O DE I. TO SLEEP. (Published in 1777.) On this my penfive pillow, gentle Sleep! Descend, in all thy downy plumage drest: Wipe with thy wing these eyes that wake to weep, And place thy crown of poppies on my breast. 5 O steep my senses in oblivion's balm, Yet ah! in vain, familiar with the gloom, V. 3. Wipe with thy wing these eyes] See Crafhaw's tranflation of Marino's Sofpetto d'Herode : Now had the night's companion from her den, Where all the bufy day the close doth lie, Nor would the dawning day my forrows charm: V. 14. Black midnight and the blaze of noon alike To me appear,-] Compare Samfon Agonifles, ver. 80: O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Without all hope of day. Death stands prepar'd, but ftill delays, to ftrike.] From Paradife Loft: And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delay'd to ftrike. xi. 491. Where it may be remarked by the way, that the very affecting circumftance which follows, -tho' oft invok'd With vows as their chief good and final hope, may poffibly have been fuggefted by Phineas Fletcher, Pray'rs there are idle, death is woo'd in vain; In midst of death poor wretches long to die. Purple Island, Cant. vi. St. 37. See alfo Sackville's figure of Remorfe in the Induction to the Mirror of Magiftrates: With dreadfull cheere and lookes throwne to the skie, O DE II. THE HAMLET. WRITTEN IN WHICHWOOD FOREST. (Published in 1777.) THE hinds how bleft, who ne'er beguil'd The Hamlet.] Mr. Headley remarks that the leading idea of this poem was fuggefted by an account of the life of a peasant in Ph. Fletcher's Purple Island, Cant. xii. of which the first six stanzas were certainly in Mr. Warton's eye: V. His certain life that never can deceive him Is full of thousand sweets and rich content: The fmooth-leav'd beeches in the field receive him His life is neither toft in boift'rous feas Of troublous world, nor loft in flothful eafe; His bed of wool yields fafe and quiet fleeps, While by his fide his faithful spouse hath place, His little fon into his bofom creeps, The lively picture of his father's face: Never his humble house or state torment him, Leffe he could like, if leffe his God had fent him, And, when he dies, green turfs with graffie tombe content him. The fame remark as to the resemblance of these poems is made in Headley's Ancient English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 140. where it is juftly called a moft exquifite little piece, and is faid to contain such a felection of beautiful rural images, as perhaps no other poem of equal length in our language prefents us with. Whichwood Foreft.] This foreft is of confiderable extent to Nor haunt the crowd, nor tempt the main, When morning's twilight-tinctur'd beam Strikes their low thatch with flanting gleam, They rove abroad in ether blue, To dip the scythe in fragrant dew; 5 wards the western fide of Oxfordshire, and at no great diftance from our poet's parish of Cuddington. The bounds of it, as Camden informs us on an authority earlier than his own, were once much wider. For King Richard the Third disforested a great part of Whichwood between Woodstock and Brightstow, which King Edward the Fourth had taken into the limits of that foreft. Britannia, vol. i. p. 294. ed. 1722. V. 5. morning's twilight-tinctur'd beam] An image beautiful and new. Raphael's wings in Par. Loft, v. 285. are "Skytinctur'd." V. 8. They rove abroad in ether blue, To dip the scythe in fragrant dew ;] In Mafon's Englifb Garden, ii. 184: Draw through the dew the fplendor of his feythe. Where, by the way, is an instance of that affected phraseology, so frequent and fo much to be regretted in a poet of undoubted genius. See also his very fine dramatic poem, Caractacus: Lift your boughs of vervain blue, Dipt in cold September dew. The above expreffion occurs in a very fine paffage in the Faerie For not to have been dipt in Lethe lake |