A panting fyllable through time and space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark;
But fuch as learning without falfe pretence,
The friend of truth, the associate of sound sense,
And such as, in the zeal of good design,
Strong judgment labouring in the fcripture mine,
All fuch as manly and great fouls produce,
Worthy to live, and of eternal ufe:
Behold in thefe, what leisure hours demand,
Amusement and true knowledge hand in hand.
Luxury gives the mind a childish cast,
And, while the polishes, perverts the taste;
Habits of close attention, thinking heads,
Become more rare as diffipation spreads,
Till authors hear at length one general cry,
Tickle and entertain us, or we die.
The loud demand, from year to year the fame,
Beggars invention, and makes fancy lame;
Till farce itself, moft mournfully jejune,
Calls for the kind affiftance of a tune;
And novels (witness every month's Review)
Belie their name, and offer nothing new.
The mind, relaxing into needful sport,
Should turn to writers of an abler fort,
Whose wit well managed, and whose claffic style,
Give truth a luftre, and make wisdom fmile.
Friends (for I cannot ftint, as fome have done,
Too rigid in my view, that name to one;
Though one, I grant it, in the
generous breast Will stand advanced a step above the rest; Flowers by that name promifcuously we call,
But one, the rose, the regent of them all)—
Friends, not adopted with a schoolboy's haste,
But chosen with a nice difcerning taste,
Well born, well disciplined, who, placed apart
From vulgar minds, have honour much at heart,
And, (though the world may think the ingredients
The love of virtue, and the fear of God? [odd,)
Such friends prevent what else would foon fucceed,
A temper ruftic as the life we lead,
And keep the polish of the manners clean,
As theirs who buftle in the bufieft fcene;
For folitude, however fome may rave,
Seeming a fanctuary, proves a grave,
A fepulchre, in which the living lie,
Where all good qualities grow fick and die.
I praise the Frenchman,* his remark was fhrewd,
How sweet, how paffing sweet is folitude!
But grant me ftill a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper-folitude is sweet.
Yet neither these delights, nor aught befide,
That appetite can ask, or wealth provide,
Can fave us always from a tedious day,
Or shine the dulnefs of ftill life away;
Divine communion, carefully enjoy'd,
Or fought with energy, must fill the void.
O, facred art! to which alone life owes
Its happiest seasons, and a peaceful close,
Scorn'd in a world, indebted to that scorn
For evils daily felt and hardly borne,
Not knowing thee, we reap, with bleeding hands,
Flowers of rank odour upon thorny lands,
And, while experience cautions us in vain,
Grafp feeming happiness, and find it pain.
Defpondence, felf-deserted in her grief,
Loft by abandoning her own relief,
Murmuring and ungrateful difcontent,
That scorns afflictions mercifully meant,
Those humours, tart as wines upon
the fret, Which idleness and wearinefs beget;
These, and a thousand plagues that haunt the breast,
Fond of the phantom of an earthly rest,
Divine communion chafes, as the day
Drives to their dens the obedient beafts of prey.
See Judah's promifed king, bereft of all,
Driven out an exile from the face of Saul,
To distant caves the lonely wanderer flies,
To feek that peace a tyrant's frown denies.
Hear the sweet accents of his tuneful voice,
Hear him, o'erwhelm'd with forrow, yet rejoice;
No womanish or wailing grief has part,
No, not a moment, in his royal heart;
'Tis manly music, such as martyrs make,
Suffering with gladness for a Saviour's fake;
His foul exults, hope animates his lays,
The sense of mercy kindles into praise,
And wilds, familiar with the lion's roar,
Ring with ecftatic founds unheard before :
'Tis love like his that can alone defeat
The foes of man, or make a desert sweet.
Religion does not cenfure or exclude
Unnumber'd pleasures harmleffly pursued;
To ftudy culture, and with artful toil
To meliorate and tame the stubborn foil;
To give diffimilar yet fruitful lands
The grain, or herb, or plant that each demands; To cherish virtue in an humble state,
And share the joys your bounty may create;
To mark the matchlefs workings of the power
That fhuts within its feed the future flower,
Bids these in elegance of form excel,
In colour these, and those delight the smell,
Sends Nature forth the daughter of the skies,
To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes;
To teach the canvass innocent deceit,
Or lay the landscape on the snowy sheet—
These, these are arts pursued without a crime,
That leave no stain upon the wing of time.
Me poetry (or rather notes that aim,
Feebly and vainly, at poetic fame)
Employs, shut out from more important views,
Fast by the banks of the flow winding Oufe;
Content if thus fequefter'd I may raise
A monitor's though not a poet's praise,
And while I teach an art too little known,
To close life wifely, may not waste my own.
or Tithing-Time at STOCK, in ESSEX.
Verfes addreffed to a country clergyman complaining of the difagreeableness of the day annually appointed for receiving the dues at the parfonage.
SOME, ponder well, for 'tis no jest,
To laugh it would be wrong,
The troubles of a worthy priest,
The burden of my fong.
This priest he merry is and blithe
Three quarters of the year,
But oh! it cuts him like a fcythe
When tithing-time draws near.
He then is full of frights and fears,
As one at point to die,
And long before the day appears
He heaves up many a figh.
For then the farmers come jog, jog,
Along the miry road,
Each heart as heavy as a log,
To make their payments good.
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