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And earth a second Eden shows,
Where'er the healing water flows:
But ah, if from the dykes and drains
Of sensual nature's feverish veins,
Lust, like a lawless headstrong flood,
Impregnated with ooze and mud,
Descending fast on every side,
Once mingles with the sacred tide,
Farewell the soul-enlivening scene!
The banks that wore a smiling green,
With rank defilement overspread,
Bewail their flowery beauties dead.
The stream polluted, dark, and dull,
Diffused into a Stygian pool,
Through life's last melancholy years
Is fed with overflowing tears:
Complaints supply the zephyr's part,
And sighs that heave a breaking heart.

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A POETICAL EPISTLE TO LADY AUSTEN.

DEAR ANNA-between friend and friend
Prose answers every common end ;
Serves, in a plain and homely way,
Το express the occurrence of the day;

Our health, the weather, and the news;
What walks we take, what books we choose;
And all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind.

*

But when a poet takes the pen,
Far more alive than other men,
He feels a gentle tingling come
Down to his finger and his thumb,
Derived from nature's noblest part,
The centre of a glowing heart:

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And this is what the world, who knows
No flights above the pitch of prose,
His more sublime vagaries slighting,
Denominates an itch for writing.
No wonder I, who scribble rhyme
To catch the triflers of the time,
And tell them truths divine and clear,

B'

Which, couch'd in prose, they will not hear; Who labour hard to allure and draw

The loiterers I never saw,

Should feel that itching and that tingling,
With all my purpose intermingling,
Το your intrinsic merit true,

When call'd to address myself to you.

Mysterious are His ways whose power

Brings forth that unexpected hour,
When minds, that never met before,
Shall meet, unite, and part no more:
It is the allotment of the skies,
The hand of the Supremely Wise,
That guides and governs our affections,
And plans and orders our connexions:
Directs us in our distant road,

And marks the bounds of our abode.

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Thus we were settled when you found us,
Peasants and children all around us,
Not dreaming of so dear a friend,
Deep in the abyss of Silver-End.*
Thus Martha, e'en against her will,
Perch'd on the top of yonder hill;
And you, though you must needs prefer
The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre,†
Are come from distant Loire, to choose
A cottage on the banks of Ouse.
This page of Providence quite new,
And now just opening to our view,
Employs our present thoughts and pains
To guess and spell what it contains :
But day by day, and year by year,
Will make the dark enigma clear;
And furnish us, perhaps, at last,
Like other scenes already past,
With proof, that we, and our affairs,
Are part of a Jehovah's cares;
For God unfolds by slow degrees
The purport of his deep decrees;
Sheds every hour a clearer light
In aid of our defective sight;

And spreads, at length, before the soul,

A beautiful and perfect whole,

* An obscure part of Olney, adjoining to the residence of

Cowper, which faced the market-place.

+ Lady Austen's residence in France.

Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate in vain.

Say, Anna, had you never known
The beauties of a rose full blown,
Could you, though luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud, descry,
Or guess, with a prophetic power,
The future splendour of the flower?
Just so the Omnipotent, who turns
The system of a world's concerns,
From mere minutiæ can educe
Events of most important use;
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.

The works of man tend, one and all,

As needs they must, from great to small;

And vanity absorbs at length

The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan
Which this day's incident began?
Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion
For our dim-sighted observation;
It pass'd unnoticed, as the bird
That cleaves the yielding air unheard,
And yet may prove, when understood,
A harbinger of endless good.

Not that I deem, or mean to call
Friendship a blessing cheap or small:
But merely to remark, that ours,

Like some of nature's sweetest flowers,

Rose from a seed of tiny size,

That seem'd to promise no such prize;
A transient visit intervening,

And made almost without a meaning,
(Hardly the effect of inclination,
Much less of pleasing expectation,)
Produced a friendship, then begun,
That has cemented us in one;
And placed it in our power to prove,
By long fidelity and love,

That Solomon has wisely spoken;
"A threefold cord is not soon broken."

Dec. 1781.

THE COLUBRIAD.

CLOSE by the threshold of a door nail'd fast
Three kittens sat, each kitten look'd aghast.
I, passing swift and inattentive by,

At the three kittens cast a careless eye;

Not much concern'd to know what they did there; Not deeming kittens worth a poet's care.

But presently a loud and furious hiss

Caused me to stop, and to exclaim, "What's this?"
When lo! upon the threshold met my view,
With head erect, and eyes of fiery hue,

A viper, long as Count de Grasse's queue."
Forth from his head his forked tongue he throws,
Darting it full against a kitten's nose;

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