Ponti profundis clausa recessibus,
Strepens procellis, rupibus obsita,
Quam grata defesso virentem
Skia sinum nebulosa pandis.
His cura, credo, sedibus exulat;
His blanda certe pax habitat locis:
Non ira, non moeror quietis
Insidias meditatur horis.
At non cavata rupe latescere,
Menti nec aegrae montibus aviis
Prodest vagari, nec frementes
E scopulo numerare fluctus
Humana virtus non sibi sufficit,
Datur nee aequum cuique animum sibi
Parare posse, ut Stoicorum
Secta crepet nimis alta fallax.
Exaestuantis pectoris impetum.
Rex summe, solus tu regis arbiter,
Mentisque, te tollente, surgunt,
Te recidunt moderante fluctus.
[Footnote: VARIOUS READINGS. Line 2. In the manuscript. Dr Johnson,
instead of rupibus obsita, had written imbribus uvida. and uvida
nubibus, but struck them both out. Lines 15 & 16. Instead of these two
lines, he had written, but afterwards struck out, the following:
Parare posse, utcunque jactet
Grandiloquus nimis alta Zeno.]
After supper, Dr Johnson told us, that Isaac Hawkins Browne drank
freely for thirty years, and that he wrote his poem, De Animi
Immortalitate, in some of the last of these years. I listened to this
with the eagerness of one, who, conscious of being himself fond of
wine, is glad to hear that a man of so much genius and good thinking
as Browne had the same propensity.