And (tho' the world may think th' ingredients odd) The love of virtue, and the fear of God!
Such friends prevent what else wou'd foon fucceed,
A temper ruftic as the life we lead,
And keep the polish of the manners clean,
As their's who bustle in the busiest scene,
For folitude, however some may rave,
Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave,
A fepulchre in which the living lie,
Where all good qualities grow fick and die.
I praise the * Frenchman, his remark was shrew'd-
How sweet, how passing sweet is folitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, folitude is sweet.
Yet neither these delights, nor aught beside
That appetite can ask, or wealth provide,
Can save us always from a tedious day,
Or fhine the dullness of still life away;
Divine communion carefully enjoy'd,
Or fought with energy, must fill the void.
Oh facred art, to which alone life owes
Its happiest seasons, and a peaceful close,
Scorn'd in a world, indebted to that scorn
For evils daily felt and hardly borne,
Not knowing thee, we reap with bleeding hands,
Flow'rs of rank odor upon thorny lands,
And while experience cautions us in vain,
Grafp feeming happiness, and find it pain.
Despondence, felf-deferted in her grief,
Loft by abandoning her own relief,
Murmuring and ungrateful discontent,
That scorns afflictions mercifully meant,
Those humours tart as wines upon the fret,
Which idleness and weariness beget,
These and a thousand plagues that haunt the breaft
Fond of the phantom of an earthly rest,
Divine communion chases as the day
Drives to their dens th' obedient beasts of prey. See Judah's promised king, bereft of all,
Driv'n out an exile from the face of Saul,
To distant caves the lonely wand'rer flies,
To seek that peace a tyrant's frown denies.
Hear the sweet accents of his tuneful voice,
Hear him o'erwhelm'd with forrow, yet rejoice,
No womanish or wailing grief has part,
No, not a moment, in his royal heart,
Tis manly music, such as martyrs make,
Suff'ring with gladness for a Saviour's sake;
His foul exults, hope animates his lays,
The sense of mercy kindles into praise,
And wilds familiar with the lion's roar,
Ring with extatic sounds unheard before;
'Tis love like his that can alone defeat
The foes of man, or make a desart sweet.
Religion does not cenfure or exclude
Unnumber'd pleasures harmlessly pursued.
To study culture, and with artful toil
To meliorate and tame the stubborn foil,
To give dissimilar yet fruitful lands
The grain or herb or plant that each demands,
To cherish virtue in an humble state,
And share the joys your bounty may create,
To mark the matchless workings of the pow'r
That shuts within its feed the future flow'r,
Bids these in elegance of form excell,
In colour these, and those delight the smell,
Sends nature forth, the daughter of the skies,
To dance on earth, and charm all human eyes;
To teach the canvass innocent deceit,
Or lay the landscape on the snowy sheet,
These, these are arts pursued without a crime,
That leave no stain upon the wing of time.
Me poetry (or rather notes that aim
Feebly and vainly at poetic fame)
Employs, shut out from more important views,
Fast by the banks of the flow-winding Ouse,
Content, if thus sequester'd I may raise
A monitor's, though not a poet's praise,
And while I teach an art too little known,
To close life wifely, may not waste my own.
EAS'NING at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
While meaner things whom instinct leads
Are rarely known to stray.
One filent eve I wander'd late,
And heard the voice of love,
The turtle thus address'd her mate,
And footh'd the lift'ning dove.
|