POEMS.
POEMS, BY A GENTLEMAN.
—AMAT NEMUS, ET FUGIT URBES.
HORACE.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. CADELL, IN THE STRAND. MDCCLXXXII.
COLIN's ELEGY, On Revisiting the Place where he first became acquainted with DELIA.
Indeed (said
Lucid
) I have often heard
Faire
Rosalind
of divers fowly blamed
For being to that Swaine too cruel hard.
That her bright glorie else hath much defamed.
Spenser's Colin Clout's come home again.
YET once again, by wayward fortune led,
I view the sacred walls where dwelt my fair;
Where, blest with her, my days in rapture fled;
Too soon alloy'd, and shaded with despair!
Three years are past, since first my yielding heart
It's virgin vows to love and
Delia
paid;
(Sincere itself, it ne'er suspected art!)
And ah! what changes those three years have made!
Young
Corydon,
to whom the fair one gave
Her earliest faith, and holiest union vow'd,
Sleeps in the silent chamber of the grave,
And for a wedding garment wears a shroud.
Large tides of grief in
Delia
's bosom roll'd:
But soon
Dametas
dried the mourner's tears;
Dametas,
rich, but petulant and old,
And damn'd with jealousy, the crime of years.
What need I more—by treach'rous friends deceiv'd,
He mark'd each venial fault with jaundic'd eyes,
Each paltry tale with partial ear believ'd,
And construed Indiscretion into Vice.
Now, banish'd from a husband's board, she mourns;
Her woes embitter'd by a parent's frown;
Condemn'd, rejected, for a crime she scorns;
And like a dream her transient glories flown.
Fair daughter of the morn, thy star is set!
Thy star is set, nor ever more must rise!
O may no wrongs of mine, in judgment met,
Swell thy full soul's distress with added cries!
We might have liv'd!—Ah sadly pleasing thought!
Vain Recollection! What art thou to me!
We might have liv'd! As virtuous love had taught,
In unreproved pleasures ever free.
We might have liv'd!—But execrable gold
Love's unsubstantial claims and tears outweigh'd:
For wealth her charms the venal
Delia
sold,
For wealth her lover and her friend betray'd.
For me, (who now with pain review the place
Where once my
Delia
call'd her
Colin
dear;
Each well-known path with aching heart retrace,
Think on her
ickleness and drop a tear:)
Silent and sole, I seek th' accustom'd bow'r,
The Bow'r once sacred to my love and me;
Where oft with her I pass'd th' enraptur'd hour,
And bore the syren charmer on my knee.
I seek the Plane, whose trunk, with mine combin'd
Bears the dear letters of my
Delia
's name;
I mark their growth, but that distracts my mind,
For such I once had hop'd our mutual flame.
E'en while I write, these scenes of former bliss
Such fond reflections in my bosom move,
What then my fortune was, what now it is,
That though I can't esteem, I still must love.
I love; but 'tis not with that youthful heat
Which once inflam'd my soul, to reason blind;
'Tis with that soothing grief, that soft regret,
Which those who think on friends departed, find.
I grieve; but 'tis a calm and virtuous woe,
By reason sanctified, by heav'n approv'd;
'Tis such as kindred saints in heaven might know,
Seeing those fall whom when on earth they lov'd.
Time and reflection long have chas'd away
The painted phantoms that bewitch'd my sight;
God's wise behests submissive I obey,
And own, convinc'd, "Whatever is, is right."
Vain love, farewell!—for me, should heav'n design
Such added blessing to my future life;
Soon may I call th' ingenuous
Mira
mine,
And meet, unwarpt by love, a virtuous wife.
COLIN, TO HIS FRIENDS, Exhorting him to the attainment of Honours by a steady Application to the LAW.
"Business! too oft the frivolous pretence
"Of human lusts, to shake off innocence;
"Business! the grave impertinence;
"Business! the thing which I of all things hate;
"Business! the contradiction of thy fate.
Cowley's Complaint—The muse speaks.
MY friends, no more!—your kind remonstrance spare!
Your kind remonstrance, your advice is vain:
Conscious I shall not answer half your care
It serves no purpose but to give me pain.
I cannot feel one wish for pomp or pow'r,
I seek no titles, I desire no place;
Born as I was in unambitious hour
I scorn the prize, and can I run the race?
When
Westminster Hall.
in
the Courts
I take my silent stand,
Unenvious I behold the judge's state;
Behold with pitying eye, Law's restless band,
And wonder man will bustle to be great.
Onward I pass—A soberer scene succeeds:
Westminster Abbey.
'Tis the sad mansion of departed kings!
Where every stone that blazons forth their deeds
Proclaims the vanity of earthly things.
Proclaims th' aspiring croud I left behind,
Mere insect swarms that shine but for an hour;
Then, nipt by cold or shatter'd by the wind,
Fleet, like the transient bow that gilds a show'r.
Shall I then sacrifice life's happiest prime
To gain employments I should wish to shun?
Enslave the sacred freedom of my time
To win a title I should hate when won?
No!—Let me live with independence blest,
Blest with the sweets of no unlearned ease;
Indulge th' unruffl'd calm my soul loves best,
And eat my bread in privacy and peace.
One sole inducement could have rous'd my mind;
That sole inducement has been long no more:
Delia
was false!—with her at once resign'd
Fled all the schemes I ever form'd for pow'r.
Had she been mine, what could not I have done
To give that wealth she now has bought so dear?
What prize so great that I could not have won,
When all my efforts were inspir'd by her?
Now for myself I live:—With books my morn,
With friends perchance my evening hours are spent:
The rich man's wonder, and the proud man's scorn,
I envy neither, for I feel content.
Free, unconstrain'd, my country's laws I choose;
Those laws by which e'en monarchs are control'd;
Their changes trace, their origin deduce;
But do it for instruction, not for gold.
Thus let me live, till manhood's steadier day
Matures the seeds that lab'ring youth has sown:
Then might some fav'ring female, chastly gay,
Wise without pride, and fair without a frown:
Would such a one, from mean coquetry free,
Who held her word as sacred as her fame:
Would
Mira
plight her spotless faith to me,
And at the altar grace her
Colin
's name!
Blest beyond hope, how gladly I'd forswear
The wild fantastick pageants
London
yields,
To breathe the country's pure untainted air
That sweeps with fresh'ning breeze the new-plough'd fields.
Me rural scenes! me woods! and streams can please
That through the fertile vales irriguous rove!
Here let me stretch my wearied limbs at ease!
For I, inglorious, woods and streams can love!
Happy the man, whose philosophick eye
Could to their causes Nature's workings trace;
Could learn from thence death's terrors to defy,
And joy to meet his Maker face to face.
Blest too is he, whom woods and streams can charm,
Whose humble thoughts to lesser flights aspire;
Who tunes, (his heart with thankful rapture warm,)
To Nature's bounteous lord the rural lyre.
No toil of office ruffles his repose,
No purpled monarch's proud unyielding state;
Unvers'd in publick scenes, he little knows
The loud discordant senate's vain debate.
He little knows th' embattled pow'rs that join
From
Britain's
grasp her western world to rend;
Nor sees her sick'ning Genius droop and pine,
Nor deems her less'ning glories near their end.
Untost by storms, he gently glides through life;
His fields, his trees, give sweet though simple fare;
He scapes the madding town's unholy strife,
He scapes the noisy clamours of the Bar.
THE DELIGHTS OF FANCY.
On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long
(Sitting was more convenient for the song:)
Nor till her lay was ended could I move,
But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove.
Only methought the time too swiftly pass'd,
And every note I fear'd would be the last.
My sight, and smell, and hearing, were employ'd,
And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd.
And what alone did all the rest surpass,
The sweet possession of the fairy place;
Single, and conscious to myself alone
Of pleasures to th' excluded world unknown:
Pleasures which no where else were to be found,
And all Elysium in a spot of ground.
Dryden
's
flower and leaf,
imitated from
Chaucer.
Again the summer shines! with mightier flame
The Sun exults his lengthen'd course to roll,
And wide diffuses through the human frame
A languid bliss that melts the poet's soul.
It melts the soul, but gives the pow'r to sing
Those visionary scenes itself inspires;
Tunes it to harmonies of noblest string,
And bids it glow with more than mortal fires.
Great Life of all the world, and Lord of day!
Best symbol of our common Maker's might!
Well might th' unguided heathen thee obey,
And prostrate hail thy orb's returning light;
For oft myself have felt thy rapt'rous heat
Steal o'er my senses like a fairy dream;
Then, when my yielding limbs have sought retreat,
And sunk in silence near some shaded stream;
My soul, on Fancy's wing sublimely borne,
Hath mus'd of scenes too bright for mortal eye;
Hath seen white robes by saints and martyrs worn,
And heard th' eternal carols of the sky.
Oft too luxuriant Fancy reigns alone,
And calls from fablers old a varying band;
And scenes of bliss to waking life unknown,
Rise, change, and vanish, as she gives command.
Imagination works with all her pow'rs,
And gorgeous Knights in glitt'ring troops are seen,
And courteous squires, and dwarfs, and moated tow'rs,
And all the splendours of the gothick scene.
Bards too of other times resume their lyres!
The glorious tale that
Chaucer's
Knight hath told
Sounds in mine ears, and fills me with its fires:
And now the jousting warriours I behold,
And
Palamon
is to the stake convey'd:
Now from the earth upstarts th' infernal fiend;
Now dying
Arcite
wills the dear bought maid,
If she can ever love, to love his friend.
Anon
See Spenser's Faerie Queene.
prince
Arthur
's blazing shield o'erthrows
The giant conqueror of the Red Cross Knight;
Or ruthless
Talus
drives his host of foes
With unrelenting flail and iron might.
Dear scenes of blest delusion! golden dreams!
And always innocent, and always new!
Where oft with truths sublime the fiction teems,
And Virtue's noblest patterns strike the view:
Ye feed the fancy, nor seduce the heart!
For from our reach remote your actions lie;
No youth can now assume
Pyrochles'
part,
No modern maid like poor
See Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.
Parthenia
die.
Not so the spurious and destructive brood,
The graceless toys of more enlighten'd times,
That teach the child to languish to be woo'd,
Create her follies, and contrive her crimes:
These clear the paths to ruin and to shame:
Perhaps, by these poor
Delia
was undone!
Delia!
whose lost and desolated fame
Friendship can only weep, and virtue shun!
But O! the gorgeous tales of earlier days,
Where fancy shines in mystick fiction bright;
Where chastity is woman's fairest praise,
And virtue's cause inspires the vent'rous knight;
Be these my choice! and who, by these refin'd,
Would bear the bus'ness of life's publick croud;
Would change these wand'rings of th' enchanted mind
For all the splendid slav'ry of the proud.
But these to few are giv'n:—unknown they lie,
Unsought, unhonour'd, by the venal herd
Where purseproud wealth can injur'd worth defy,
And poverty alone is shunn'd and fear'd.
Unknown they lie where sturdy labour lives
And earns with ceaseless care his scanty meal;
Oft too where chance the pow'rs of leisure gives,
Superior fate denies the pow'r to feel.
Yet some perchance, in this tempestuous time
Some still remain, and sure not meanly blest,
Whose rambling thoughts have reach'd this rapt'rous clime,
And view'd these scenes of fancy and of rest.
For them all nature breathes elysian grace,
And sweets ambrosial stream from every flow'r;
Fairies for them the green-sward ringlets trace,
And magick's mightiest influence guards their bow'r.
And should blest Competence from heav'n descend,
And from a patron's will their freedom save;
To such, congenial with myself, I'll bend,
And consecrate the verse these visions gave.
THE END.