But when Old Age has on your temples shed
Her silver-frost, there's no returning sun;
Swift flies our autumn, swift our summer's fled,
When youth, and love, and spring, and golden joys
are gone.

Then cold, and winter, and your aged snow,
Stick fast upon you; not the rich array,
Not the green garland, nor the rosy bough,
Shall cancel or conceal the melancholy gray.

The chase of pleasures is not worth the pains,
While the bright sands of health run wasting down;
And honour calls you from the softer scenes,
To sell the gaudy hour for ages of renown.
'Tis but one youth, and short, that mortals have,
And one old age dissolves our feeble frame;
But there's a heavenly art t' elude the grave,
And with the hero-race immortal kindred claim.
The man that has his country's sacred tears
Redewing his cold hearse, has liv'd his day: [heirs;
Thus, Blackbourn, we should leave our names our
Old Time and waning moons sweep all the rest away.

TRUE MONARCHY.

1701.

T
HE rising year beheld the imperious Gaul
Stretch his dominion, while a hundred towns
Crouch'd to the victor: but a steady soul
Stands firm on its own base, and reigns as wide,
As absolute; and sways ten thousand slaves,
Lusts and wild fancies, with a sovereign hand.

We are a little kingdom; but the man That chains his rebel Will to Reason's throne, Forms it a large one, while his royal mind Makes Heaven its council, from the rolls above Draws its own statutes, and with joy obeys.

'Tis not a troop of well-appointed guards Create a monarch, not a purple robe Dy'd in the people's blood, not all the crowns Or dazzling tiars that bend about the head, Though gilt with sun-beams and set round with stars. A monarch he that conquers all his fears, And treads upon them; when he stands alone, Makes his own camp; four guardian virtues wait His nightly slumbers, and secure his dreams. Now dawns the light; he ranges all his thoughts In square battalions, bold to meet th' attacks Of Time and Chance, himself a numerous host, All eye, all car, all wakeful as the day, Firm as a rock, and moveless as the centre.

In vain the harlot Pleasure spreads her charms, To lull his thoughts in Luxury's fair lap, To sensual ease (the bane of little kings, Monarchs whose waxen images of souls Are moulded into softness); still his mind Wears its own shape, nor can the heavenly form Stoop to be modell'd by the wild decrees Of the mad vulgar, that unthinking herd.

He lives above the crowd, nor hears the noise Of wars and triumphs, nor regards the shouts Of popular applause, that empty sound; Nor feels the flying arrows of Reproach, Or Spite or Envy. In himself secure, Wisdom his tower, and conscience is his shield, His peace all inward, and his joys his own.

He, though th' Atlantic and the Midland seas With adverse surges meet, and rise on high Suspended 'twixt the winds, then rush amain, Mingled with flames, upon his single head, And clouds, and stars, and thunder, firm he stands, Secure of his best life; unhurt, unmov'd; And drops his lower nature, born for death: Then from the lofty castle of his mind Sublime looks down, exulting, and surveys The ruins of creation (souls alone Are heirs of dying worlds); a piercing glance Shoots upwards from between his closing lids, To reach his birth-place, and without a sigh He bids his batter'd flesh lie gently down Amongst his native rubbish; whilst the spirit Breathes and flies upward, an undoubted guest Of the third Heaven, th' unruinable sky.

Oft has thy genius rous'd us hence With elevated song,

A puff of honour fills the mind,
And yellow dust is solid good;
Thus, like the ass of savage kind,
We snuff the breezes of the wind,
Or steal the serpent's food.
Could all the choirs
That charm the poles
But strike one doleful sound,
'Twould be employ'd to mourn our souls,
Souls that were fram'd of sprightly fires
In floods of folly drown'd.
Souls made of glory seek a brutal joy;

How they disclaim their heavenly birth,
Melt their bright substance down with drossy earth,
And hate to be refin'd from that impure alloy !

Eid us renounce this world of sense,
Bid us divide th' immortal prize
With the seraphic throng:
"Knowledge and love make spirits blest,
Knowledge their food, and love their rest;"
But Flesh, th' unmanageable beast,
Resists the pity of thine eyes,

And music of thy tongue.

Then let the worms of grovelling mind
Round the short joys of earthly kind

In restless windings roam;

The name of an angel in Milton's Paradise Lost.

Harts, or horses, strong and fleet,
Had they wings to help their feet,
Could not run it half way o'er
In ten thousand days and more.

Yet the silly wandering mind, Loth to be too much confin'd, Roves and takes her daily tours, Coasting round the narrow shores, Narrow shores of flesh and sense, Picking shells and pebbles thence: Or she sits at Fancy's door, Calling shapes and shadows to her, Foreign visits still receiving, And t' herself a stranger living. Never, never would she buy Indian dust, or Tyrian dye, Never trade abroad for more, If she saw her native store; If her inward worth were known, She might ever live alone.

THE ADVENTUROUS MUSE.

URANIA takes her morning flight
With an inimitable wing:

Through rising deluges of dawning light
She cleaves her wondrous way,

She tunes immortal anthems to the growing day;

1

Nor Rapin gives her rules to fly, nor Purcell 2

notes to sing.

She nor inquires, nor knows, nor fears [sand;
Where lie the pointed rocks, or where th' ingulfing
Climbing the liquid mountains of the skies,
She meets descending angels as she flies,

Nor asks them where their country lies,
Or where the sea-marks stand.
Touch'd with an empyreal ray,

She springs, unerring, upward to eternal day,
Spreads her white sails aloft, and steers,
With bold and safe attempt, to the celestial land.
Whilst little skiffs along the mortal shores

With humble toil in order creep,
Coasting in sight of one another's oars,

Nor venture through the boundless deep, Such low pretending souls are they Who dwell enclos'd in solid orbs of skull;

Plodding along their sober way,

The snail o'ertakes them in their wildest play, While the poor labourers sweat to be correctly dull.

Give me the chariot whose diviner wheels

Mark their own route, and unconfin'd
Bound o'er the everlasting bills,

[hind.

And lose the clouds below, and leave the stars beGive me the Muse whose generous force, Impatient of the reins,

Pursues an unattempted course,

Breaks all the critic's iron chains,
And bears to Paradise the raptur'd mind.

There Milton dwells. The mortal sung Themes not presum'd by mortal tongue; New terrours, or new glories, shine In every page, and flying scenes divine Surprise the wondering sense, and draw our souls

[along.

1 A French critic.

2 An English master of music.

Behold his Muse sent out t' explore The unapparent deep where waves of chaos roar, And realms of night unknown before. She trac'd a glorious path unknown, [thrown, Through fields of heavenly war, and seraphs overWhere his adventurous genius led:

Sovereign, she fram'd a model of her own,

Nor thank'd the living nor the dead. The noble hater of degenerate rhyme Shook off the chains, and built his verse sublime, A monument too high for coupled sounds to climb. He mourn'd the garden lost below;

(Earth is the scene for tuneful woe) Now bliss beats high in all his veins, Now the lost Eden he regains, [strains. Keeps his own air, and triumphs in unrival'd Immortal bard! Thus thy own Raphael sings,

And knows no rule but native fire:

All Heaven sits silent, while to his sovereign strings
He talks unutterable things;

With graces infinite his untaught fingers rove
Across the golden lyre:

From every note Devotion springs.
Rapture, and Harmony, and Love,
O'erspread the listening choir.

TO MR. NICHOLAS CLARK.

THE COMPLAINT.

'Twas in a vale where osiers grow,
By murmuring streams we told our woe,
And mingled all our cares:
Friendship sat pleas'd in both our eyes,
In both the weeping dews arise,
And drop alternate tears.

The vigorous monarch of the day,
Now mounting half his morning way,
Shone with a fainter bright;
Still sickening, and decaying still,
Dimly he wander'd up the hill
With his expiring light.

In dark eclipse his chariot roll'd, The queen of night obscur'd his gold Behind her sable wheels;

Nature grew sad to lose the day, The flowery vales in mourning lay, In mourning stood the bills.

"Such are our sorrows, Clark," I cried, "Clouds of the brain grow black, and hide Our darken'd souls behind; In the young morning of our years Distempering fogs have climb'd the spheres, And choke the labouring mind.

"Lo, the gay planet ears his head, And overlooks the lofty shade,

New-brightening all the skies: Bu say, dear partner of my moan, When will our long eclipse be gone, Or when our suns arise?

"In vain are potent herbs applied, Harmonious sounds in vain have tried To make the darkness fly: