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.

O fteep my fenfes in oblivion's balm,

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And footh my throbbing pulse with lenient hand; This tempeft of my boiling blood becalm!— Defpair grows mild at thy fupreme command.

Yet ah! in vain, familiar with the gloom,
And fadly toiling through the tedious night, 10
I feek fweet flumber, while that virgin bloom,
For ever hovering, haunts my wretched fight.

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,
With her foft wing wip'd from the brows of men
Day's fweat. St. 49. p. 46. edit. Philips.

Nor would the dawning day my forrows charm:
Black midnight and the blaze of noon alike
To me appear, while with uplifted arm
Death ftands prepar'd, but still delays, to strike. 16

V. 14. Black midnight and the blaze of noon alike

To me appear,-]

Compare Samfon Agonistes, ver. 80:

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day.

Death ftands 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 fkie,

Wifbing for death, and yet she could not die. St. 33.

O DE II.

THE HAMLET.

WRITTEN IN WHICHWOOD FOREST.

(Published in 1777.)

THE hinds how bleft, who ne'er beguil'd
To quit their hamlet's hawthorn wild;

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 fix ftanzas were certainly in Mr. Warton's eye:

V.

His certain life that never can deceive him

Is full of thoufand fweets and rich content:

The fmooth-leav'd beeches in the field receive him
With cooleft fhades, till noontide rage is spent:
His life is neither toft in boift'rous feas

Of troublous world, nor loft in flothful eafe;
Pleas'd and full bleft he lives when he his God can please.
VI.

His bed of wool yields fafe and quiet fleeps,'

While by his fide his faithful fpoufe 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 fuch 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,
For fplendid care, and guilty gain!

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;

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wards the western fide of Oxfordshire, and at no great distance 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 an Brightstow, which King Edward the Fourth had taken into the 1.mits 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 Pa. Loft, v. 285. are "Skytinatur'd."

V. 8. They rove abroad in ether blue,

To dip the fcythe in fragrant dew ;]

In Mafon's English Garden, ii. 184:

Draw through the dew the fplendor of his fcythe..

Where, by the way, is an inftance of that affected phraseology, fo frequent and fo much to be regretted in a poet of undoubted genius. See alfo 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
Queene, to which I cannot at present refer:

For not to have been dipt in Lethe lake
Could fave the fon of Thetis from to die:
But that blind bard did him immortal make
With verfes dipt in dew of Caftalie.

The fheaf to bind, the beech to fell,
That nodding fhades a craggy dell.

Midft gloomy glades, in warbles clear,
Wild nature's sweetest notes they hear :
On green untrodden banks they view
The hyacinth's neglected hue:

In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds, 16
They spy the squirrel's airy bounds:
And startle from her afhen fpray,

Across the glen, the fcreaming jay:
Each native charm their steps explore
Of Solitude's fequefter'd store.,

For them the moon with cloudlefs ray Mounts, to illume their homeward way: Their weary fpirits to relieve,

The meadows incenfe breathe at eve.

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But Achilles was dipt in Stygian lake. Young in his Love of Fame fays very sweetly of two beautiful young women in tears,

Like blushing rofe-buds, dipt in morning dew. Sat. v.

V. 11. Midft gloomy glades,] I have been inclined to attribute our poet's alliterative propenfity to his fondnefs for Spenfer. We may trace him in the prefent inftance in the Faerie Queene, II.

vii. 3.

At last he came unto a gloomy glade.

V. 24. The meadows incenfe breathe at eve.] Mr. Headley refers to Gray and Milton, by whom the fame circumftance is ap plied with equal propriety to the morning: