ON THE DEATH OF THE VICE-CHANCELLOR,
LEARN, ye nations of the earth, The condition of your birth; Now be taught your feeble state; Know, that all must yield to Fate!
If the mournful rover, Death, Say but once-"Resign your breath!" Vainly of escape you dream, You must pass the Stygian stream.
Could the stoutest overcome Death's assault, and baffle doom, Hercules had both withstood, Undiseased by Nessus' blood.
Ne'er had Hector pressed the plain By a trick of Pallas slain, Nor the chief to Jove allied By Achilles' phantom died. Could enchantments life prolong, Circe, saved by magic song, Still had lived, and equal skill Had preserved Medea still.
Dwelt in herbs and drugs a power To avert man's destined hour, Learn'd Machaon should have known Doubtless to avert his own:
Chiron had survived the smart Of the hydra-tainted dart, And Jove's bolt had been, with ease, Foiled by Asclepiades.
Thou too, sage! of whom forlorn Helicon and Cirrha mourn, Still hadst filled thy princely place, Regent of the gowned race;
Hadst advanced to higher fame Still thy much-ennobled name, Nor in Charon's skiff explored The Tartarean gulf abhorred.
But resentful Proserpine, Jealous of thy skill divine, Snapping short thy vital thread, Thee too numbered with the dead.
Wise and good! untroubled be The green turf that covers thee! Thence, in gay profusion, grow All the sweetest flowers that blow !
Pluto's consort bid thee rest!
acus pronounce thee blest, To her home thy shade consign, Make Elysium ever thine!
ON THE DEATH OF THE BISHOP OF ELY.
WRITTEN IN THE AUTHOR'S SEVENTEENTH YEAR.
My lids with grief were tumid yet, And still my sullied cheek was wet With briny tears, profusely shed For venerable Winton dead;
When Fame, whose tales of saddest sound,
Alas! are ever truest found,
The news through all our cities spread Of yet another mitred head By ruthless Fate to death consigned- Ely, the honour of his kind!
At once a storm of passion heaved My boiling bosom; much I grieved, But more I raged, at every breath
AH, how the human mind wearies herself With her own wanderings, and, involved in gloom Impenetrable, speculates amiss!
Measuring, in her folly, things divine
By human; laws inscribed on adamant
By laws of man's device, and counsels fixt
For ever by the hours that pass and die.
How? shall the face of Nature then be ploughed Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last On the great parent fix a sterile curse? Shall even she confess old age, and halt, And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows? Shall foul Antiquity with Rust, and Drought, And Famine, vex the radiant worlds above? Shall Time's unsated maw crave and ingulf The very heavens, that regulate his flight? And was the Sire of all able to fence
His works, and to uphold the circling worlds, But, through improvident and heedless haste, Let slip the occasion ?-so, then, all is lost- And in some future evil hour yon arch
Shall crumble and come thundering down, the poles Jar in collision, the Olympian king
Fall with his throne, and Pallas, holding forth The terrors of the Gorgon shield in vain, Shall rush to the abyss, like Vulcan hurled
Down into Lemnos, through the gate of heaven. Thou also, with precipitated wheels, Phoebus, thy own son's fall shalt imitate, With hideous ruin shalt impress the deep Suddenly, and the flood shall reek, and hiss, At the extinction of the lamp of day. Then too shall Hæmus, cloven to his base, Be shattered, and the huge Ceraunian hills, Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immersed In Erebus, shall fill himself with fear.
No. The Almighty Father surer laid His deep foundations, and, providing well For the event of all, the scales of fate Suspended in just equipoise, and bade His universal works, from age to age, One tenor hold, perpetual, undisturbed.
Hence the prime mover wheels itself about Continual, day by day, and with it bears In social measure swift the heavens around. Not tardier now is Saturn than of old, Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars. Phoebus, his vigour unimpaired, still shows The effulgence of his youth, nor needs the god A downward course, that he may warm the vales; But, ever rich in influence, runs his road, Sign after sign, through all the heavenly zone. Beautiful, as at first, ascends the star
From odoriferous Ind, whose office is
To gather home betimes the ethereal flock, To pour them o'er the skies again at eve, And to discriminate the night and day.
Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes and wanes Alternate, and, with arms extended still,
She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams. Nor have the elements deserted yet
Their functions: thunder, with as loud a stroke
As erst, smites through the rocks, and scatters them.
The East still howls, still the relentless North
Invades the shuddering Scythian, still he breathes The winter, and still rolls the storms along. The king of ocean, with his wonted force, Beats on Pelorus; o'er the deep is heard The hoarse alarm of Triton's sounding shell;
Nor swim the monsters of the Ægean sea In shallows, or beneath diminished waves. Thou, too, thy ancient vegetative power Enjoyest, O earth! Narcissus still is sweet; And, Phoebus! still thy favourite, and still Thy favourite Cytherea ! both retain Their beauty; nor the mountains, ore-enriched For punishment of man, with purer gold Teemed ever, or with brighter gems the deep. Thus in unbroken series all proceeds;
And shall, till wide involving either pole, And the immensity of yonder heaven, The final flames of destiny absorb
The world, consumed in one enormous pyre!
AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE,
YE sister powers, who o'er the sacred groves Preside, and thou, fair mother of them all, Mnemosyne! and thou who, in thy grot Immense, reclined at leisure, hast in charge The archives, and the ordinances of Jove, And dost record the festivals of heaven, Eternity!-inform us who is He, That great original by nature chosen To be the archetype of human kind, Unchangeable, immortal, with the poles Themselves coeval, one, yet everywhere, An image of the god who gave him being? Twin-brother of the goddess born from Jove, He dwells not in his father's mind, but, though Of common nature with ourselves, exists
Apart, and occupies a local home.
Whether, companion of the stars, he spend
Eternal ages, roaming at his will
On the moon's side that nearest neighbours earth;
From sphere to sphere the tenfold heavens; or dwell
Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit
Among the multitude of souls ordained
To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance)
That vast and giant model of our kind In some far distant region of this globe Sequestered stalk, with lifted head on high O'ertowering Atlas, on whose shoulders rest The stars, terrific even to the gods.
Never the Theban seer, whose blindness proved
His best illumination, him beheld In secret vision: never him the son
Of Pleione, amid the noiseless night
Descending, to the prophet-choir revealed; Him never knew the Assyrian priest, who yet The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,
And Belus, and Osiris far-renowned;
Nor even thrice great Hermes, although skilled So deep in mystery, to the worshippers Of Isis showed a prodigy like him.
And thou, who hast immortalised the shades
Of Academus,-if the schools received
This monster of the fancy first from thee,- Either recall at once the banished bards To thy republic, or, thyself evinced
A wilder fabulist, go also forth.
OH that Pieria's spring would through my breast Pour its inspiring influence, and rush
No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable father's sake
All meaner themes renounced, my muse, on wings Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain. For thee, my father! howsoe'er it please,
She frames this slender work; nor know I aught That may thy gifts more suitably requite; Though to requite them suitably would ask Returns much nobler, and surpassing far The meagre stores of verbal gratitude : But, such as I possess, I send thee all. This page presents thee in their full amount
With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought; Nought, save the riches that from airy dream
In secret grottoes, and in laurel bowers,
I have, by golden Clio's gift, acquired.
Verse is a work divine; despise not thou
Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more)
Man's heavenly source, and which, retaining still Some scintillations of Promethean fire,
Bespeaks him animated from above.
The gods love verse; the infernal powers themselves Confess the influence of verse, which stirs The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains Of adamant both Pluto and the Shades. In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale Tremulous Sibyl, make the future known;
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