pang, de- clare.
O'er all the soul his sacred influence breathes! Inflames imagination; thro' the breast Infuses every tenderness; and far Beyond dini earth exalts the swelling thought. Ten thousand thousand fleet ideas, such
As never mingled with the vulgar dream, Crowd fast into the mind's creative eye. As fast the correspondent passions rise, As varied, and as high: Devotion rais'd To rapture, and divine astonishment; The love of Nature unconfin'd, and, chief, Of human race; the large ambitious wish, To make them blest; the sigh for suffering worth
Lost in obscurity; the noble scorn
Of tyrant-pride; the fearless great resolve; The order which the dying patriot draws, Inspiring glory thro' reniotest time;
Th' awaken'd throb for virtue, and for fame; The sympathies of love, and friendship dear; With all the social offspring of the heart.
Oh bear me then to vast embowering shades, To twilight groves and visionary vales; To weeping grottos and prophetic glooms; Where angel-forms athwart the solemn dusk, Tremendous sweep, or seem to sweep along; And voices more than human, thro' the void Deep-sounding, seise the enthusiastic ear! Or is this gloom too much? Then lead, ye powers,
That o'er the garden and the rural seat Preside, which shining thro' the cheerful land In countless numbers blest Britannia sees; O lead me to he wide-extended walks, The fair majestic paradise of Stowe * ! Not Persian Cyrus on Ionia's shore F'er saw such sylvan scenes; such various art By genius fir'd, such ardent genius tamı'd By cool judicious art; that, in the strife, All-beauteous Nature fears to be out-done: And there, O Pitt, thy country's early boast, There let me sit beneath the shelter'd slopes, Or in that Temple † where, in future times, Thou well shalt merit a distinguish'd name; And, with thy converse blest, catch the last smiles
Of Autumn beaming o'er the yellow woods. While there with thee th' inchanted round I walk,
The regulated wild, gay Fancy then Will tread in thought the groves of Attic land? Will from thy standard taste refine her own, Correct her pencil to the purest truth Of nature, or, the unimpassion'd shades Forsaking, raise it to the human mind. Or if hereafter she, with juster hand, Shall draw the tragic scene, instruct her thou, To mark the varied movements of the heart; What every decent character requires, And ev'ry passion speaks: O thro' her strain Breathe thy pathetic eloquence! that moulds Th' attentive senate, charms, persuades, exalts; Of honest zeal th' indignant lightning throws, And shakes correction on her venal throne, While thus we talk, and thro' Elysian vales Delighted rove, perhaps a sigh escapes: What pity, Cobham, thou thy verdant files
• The seat of the Lord Viscount Cobham,
[Of order'd trees should'st here inglorious range, Instead of squadrons flaming o'er the field, And long-embattled hosts! when the proud foe The faithless vain disturber of mankind, Insulting Gaul, has rous'd the world to war? When keen, once more, within their bounds to press
Those polish'd robbers, those ambitious slaves, The British Youth would hail thy wise command,
Thy temper'd ardor, and thy veteran skill. The western sun withdraws the shorten'd day:
And humid evening, gliding o'er the sky, In her chill progress, to the ground condens'd The vapors throw. Where creeping waters
Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along The dusky mantled lawn. Meanwhile the
Full-orb'd, and breaking thro' the scatter'd clouds,
Shows her broad visage in the crimson'd east, Turn'd to the sun direct, her spotted disk, Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales de- scend,
And caverns deep, as optic tube descries, A smaller earth, gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day. Now thro' the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublinie. Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild O'er the sky'd mountain to the shadowy vale, While rocks and floods reflect the quivering
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide Of silver radiance, trembling round the world.
But when half-blotted from the sky her light, Fainting, permits the starry fires to burn With keener lustre thro' the depth of heaven: Or near extinct her deaden'd orb appears, And scarce appears, of sickly beamless white; Oft' in this season, silent from the north A blaze of meteors shoots: ensweeping first The lower skies, they all at once converge High to the crown of heaven, and all at once Relapsing quick, as quickly re-ascend, And mix, and thwart, extinguish, and renew, All ether coursing in a maze of light.
From look to look, contagious thro' the crowd,
The panic runs, and into wondrous shapes The appearance throws: Armies in meet array, Throng'd with aërial spears, and steeds of fire: Till the long lines of full-extended war In bleeding fight commix'd, the sanguine flood Rolls a broad slaughter o'er the plains of heaven, As thus they scan the visionary scene, On all sides swells the superstitious din,
↑ The Temple of Virtue in Stowe Gardens. Incontinent;
« FöregåendeFortsätt » |