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Ah me! too well that gait I know,

My youth's first friend, my manhood's woe!
Its breast it bares! what! ftain'd with blood?
Quick let me ftanch the vital flood.
O 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' Ausonian fhore,
Sweet' Dorian Moschus trill'd of yore:
No time should cancel thy defert,

More, more, than "Bion was, thou wert.
IX.

O goddess of the tearful eye,

The never-ceafing stream supply.

Let us with Retirement go

To charnels, and the house of woe,

O'er Friendship's herse low-drooping mourn,

Where the fickly tapers burn,

Where Death and nun-clad Sorrow dwell,

And nightly ring the folemn knell.

1 See Idyll.

Alluding to the death of a friend.

The

The gloom difpels, the charnel smiles,
Light flashes through the vaulted iles.
Blow filky foft, thou western gale,
O goddess of the defart, hail!

She burfts from yon 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,
Her eyes roll wild, a stride her pace;
Her left a magic mirror holds,
In which the oft herself beholds.

O goddess of the defart, hail!

And fofter blow, thou western gale!

Since in each scheme of life I've fail'd, And disappointment seems entail'd;

Since all on earth I valued most,

My guide, my stay, my friend is loft;

You, only you, can make me bleft,

And hush the tempeft in my breast.

Then gently deign to guide my
Το your hermit-trodden feat,

feet

R 3

Where

Where I may live at laft my own,
Where I at laft may die unknown.

I fpoke, fhe twin'd her magic ray,'
And thus she said, or feem'd to say:
Youth, you're mistaken, 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 streamlet flow,
There pale Inaction pines his life away,
And, fatiate, curfes 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 laft farewell;

'Tis impious.

God never made an independent man,
'Twould jar 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 feraph, fire.

Should

Should man through Nature folitary roam,
His will his fovereign, every where his home,
What force would guard him from the lion's jaw?
What swiftness wing him from the panther's paw?
Or fhould Fate lead him to fome safer shore,
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.

Though Nature's works the ruling mind declare,
And well deserve enquiry's ferious care,
The God (whate'er Mifanthropy may fay)

Shines, beams in man with most unclouded ray.
What boots it thee to fly from pole to pole,

Hang o'er the fun, and with the planets roll?

What boots through space's furtheft bourns to roam, If thou, O man, a ftranger art at home?

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Then know thyself, the human mind furvey,
The ufe, the pleasure will the toil repay.

Hence Inspiration plans his manner'd lays,

Hence Homer's crown, and, Shakespear, hence thy bays.

Hence he, the pride of Athens, and the shame,

The beft and wifest 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, fhould in practice fhine.
Say, does the learned Lord of Hagley's fhade,
Charm man fo much by moffy fountains laid,
As when arouz'd, he stems Corruption's course,
And shakes the fenate with a Tully's force?
When Freedom gasp'd beneath a Cæsar's feet,
Then public Virtue might to shades retreat;
But where the breathes, the least may useful be,
And Freedom, Britain, ftill belongs to thee.
Though man's ungrateful, or though Fortune frown;
Is the reward of worth a fong, or crown?

Nor yet unrecompens'd are Virtue's pains,
Good Allen lives, and bounteous Brunswick reigns.
On each condition difappointments wait,

Enter the hut, and force the guarded gate.

Nor

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