That oft we owe our safety to a skill

We could not teach, and must despair to learn.
But learn we might, if not too proud to stoop
To quadruped instructors, many a good
And useful quality, and virtue too,
Rarely exemplified among ourselves.
Attachment never to be weaned, or changed
By any change of fortune; proof alike
Against unkindness, absence, and neglect;
Fidelity, that neither bribe nor threat
Can move or warp; and gratitude for small
And trivial favours, lasting as the life,

And glistening even in the dying eye.

Man praises man. Desert in arts or arms
Wins public honour; and ten thousand sit
Patiently present at a sacred song,
Commemoration-mad; content to hear
(Oh wonderful effect of music's power!)
Messiah's eulogy for Handel's sake.

But less, methinks, than sacrilege might serve-
(For was it less, what heathen would have dared
To strip Jove's statue of his oaken wreath,
And hang it up in honour of a man?)

Much less might serve, when all that we design
Is but to gratify an itching ear,

And give the day to a musician's praise. Remember Handel? Who, that was not born

Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets,

Or can, the more than Homer of his age?
Yes we remember him; and while we praise
A talent so divine, remember too

That His most holy book, from whom it came,
Was never meant, was never used before,
To buckram out the memory of a man.
But hush!-the muse perhaps is too severe;
And with a gravity beyond the size

And measure of the offence, rebukes a deed
Less impious than absurd, and owing more
To want of judgment than to wrong design.
So in the chapel of old Ely House,

When wandering Charles, who meant to be the third,
Had fled from William, and the news was fresh,
The simple clerk, but loyal, did announce,

And eke did rear right merrily, two staves,
Sung to the praise and glory of King George!
Man praises man; and Garrick's memory next,
When time hath somewhat mellowed it, and made
The idol of our worship while he lived
The God of our idolatry once more,

Shall have its altar; and the world shall go
In pilgrimage to bow before his shrine.
The theatre too small shall suffocate

Its squeezed contents, and more than it admits
Shall sigh at their exclusion, and return

Ungratified. For there some noble lord

Shall stuff his shoulders with king Richard's bunch,
Or wrap himself in Hamlet's inky cloak,

And strut, and storm, and straddle, stamp and stare,
To show the world how Garrick did not act,
For Garrick was a worshipper himself;

He drew the liturgy, and framed the rites
And solemn ceremonial of the day,

And called the world to worship on the banks
Of Avon, famed in song. Ah, pleasant proof
"That piety has still in human hearts

Some place, a spark or two not yet extinct.

The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths;
The mulberry-tree stood centre of the dance;

The mulberry-tree was hymned with dulcet airs;
And from his touchwood trunk the mulberry-tree
Supplied such relics as devotion holds

Still sacred, and preserves with pious care.
So 'twas an hallowed time: decorum reigned,
And mirth without offence. No few returned,
Doubtless, much edified, and all refreshed.
-Man praises man. The rabble all alive
From tippling benches, cellars, stalls, and styes,
Swarm in the streets. The statesman of the day,
A pompous and slow-moving pageant, comes.
Some shout him, and some hang upon his car,
To gaze in's eyes, and bless him. Maidens wave

Their 'kerchiefs, and old women weep for joy:

While others, not so satisfied, unhorse

The gilded equipage, and turning loose
His steeds, usurp a place they well deserve.

Why? what has charmed them? Hath he saved the state?

No. Doth he purpose its salvation? No.
Enchanting novelty, that moon at full,
That finds out every crevice of the head,
That is not sound and perfect, hath in their's
Wrought this disturbance. But the wane is near,
And his own cattle must suffice him soon.

Thus idly do we waste the breath of praise,
And dedicate a tribute, in its use

And just direction sacred, to a thing

Doomed to the dust, or lodged already there.
Encomium in old time was poet's work;
But poets having lavishly long since
Exhausted all materials of the art,

The task now falls into the public hand;
And I, contented with an humbler theme,
Have poured my stream of panegyric down
The vale of nature, where it creeps, and winds
Among her lovely works with a secure
And unambitious course, reflecting clear,
If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes.
And I am recompensed, and deem the toils

Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine

May stand between an animal and woe,

And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.

The groans of nature in this nether world, Which Heaven has heard for ages, have an end. Foretold by prophets, and by poets sung, Whose fire was kindled at the prophets' lamp, The time of rest, the promised sabbath, comes. Six thousand years of sorrow have well-nigh Fulfilled their tardy and disastrous course Over a sinful world; and what remains Of this tempestuous state of human things Is merely as the working of a sea

Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest :

For He, whose car the winds are, and the clouds.
The dust, that waits upon his sultry march,
When sin hath moved him, and his wrath is hot,
Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love;
And what his storms have blasted and defaced
For man's revolt shall with a smile repair.

Sweet is the harp of prophecy; too sweet
Not to be wronged by a mere mortal touch:
Nor can the wonders it records be sung
To meaner music and not suffer loss.
But when a pcet, or when one like me,
Happy to rove among poetic flowers,