398

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

Yet life still lingers in thee, and puts forth
Proof not contemptible of what she can,
Even where death predominates. The spring
Finds thee not less alive to her sweet force,
Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood,
So much thy juniors, who their birth received
Half a millennium since the date of thine.

But since, although well qualified by age
To teach, no spirit dwells in thee, nor voice
May be expected from thee, seated here
On thy distorted root, with hearers none,
Or prompter, save the scene, I will perform
Myself the oracle, and will discourse
In my own ear such matter as I may.

One man alone, the father of us all,

rew not his life from woman; never gazed,
With mute unconsciousness of what he saw,
On all around him; learned not by degrees,
Nor owed articulation to his ear;
But, moulded by his Maker into man
At once, upstood intelligent, surveyed
All creatures, with precision understood
Their purport, uses, properties, assigned
To each his name significant, and filled
With love and wisdom, rendered back to Heaven
In praise harmonious the first air he drew.
He was excused the penalties of dull
Minority. No tutor charged his hand

With the thought-tracing quill, or tasked his mind
With problems. History, not wanted yet,

Leaned on her elbow, watching Time, whose course,
Eventful, should supply her with a theme.

WHICH THE AUTHOR HEARD SING ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1792.

WHENCE is it, that amazed I hear
From yonder withered spray,

This foremost morn of all the year,

The melody of May?

And why, since thousands would be proud

Of such a favour shown,

Am I selected from the crowd

To witness it alone?

Sing'st thou, sweet Philomel, to me,

For that I also long

Have practised in the groves like thee,

Though not like thee in song?

Or sing'st thou rather under force
Of some divine command,
Commissioned to presage a course
Of happier days at hand?

Thrice welcome then! for many a long
And joyless year have I,

As thou to-day, put forth my song
Beneath a wintry sky.

But Thee no wintry skies can harm,
Who only need'st to sing,
To make even January charm,
And every season Spring.

LINES

WRITTEN FOR INSERTION IN A COLLECTION OF HANDWRITINGS AND SIGNATURES MADE BY MISS PATTY, SISTER OF HANNAH MORE

March 6, 1792.

IN vain to live from age to age

While modern bards endeavour,
I write my name in Patty's page,
And gain my point for ever.

W. COWPER.

EPITAPH

ON A FREE BUT TAME REDBREAST, A FAVOURITE OF MISS SALLY HURDIS.

March 1792.

THESE are not dew-drops, these are tears,

And tears by Sally shed

For absent Robin, who she fears

With too much cause, is dead.

One morn he came not to her hand
As he was wont to come,

And, on her finger perched, to stand
Picking his breakfast-crumb.

Alarmed she called him, and perplext
She sought him, but in vain;
That day he came not, nor the next,
Nor ever came again.

She therefore raised him here a tomb,
Though where he fell, or how,
None knows, so secret was his doom,
Nor where he moulders now.

Had half a score of coxcombs died,
In social Robin's stead,

Poor Sally's tears had soon been dried,
Or haply never shed.

But Bob was neither rudely bold
Nor spiritlessly tame,

Nor was, like theirs, his bosom cold,
But always in a flame.

SONNET TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, ESQ.
April 16, 1792.

THY Country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,
Hears thee by cruel men and impious called
Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose the enthralled
From exile, public sale, and slavery's chain.
Friend of the poor, the wronged, the fetter-galled,
Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain.

Thou hast achieved a part; hast gained the ear
Of Britain's senate to thy glorious cause;

Hope smiles, joy springs, and though cold caution pause
And weave delay, the better hour is near
That shall remunerate thy toils severe

By peace for Afric, fenced with British laws.
Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love
From all the just on earth, and all the blest above.

EPIGRAM.

(PRINTED IN THE NORTHAMPTON MERCURY.)

To purify their wine some people bleed
A lamb into the barrel, and succeed;
No nostrum, planters say, is half so good
To make fine sugar, as a negro's blood.
Now lambs and negroes both are harmless things,
And thence perhaps this wondrous virtue springs.
'Tis in the blood of innocence alone-
Good cause why planters never try their own.

TO DR. AUSTIN, OF CECIL STREET, LONDON.

AUSTIN. accept a grateful verse from me,
The poet's treasure, no inglorious fee.
Loved by the Muses, thy ingenuous mind
Pleasing requital in my verse may find;
Verse oft has dashed the scythe of Time aside,
Immortalising names which else had died.
And oh, could I command the glittering wealth
With which sick kings are glad to purchase health;

Yet, if extensive fame, and sure to live,
Were in the power of verse like mine to give,
I would not recompense his art with less,
Who, giving Mary health, heals my distress.

Friend of my friend! I love thee, though unknown,
And boldly call thee, being his, my own.

SONNET ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.
June 2, 1792.

HAYLEY, thy tenderness fraternal shown
In our first interview, delightful guest!
To Mary and me for her dear sake distressed,
Such as it is has made my heart thy own,

Though heedless now of new engagements grown ;
For threescore winters make a wintry breast,
And I had purposed ne'er to go in quest
Of Friendship more, except with God alone.
But thou hast won me; nor is God my foe,
Who, ere this last afflictive scene began,
Sent thee to mitigate the dreadful blow,
My brother, by whose sympathy I know
Thy true deserts infallibly to scan,

Not more to admire the bard than love the man.

MARY AND JOHN.

IF John marries Mary, and Mary alone,

'Tis a very good match between Mary and John.

Should John wed a score, oh, the claws and the scratches!
It can't be a match :-'tis a bundle of matches.

TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

DEAR President, whose art sublime
Gives perpetuity to time,

And bids transactions of a day,

That fleeting hours would waft away

To dark futurity, survive,

And in unfading beauty live,-
You cannot with a grace decline

A special mandate of the Nine,

Yourself, whatever task you choose,
So much indebted to the Muse.

Thus say the sisterhood :-We come ;
Fix well your pallet on your thumb,
Prepare the pencil and the tints,

1 Hayley,

402

LETTERS ON LITERATURE.

We come to furnish you with hints.
French disappointment, British glory,
Must be the subject of the story.

First strike a curve, a graceful bow,
Then slope it to a point below;
Your outline easy, airy, light,
Filled up becomes a paper kite.
Let independence, sanguiue, horrid,
Blaze like a meteor in the forehead:
Beneath (but lay aside your graces)
Draw six-and-twenty rueful faces,
Each with a staring, steadfast eye,
Fixed on his great and good ally.
France flies the kite-'tis on the wing-
Britannia's lightning cuts the string.
The wind that raised it, ere it ceases,
Just rends it into thirteen pieces,
Takes charge of every fluttering sheet,
And lays them all at George's feet.
Iberia, trembling from afar,
Renounces the confederate war;
Her efforts and her arts o'ercome,
France calls her shattered navies home;
Repenting Holland learns to mourn
The sacred treaties she has torn ;
Astonishment and awe profound
Are stamped upon the nations round;
Without one friend, above all foes,
Britannia gives the world repose.

ON THE

AUTHOR OF LETTERS ON LITERATURE.1

THE genius of the Augustan age

His head among Rome's ruins reared,
And bursting with heroic rage,

When literary Heron appeared,

Thou hast, he cried, like him of old
Who set the Ephesian dome on fir

By being scandalously bold,

Attained the mark of thy desire.

And for traducing Virgil's name

Shalt share his merited reward;

A perpetuity of fame,

That rots, and stinks, and is abhorred.

1 Nominally by Robert Heron, but written by John Pinkerton. 8vo. 1785.