Purer every fountain flows
Stronger every wilding grows.
Let those toil for gold who please,
Or for fame renounce their ease,
What is fame an empty bubble.
Gold? a tranfient, fhining trouble.
Let them for their country bleed,
What was Sidney's, Raleigh's meed?
Man's not worth a moment's pain,
Bafe, ungrateful, fickle, vain.
Then let me, fequefter'd fair,
To your Sibyl grot repair,
On yon hanging cliff it ftands
Scoop'd by Nature's falvage hands,
Bofom'd in the gloomy shade
Of cypress not with age decay'd.
Where the owl ftill-hooting fits,
Where the bat inceffant flits,
There in loftier strains I'll fing
Whence the changing feafons fpring,
Tell how ftorms deform the skies,
Whence the waves fubfide and rise,
Trace the comet's blazing tail,
Weigh the planets in a scale;
Bend, great God, before thy fhrine,
The bournlefs macrocofm's thine.
Save me! what's yon fhrouded fhade?
That wanders in the dark-brown glade.
It beckons me! —vain fears adieu,
Mysterious ghoft, I follow you.
Ah me! too well that gait I know,
My youth's first friend, my manhood's woe!
Its breaft it bares! what! ftain'd with blood?
Quick let me ftanch the vital flood.
Oh fpirit, whither art thou flown?
Why left me comfortless alone?
O Solitude on me bestow,
The heart-felt harmony of woe,
Such, fuch, as on th' Aufonian shore,
Sweet Dorian Mofchus trill'd of
*
No time fhould cancel thy defert,
More, more, than † Bion was, thou wert.
IX.
O goddess of the tearful eye,
The never-ceafing ftream fupply.
Let us with Retirement go
To charnels, and the house of woe,
O'er Friendship's herfe low-drooping mourn,
Where the fickly tapers burn,
Where Death and nun-clad Sorrow dwell,
And nightly ring the folemn knell.
+Alluding to the death of a friend.
The gloom difpels, the charnel fmiles,
Light flashes thro' the vaulted iles.
Blow filky foft, thou western gale,
O goddess of the defart, hail!
She burfts from you cliff-riven cave,
Infulted by the wintry wave;
Her brow an ivy garland binds,
Her treffes wanton with the winds,
A lion's fpoils, without a zone,
Around her limbs are careless thrown;
Her right hand wields a knotted mace,
roll wild, a ftride her pace;
Her left a magic mirror holds,
In which the oft herself beholds.
O goddess of the defart, hail!
And fofter blow, thou weftern gale!
Since in each scheme of life I've fail'd,
And disappointment seems entail'd;
Since all on earth I valued moft,
My guide, my stay, my friend is loft;
You, only you, can make me blest,
And hufh the tempeft in my breast.
Then gently deign to guide my feet
Το your hermit-trodden feat,
Where I may live at last my own,
Where I at last may die unknown.
I fpoke, fhe twin'd her magic ray,
And thus fhe faid, or feem'd to say.
Youth, you're miftaken, if you think to find
In fhades a medicine for a troubled mind;
Wan Grief will haunt you wherefoe'er you go,
Sigh in the breeze, and in the ftreamlet flow.
There pale Inaction pines his life away,
And, fatiate, curses the return of day :
There naked Frenzy laughing wild with pain,
Or bares the blade, or plunges in the main :
There Superftition broods o'er all her fears,
And yells of dæmons in the Zephyr hears.
But if a hermit you're refolv'd to dwell,
And bid to focial life a last farewel;
'Tis impious.
God never made an independent man,
'Twould jarr the concord of his general plan:
See every part of that ftupendous whole,
"Whose body Nature is, and God the foul;"
To one great end, the general good, confpire,
From matter, brute, to man, to seraph, fire.
Should man thro' Nature solitary roam,
His will his fovereign, every where his home,
What force wou'd guard him from the lion's jaw?
What swiftness wing him from the panther's paw
Or fhould Fate lead him to fome fafer fhore,
Where panthers never prowl, nor lions roar;
Where liberal Nature all her charms bestows,
Suns fhine, birds fing, flowers bloom, and water flows,
Fool, doft thou think he'd revel on the store,
Abfolve the care of Heaven, nor ask for more?
Tho' waters flow'd, flow'rs bloom'd, and Phoebus fhone,
He'd figh, he'd murmur that he was alone.
For know, the Maker on the human breaft
A fenfe of kindred, country, man, impreft;
And focial life to better, aid, adorn,
With proper faculties each mortal's born.
Tho' Nature's works the ruling mind declare,
And well deferve enquiry's ferious care,
The God (whate'er Mifanthropy may fay)
Shines, beams in man with moft unclouded ray.
What boots it thee to fly from pole to pole?
Hang o'er the fun, and with the planets roll?
What boots thro' space's furtheft bourns to roam ?
If thou, O man, a ftranger art at home.
Then know thyfelf, the human mind survey,
The use, the pleasure will the toil repay.
Hence Infpiration plans his manner'd lays,
Hence Homer's crown, and Shakespear hence thy bays. Hence he, the pride of Athens and the shame,
The best and wifeft of mankind became.
Nor study only, practise what you know,
Your life, your knowledge, to mankind you owe.
With Plato's olive wreath the bays entwine;
Those who in study, fhou'd in practice shine.
Say, does the learned Lord of Hagley's fhade,
Charm man fo much by moffy fountains laid,
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