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MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

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!

A PHYSICIAN.

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

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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

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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,

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She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams.
Nor have the elements deserted yet

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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;

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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!

ON THE PLATONIC IDEA,

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

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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.

TO HIS FATHER.

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

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Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more)

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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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