Nor boasts unjustly her superior powers;
Since, though to Painting’s free and ardent hand,
Is given to wake each form of fair and grand;
To rival Nature with her vivid hues;
To speak the language of the loftiest muse;
Yet, to a point of time her force restrain’d,
One fixed effect can only be attain’d
By the slow labour of revolving days,
Though Art consummate on the canvas blaze.
Thus triumphs Poesy;--yet Painting knows
A power more precious; on affection’s woes
To shed a softer, a more cheering ray,
Than beams from MASON’S, or from HAYLEY’S lay.
See lovely Susan on the sea-beach stands,
And stretches o’er the waves her trembling hands;
Upbraids the bounding ship, whose sails unfurl’d
Court the dread hazards of the wat’ry world;
While, ling’ring on the windy deck in vain,
William’s dear form gleams dimly o’er the main;--
Now distance veils him on the misty deep,
And slow she turns, to wander, and to weep.
What, ’mid these sorrows, may her tears beguile,
And wake on her pale lip the pensive smile?
O Painting! great Magician! thine the power
That gilds unhappy Susan’s gloomy hour;
Warm in thy tints, in thy expression bright,
Still charming William lives before her sight;
Distinct his speaking eye, his graceful brows,
And all himself the idol portrait glows.
Say, Poesy, can thy rich stores impart
Such precious balsam to the wounded heart?
What equal medicine boast thy mighty Nine,
Though strains Orphean warble from their shrine?
Since if the fair ideal forms we trace,
Rivals of life in colour, strength, and grace,
Yet, when emerging Genius charms our sight,
Free as it soars Aonia’s sacred height,
And our pleas’d thoughts the consciousness desire
Of features warm’d and beaming with its fire;
Features, which to our mortal eye unknown
Might to our mind by plastic art be shown,
’Tis then that Poesy, responseless found,
Frowns on her pen and throws it on the ground.
Though ne’er beheld the actual form he wears,
My spirit thus thy Hayley’s fame reveres;
Marks his dear Muse her charming strains extend,
And boasts the privilege to call him Friend.
But when in vain my grateful wishes sought
His living image in the stores of thought,
Thy pencil, ROMNEY, the desire supplies,
And bids me see the generous Bard I prize.
O! while in each bold lineament we find
Some emanation of his ardent mind,
See worth benign, and copious knowledge throw
Their mingled grace upon his pensive brow,
Still, glowing Artist, shall thy gift impart
Unsated pleasure to my conscious heart.
Dear is that gift as the soft, silver rain,
And breath Favonian, to the April plain,
As Memory’s voice recalling happy days,
As to my favour’d muse thy Hayley’s praise.
WRITTEN
IN THE
BLANK PAGE OF THE SORROWS OF WERTER.[66]
O thou, who turnest this impassioned leaf,
Where Anguish claims the sympathetic grief,
If no relentless prejudice can bind
In stagnant frost the mercy of thy mind;
If thou shalt guess how hard to inflict the smart
Of icy absence on the glowing heart,
When all that charm’d the sense, th’ affection won,
Dwells in that form, which prudence bids us shun;
That present, soothes each rankling woe to rest,
Departed, desolates the languid breast,
Then thou’lt lament, amidst thy virtuous blame,
The wretched victim of a baneful flame,
Where ill-starr’d Love its deadliest lightning shed
On the pale Suicide’s devoted head,
And woes, that would no holier thought allow,
Threw ghastly shadows on the bleeding brow.--
Still, as thou weep’st their unresisted powers,
The virtues of the lost-one’s happier hours
Shall o’er his fatal errors gently rise,
Live in thy heart, and consecrate thy sighs!
And for the soft compassion thou hast shown
For woes and frailties, to thy soul unknown,
For generous sympathy, which shines confest,
Eternal inmate of the noble breast,
Ne’er may embosom’d grief thine eye-lids dim,--
O! live to love, but not to mourn, like him!
WRITTEN
IN THE TITLE PAGE OF A VOLUME CONTAINING
MR JEPHSON’s TRAGEDIES.
Poetic Spirits, bend your ardent gaze
On this rich effluence of dramatic rays!
Than those alone less eminently bright,
That dart from Shakespear’s orb their solar light.
Fastidious Spleen, and canker’d Envy fly,
Nor thou! O mole-eyed Prejudice, be nigh!
Then, nervous Jephson, shall thy muse obtain
Applause, that opes the gate of Glory’s fane.
WRITTEN
IN A
DIMINUTIVE EDITION OF GRAY’S POEMS.
All to the lofty Ode that genius gives
Within these few and narrow pages lives;
The Theban’s strength, and more than Theban’s grace,
A lyric Universe in fairy space.
VERSES
WRITTEN IN THE BLANK LEAVES OF MR HAYLEY’S POEMS,
PRESENTED BY A. SEWARD, TO WM. GROVE, ESQ.
OF LICHFIELD, 1793.
If e’er just taste, and sympathy sincere,
Reader, thy breast illum’d, they kindle here,
Here, at the Sun of Genius, for it shines
And pours a flood of radiance through the lines.
But to perceive in what degree each theme
Draws life and beauty from the plastic beam;
To mark how deep its sacred force pervades,
Its lights how lustrous, and how soft its shades,
Demands a kindred Spirit, skill’d to pierce
The coyest labyrinths of Aonian verse;
And HAYLEY’S powers due praise can only gain
When Poets analyze his various strain;
Feel the extent of every just design,
And taste the flowing sweetness of the line;
The learn’d allusions mark, th’ inventive art,
The skill to energize and melt the heart;
Through all the imagery empower’d to trace
The strength impressive, and the winning grace;
Behold the gay satiric verse arise
From the rich source Benevolence supplies;
For with her lustre, flashing from the lyre,
Nor spleen, nor malice, mix their lightless fire;
Since, though the pomp of letter’d Insolence,
Cold-hearted Vanity, and nice Pretence,
Stript of their veil, the lucid rhyme displays,
Yet every virtue brightens in its rays.
Ingenious GROVE! thy own poetic vein,
Its classic elegance, its tuneful strain,
Are certain pledges, that to thee belong
Powers, to appreciate well the Poet’s song,
And competent to breathe the just acclaim,
Unerring harbinger of lasting fame.
WRITTEN
IN THE BLANK LEAF OF A SMALL POCKET EDITION OF
THOMSON’s SEASONS,
THE GIFT OF MISS NOTT, OF LICHFIELD.
The gilded volume, where to actual sight
The sculptor’s powers the poet’s scenes array,
And rival praise by rival grace excite,
Proves not to me a source of that delight,
These small unornamented leaves convey.
Since they present, in an unburden’d hand,
As my lone step o’er hill and valley strays,
To fancy’s eye, each trace of fair, or grand,
Of bright, or fading, solemn, wild, or bland,
The waxing, or the waning year displays.
Yes, little book! like Elfin sprites of old,
Thou to thy mistress shalt auspicious prove,
And while thy leaves exhaustless charms unfold,
More shall they please, since thee her eyes behold
A welcome present from a friend they love.
WITH
A LOCK OF THE AUTHOR’S HAIR,
TO
A GENTLEMAN WHO REQUESTED IT.
Not with the bright, yet dangerous rose of love,
By Florio’s hand, be this light lock enwove,
But with the lily, cull’d from Friendship’s bowers,
That hides no thorns beneath its snowy flowers.
ON
SEEING MR HAYLEY’S WORKS INVIDIOUSLY CRITICIZED
IN THE PUBLIC PRINTS OF THE YEAR 1783.
Rise, kindred dunces, from your drear abodes,
Where Folly nurs’d you, and where Envy goads!
Rise, till your growing numbers equal those
That hurl’d at POPE’S bright verse their murky prose!
So you, at length, may raise the tardy ire
By Wit and Genius arm’d with all their fire.
Rise! that another DUNCIAD soon may save
Your venom’d tribe from Lethe’s whelming wave,
And HAYLEY bear you through the walks of time,
Rendering your worthless names immortal as his rhyme!
VERSES
TO THE CELEBRATED PAINTER, MR WRIGHT, OF DERBY,
WRITTEN IN 1783.
Thou, in whose breast the gentle virtues shine,
Thou, at whose call th’ obsequious graces bow,
Fain would I, kneeling at the Muses’ shrine,
Gather the laurel for thy modest brow.
And should in vain my feeble arm extend,
In vain the meed these faltering lays demand,
Should, from my touch, the conscious laurel bend,
Like coy Mimosa, shrinking from the hand,[67]
Yet thy bright tablet, with unfading hues,
Shall beam on high in honour’s envied fane,
By him emblazon’d, whose immortal muse[68]
Adorn’d thy science with her earliest strain;
Brought every gem the mines of Knowledge hide,
Cull’d roseate spoils from Fancy’s flowery plains,
And with their mingled stores new bands supplied,
That bind the sister Arts in closer chains.
What living lights, ingenious Artist, stream,
In mingling mazes as thy pencil roves!
With orient hues in bright expansion beam,
Or bend the flowing curve that beauty loves!
Charm’d as we mark, beneath thy magic hand,[69]
What sweet repose surrounds the sombrous scene,
Where, fring’d with wood, yon moon-bright cliffs expand,
The curl’d waves twinkling as they wind between;
Start, as on high thy red Vesuvius glares,[70]
Through Earth and Ocean pours his sanguine light,
With billowy smoke obscures the rising stars,
Or darts his vollied lightnings through the night;
Sigh, where ’mid twilight shades, yon pile sublime,
In cumbrous ruin, nods o’er Virgil’s tomb,[71]
Where, nurs’d by thee, poetic ivies climb,
Fresh florets spring, and brighter laurels bloom;
Or weep for JULIA, in her sea-girt cave,[72]
Exil’d from love in beauty’s splendid morn,
Wild as she gazes on the boundless wave,
And sighs, in hopeless solitude, forlorn.
Now, ardent WRIGHT, from thy creative hand,
With outline bold, and mellowest colouring warm,
Rival of life, before the canvas stands
My Father’s lov’d and venerable form!
O! when his urn shall drink my falling tears,
Thy faithful tints shall shed a bless’d relief,
Glow with mild lustre through my darken’d years,
And gild the gathering shades of filial grief!
EPISTLE[73]
TO
WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.
’Tis past!--the shades of deprivation lour,
Numbing, with influence cold, the heavy hour.
Thy joys, O Friendship! fly ere well begun,
Like the mild shining of yon liquid sun
Through this short winter’s day:--and yet I hear
Haylean accents vibrate on my ear;
Still on that countenance I seem to gaze,
Whence mingled stream the intellectual rays.
But ah! the sweet ideal mockery flies,
Silence and vacancy around me rise!
Wrap my chill’d spirit in their icy vest,
And chace each dear illusion from my breast.
Haste, ye tir’d steeds, that o’er the miry way
To my lone home these listless limbs convey!
There Hayley’s mute resemblance still remains,
To sooth the absent friend’s regretful pains;
Yet well she knows that the repining sigh,
The tear, that dims the disappointed eye,
Shall prove how weak the pencil’s utmost art
To match the faithful tablet of the heart.
But when the form, there shrin’d, too oft survey’d,[74]
Beneath the ardent beam of Thought shall fade,
For the mark’d lines that Memory’s tints display
In contemplation’s fire will melt away,
Then, Romney, nor till then, my soul shall own[75]
Thy perfect skill, and each regret atone,
For more than mortal art no longer pine,
And cease to boast superior power to thine.
And now, illumined by the crystal rays,
Fair spires, again ye meet my wonted gaze!
Your forms majestic, in the fleecy skies,
As conscious of recorded honours, rise;
Shield for your Bards, and Chiefs, of former days,[76]
The warrior-laurel, and the classic bays.
Chiefs, o’er whose sunk, sepulchral, mossy stone,
The suns and storms of countless years have flown;
And they, of later times, who wing’d afar[77]
From your high towers, the volleying bolts of war.
For that fam’d Pair, in youth’s delightful spring,[78]
Pluming beneath your shade their eaglet wing,
What time, to fire each passion of the heart,
Ye saw young GARRICK form his matchless art,
Your stripling JOHNSON, build the lofty rhyme,
Or ruminate the moral thought sublime.
And late ye saw, at evening’s solemn hours,[79]
As sigh’d the winter-blast amid your towers,
Britain’s distinguish’d Bard beneath you stray,
And bend through your long aisles his musing way;
Observe the gleams, from your half-lighted choir,
Throw the long levell’d line of paly fire
High o’er the darksome arch, and awful spread
Ambiguous glimmer round his pensive head;
While the faint rays o’er distant objects wave,
That seem the sombre spectres of the grave.
O! will that honour’d Bard, in future time,
Remember her, who view’d the thought sublime,
Enthron’d majestic in his earnest eye,
Slow as the gloomy figures glided by?
With one kind sigh will his great soul repay
Pledg’d hours of letter’d joys his flight has borne away?[80]
And now again this roof, so lately blest,
Receives me musing on its transient guest.
Slow as my step, with joyless thought, I turn,
The known apartments seek, and entering mourn,
Instant each object to my sense recalls
The Friend, so widely wandering from these walls.
Though the mild sun, in this hybernal hour,
Turns his gold eye on yonder moss-grown tower,[81]
Yet the lone graces of the quiet scene,
The vale, still grassy, and the lake serene,
Distinct and clear present themselves in vain;
Dim, as the sailing cloud, surcharg’d with rain,
My swimming eyes have drawn the misty veil,
O’er sunny tower, blue lake, and grassy dale;
For through the walls a sullen silence reigns,
So late resounding with delightful strains;
Accents that Friendship’s hallow’d powers inspire,
Aonian lays, and more than attic fire.
And now the clamorous bell’s unwelcome peal
Calls me, reluctant, to the cheerless meal;
No bounding step along the hall I hear,
But turn my head, and hide the starting tear.
High-soul’d attachment, by thy powerful sway,
Of deep regrets how large a sum we pay
For joys, that triumph in their proud increase,
And rashly pass the level line of Peace![82]
TO
THE MEMORY
OF
LADY MILLAR.[83]
Not to your shades alone, ye martial Dead,
The scatter’d flow’rs of plaintive rhyme belong,
Tho’ Valour, marching round your grave, may shed
The richest seeds of elegiac song;
Tho’ Fame’s proud chissel o’er your trophied tomb
Hangs the bright falchion high, and bends the warrior-plume.
When Death with silent footstep prints the plain,
And spreads o’er female worth his sable pall,
Shall Poesy renounce the mournful train,
Shall her melodious tears refuse to fall,
Where Friendship’s sighs, where Love’s deep groans invite,
And Virtue calls aloud to aid the solemn rite?
Ye, who essay’d to weave the golden thread,
And gem with flow’rs the woof of high applause,
The pious veil o’er shroudless ANDRE spread,
O’er ANDRE, murder’d in his country’s cause;
Ye, who with foliage dun and plumage grey,
Rear’d high the sacred shade that wav’d o’er COOK’S Morai;
Ye Sister Nine, that weep departed worth,
Pour from your echoing strings the soothing lay,
Chaunt the slow requiem o’er this hallow’d earth,
That hides your LAURA’S life-deserted clay;
Hides the coldheart, which glow’d with all your fires,
The hand, that deck’d with wreaths your many-chorded lyres.
Oft have ye seen her, in her classic bow’rs,
Weave the rich myrtle round the early rose;
And grace with dearer joy the festive hours
Than vain parade, or idle mirth bestows;
While from her glance benign young Genius caught
Spirit to ope fresh mines of soul-exalting thought.
And sure, o’er polished circles to diffuse
The new ambition, virtuous and refin’d,
To the light Graces lead the loftier muse,
And their twin’d hands with rosy chaplets bind,
Not less deserves the meed of tuneful praise,
Than Valour his proud wreath, than Wit his deathless bays.
To her gay dome, that decks the breezy vale,
Enlighten’d Pleasure led a jocund crew,
And youths and virgins in the vernal gale,
With eager step to her chaste revel flew;
While to the inspiring God, that gilds the day,
Pure the devotion rose in many a glowing lay.
Propitious heard the Pow’r, and gaily beam’d,
Gilding the foliage of the verdant shrine;
And bending o’er her vase, fair LAURA seem’d
The smiling Priestess of the sacred Nine,
As her green wreath she wove, to grace the Bard,
Whose sweet superior song might claim the wish’d reward.
But now, disastrous change!--alas! no more
Her gentle looks, and dulcet voice invite
The willing train their festive songs to pour,
And wing the passing moments with delight;
O’er the lone vase, e’erwhile so gaily crown’d,
A dim hand draws the veil of sable lawn around;
And to her shade the mingled dirge of woe
Ascends from HARRINGTON’S harmonious hand;[84]
The plaintive sounds with varied sweetness flow,
And through the scenes that feel her loss expand;
His melting notes impress with magic art
Her recollected worth on ev’ry generous heart.
Benignant LAURA! to the Muses dear,
Thy virtuous mind with bright ambition glow’d,
To tune the lyre, the votive shrine to rear,
By Science hallow’d in their fair abode;
From sterling wit to clear each base alloy,
And fill with purest fires the crystal lamp of joy.
With high-soul’d pleasure, and ingenuous truth,
’Twas thine to nurse the hopes of young Renown;
’Twas thine to elevate the views of youth;
To look, with calm disdain, superior down
On Pride’s cold frown, and Fashion’s pointed leer;
On Envy’s serpent lie, and Folly’s apish sneer.
Wide through the murky shades, by Malice shed,
To shroud its blossoms, and its foliage blight,
With rising strength thy verdant altar spread,
And bards of loftiest spirit join’d its rite;
And with their oaken, and their laurel crown
Inwove thy myrtle buds, fair wreath of fair Renown!
Though all unknown to Fame its artless reed,
My trembling hand, at thy kind bidding, tried
To crop the blossoms of the uncultur’d mead,
The primrose pale, the briar’s blushing pride,
And on thy vase with true devotion laid
The tributary flow’rs--too soon, alas! to fade.
Safe through thy gentle ordeal’s lambent flame,
My Muse, aspiring, dar’d the fiercer blaze,[85]
Which judgment lights before the hill of fame,
With calm determin’d hand and searching gaze;
But for thy lib’ral praise, with awful dread,
Far from those burning bars my trembling feet had fled.
Clad in the fine Asbestos light attire,
By elegance inwove with nicest care,
Of pow’r to pass unhurt the public fire,
Where critic Wit bids all his beacons glare,
The sprightly WINFORD, at her LAURA’S fane,[86]
Pass’d through its milder flames, amid th’ applauding train.
The Nymph of Dronfield there with snowy hand,[87]
To gay Thalia swept the silver wires;
The frolic Muse attends her soft command,
And the free strain with many a charm inspires;
Long be it hers in lettered scenes to please,
By quick Invention’s fire, and Nature’s graceful ease.
Dear to the parent-source from whence I drew
The spark of life, and all that life endears,
Time-honour’d GRAVES! with duteous joy I view[88]
Thy hollies blushing through the snow of years;
Their wintry colours the chaste shrine adorn,
Vivid as Genius blends in life’s exulting morn.
Triumphant youth fann’d the poetic flame
Of noble FIELDING, whose energic soul
So early wing’d him up the steeps of Fame,
And gain’d, e’er manhood’s dawn, the distant goal;
Still in his lays the wounded breast shall find
A charm, that sooths to rest each Vulture of the mind.[89]
From woodland scenes, in Stamford’s flow’ry vale,[90]
With Learning, Peace, and Virtue, fond to dwell,
And ring his wild harp to the passing gale,
While DRYDEN’S spirit hover’d o’er the shell,
Invention led her musing son among
Sweet LAURA’S Delphic shades, that crown’d his mystic song.
And graceful JERNINGHAM benignly brought
His gentle Muse, of bigot rage the foe;[91]
And skill’d to blend the force of reasoning thought
With Sensibility’s enamour’d glow;
Skill’d o’er frail love to draw the sacred veil,[92]
Whose mournful texture floats on Fancy’s buoyant gale.
There tender WHALLEY struck his silver lyre[93]
To Love and Nature strung,--as mingled flows
With elegiac sweetness epic fire,
In the soft story of his Edwy’s woes;
Its beauteous page shall prompt, through distant years,
The thrill of generous joy, the tide of pitying tears.
Fir’d with the lofty strain of Grecian lore,
Whose light shone radiant on the morn of time,
The bard of Æschylus, in leisure hour,[94]
Breath’d through the grove the lyric song sublime,
And see! poetic Sympathy ordains
Health to the kindling soul from his inspiring strains.
ANSTEY himself would join the sportive band,
ANSTEY, enlivener of the serious earth!
At the light waving of whose magic wand,
New fountains rose, and flow with endless mirth;
Pouring on Fancy’s soul a glow as warm,
As Bath’s rich springs impart to Health’s reviving form.
Immortal Truth, for his salubrious song,
Pluck’d the unfading laurel from her fane;
Since oft, amid the laugh of Momus’ throng,
Wisdom has gravely smil’d, and prais’d the strain;
Pleas’d to behold the Fools of Fashion hit
By new, unrival’d shafts of ridicule and wit.
Bright glows the list with many an honour’d name,
Whom Taste in LAURA’S votive throng surveys;
But HAYLEY flashes in a type of flame,
Trac’d by a sun-beam the broad letters blaze!
Rapt Britain reads the long-recording fire,
Claps her triumphant hands, and bids her realms admire!
While check’d by gen’rous friendship’s modest frown,
That will not hear the praise it joys to give;
My fingers quit the chords of high renown,
On which his young, but deathless glories live;
Yet with these lays one grateful wish shall blend,
And on Devotion’s wing to list’ning Heaven ascend.
Through lengthen’d years that pass, and passing shine,
While Health and Joy on their bright moments wait,
May his pure mind, with all its warmth benign,
Set late and cloudless in the depths of fate;
Not early, like fair LAURA’S spirit, fly
From this dark earthly scene, to its congenial sky!
Stay the white radiance of thy silver car
O’er LAURA’S hallow’d turf, fair Queen of Night,
And from the orbit of thy herald-star,
Feed all its pensive flow’rs with dewy light!
For so her gentle spirit oft’ would shed
Soft Pity’s light and dews on Pain’s deserted head.
When Fashion o’er her threw the shining vest,
When Pleasure round her trill’d the Syren song,
The sighs of Pity swell’d her polish’d breast,
The tones of Mercy warbled from her tongue;
She bade the fires of classic lore pervade
With charity’s kind warmth, misfortune’s barren shade.[95]
Not in the wealth of Andes’ glitt’ring mines,
Not in the charms the zone of love bestows,
The female form so exquisitely shines,
Though Empire binds the circlet on her brows,
As when compassion sheds her lustre meek,
Swims in the moistened eye, and wets the glowing cheek.
O witness thou, so eminently good,
That in the regal robe, and beauty’s pride,
At Calais’ conquer’d gate, sweet smiling stood,
By thy victorious Edward’s awful side!
In martial ire War’s sable cloud he seem’d,
And thou the radiant bow, that o’er its darkness beam’d.
Boast of thy sex, and glory of the throne!
O’er all thy form what matchless graces spread,
When thy fair eyes in moist suffusion shone,
And from thy cheek the changing crimson fled,
As on the neck of Edward’s captive foes
To thy afflicted sight the opprobrious cord arose!
Oh! while the fair, with soul-subduing pow’r,
On her bent knee their forfeit lives implor’d;
When, like two stars seen through a rushing show’r,
Her watry eyes gaz’d earnest on her lord,
’Twas then thy virtues, loveliest queen, outshone
Thy Edward’s’ victor-plume, waving o’er Gallia’s throne!
Thus while with fervent zeal the auspicious Nine
O’er LAURA’S form the classic cestus threw,
Hung all their golden harps within her shrine,
And ting’d her wreaths with undecaying hue,
Yet, Charity, thy soft seraphic flame
A purer glory shed around her spotless name.
And harmonizing sweet with Friendship’s lyre
The grateful blessings of the poor shall blend,
And borne on angel-wings to Heaven’s full choir,
Sublime the breath of Gratitude ascend;
With strains more dulcet swell the aspiring gales,
Than rise from Pindus’ grove, than float in Thespian vales.
Nor yet that worth, which shunn’d the public view,
Wilt thou, O mournful muse! refuse to sing;
Each virtue rather to its shade pursue,
And stoop from shining heights thy trembling wing;
Teach the soft sex whence genuine transport flows,
Tell them, domestic joy the fullest bliss bestows.