* * * * *
~Garrick’s Plays.~
No. XXII.
[From “Querer Por Solo Querer:” concluded from last Number.]
_Address to Solitude._
Sweet Solitude! still Mirth! that fear’st no wrong,
Because thou dost none: Morning all day long!
Truth’s sanctuary! Innocency’s spring!
Inventions Limbeck! Contemplation’s wing!
Peace of my soul, which I too late pursued;
That know’st not the world’s vain inquietude:
Where friends, the thieves of time, let us alone
Whole days, and a man’s hours are all his own.
_Song in praise of the Same._
Solitude, of friends the best,
And the best companion;
Mother of truths, and brought at least
Every day to bed of one:
In this flowery mansion
I contemplate how the rose
Stands upon thorns, how quickly goes
The dismaying jessamine:
Only the soul, which is divine,
No decay of beauty knows.
The World is Beauty’s Mirror. Flowers,
In their first virgin purity,
Flatt’rers both of the nose and eye.--
To be cropt by paramours
Is their best of destiny:
And those nice darlings of the land,
Which seem’d heav’n’s painted bow to scorn.
And bloom’d the envy of the morn,
Are the gay trophy of a hand.
_Unwilling to love again._
--sadly I do live in fear,
For, though I would not fair appear,
And though in truth I am not fair,
Haunted I am like those that are
And here, among these rustling leaves,
With which the wanton wind must play,
Inspired by it, my sense perceives
This snowy Jasmin whispering say,
How much more frolic, white, and fair
In her green lattice she doth stand,
To enjoy the free and cooler air,
Than in the prison of a hand.[229]
_Loving without hope._
I look’d if underneath the cope
Were one that loved, and did not hope;
But from his nobler soul remove
That _modern heresy in love_
When, hearing a shrill voice, I turn,
And lo! a sweet-tongued Nightingale,
Tender adorer of the Morn,--
In him I found that One and All.
For that same faithful bird and true,
Sweet and kind and constant lover,
Wond’rous passion did discover,
From the terrace of an eugh.
And tho’ ungrateful she appear’d
Unmoved with all she saw and heard;
Every day, before ’twas day,
More and kinder things he’d say,
Courteous, and never to be lost,
Return’d not with complaints, but praise
Loving, and all at his own cost;
Suffering, and without hope of ease:
For with a sad and trembling throat
He breathes into her breast this note:
“I love thee not, to make thee mine;
But love thee, ’cause thy form’s divine.”
_The True Absence in Love._
Zelidaura, star divine,
That do’st in highest orb of beauty shine;
Pardon’d Murd’ress, by that heart
Itself, which thou dost kill, and coveted smart
Though my walk so distant lies
From the sunshine of thine eyes;
Into sullen shadows hurl’d,
To lie here buried from the world
’Tis the least reason of my moan,
That so much earth is ’twixt us thrown.
’Tis absence of another kind,
Grieves me; for where you are present too,
Love’s Geometry does find,
I have ten thousand miles to you.
’Tis not absence to be far,
But to abhor is to absent;
To those who in disfavour are,
Sight itself is banishment.[230]
_To a Warrioress._
Heav’n, that created thee thus warlike, stole
Into a woman’s body a man’s soul.
But nature’s law in vain dost thou gainsay;
The woman’s valour lies another way.
The dress, the tear, the blush, the witching eye.
More witching tongue, are beauty’s armoury:
To railly; to discourse in companies,
Who’s fine, who courtly, who a wit, who wise;
And with the awing sweetness of a Dame,
As conscious of a face can tigers tame,
By tasks and circumstances to discover,
Amongst the best of Princes, the best Lover;
(The fruit of all those flowers) who serves with most
Self diffidence, who with the greatest boast;
Who twists an eye of Hope in braids of Fear;
Who silent (made for nothing but to bear
Sweet scorn and injuries of love) envies
Unto his tongue the treasure of his eyes:
Who, without vaunting shape, hath only wit;
Nor knows to hope reward, tho’ merit it:
Then, out of all, to make a choice so rare,
So lucky-wise, as if thou wert not fair.[231]
_All mischiefs reparable but a lost Love._
1.
A second Argo, freighted
With fear and avarice,
Between the sea and skies
Hath penetrated
To the new world, unworn
With the red footsteps of the snowy morn.
2.
Thirsty of mines;
She comes rich back; and (the curl’d rampire past
Of watry mountains, cast
Up by the winds)
Ungrateful shelf near home
Gives her usurped gold a silver home.
3.
A devout Pilgrim, who
To foreign temple bare
Good pattern, fervent prayer,
Spurr’d by a pious vow;
Measuring so large a space,
That earth lack’d regions for his plants[232] to trace.
4.
Joyful returns, tho’ poor:
And, just by his abode,
Falling into a road
Which laws did ill secure,
Sees plunder’d by a thief
(O happier man than I! for ’tis) his life.
5.
Conspicuous grows a Tree,
Which wanton did appear,
First fondling of the year.
With smiling bravery,
And in his blooming pride
The Lower House of Flowers did deride:
6.
When his silk robes and fair
(His youth’s embroidery,
The crownet of a spring,
Narcissus of the air)
Rough Boreas doth confound,
And with his trophies strews the scorned ground.
7.
Trusted to tedious hope
So many months the Corn;
Which now begins to turn
Into a golden crop:
The lusty grapes, (which plump
Are the last farewell of the summer’s pomp)
8.
How spacious spreads the vine!--
Nursed up with how much care,
She lives, she thrives, grows fair;
’Bout her loved Elm doth twine:--
Comes a cold cloud; and lays,
In one, the fabric of so many days.
9.
A silver River small
In sweet accents
His music vents,
(The warbling virginal,
To which the merry birds do sing--
Timed with stops of gold[233] the silver string);
10.
He steals by a greenwood
With fugitive feet;
Gay, jolly, sweet:
Comes me a troubled flood;
And scarcely one sand stays,
To be a witness of his golden days.--
11.
The Ship’s upweigh’d;
The Pilgrim made a Saint;
Next spring re-crowns the Plant;
Winds raise the Corn, was laid;
The Vine is pruned;
The Rivulet new tuned:--
But in the Ill I have
I’m left alive only to dig my grave.
12.
Lost Beauty, I will die,
But I will thee recover;
And that I die not instantly,
Shews me more perfect Lover:
For (my Soul gone before)
I live not now to live, but to deplore.