TO A FRIEND, ON SOME SLIGHT OCCASION ESTRANGED FROM HIM. HEALTH to my friend, and many a cheerful day! Ere wintry doubt its tender warmth destroy! Life is that stranger land, that alien clime : Shall kindred souls forego their social claim? Launch'd in the vast abyss of space and time, Shall dark suspicion quench the generous flame? Myriads of souls, that knew one parent mould, See sadly sever'd by the laws of Chance! Myriads, in Time's perennial list enroll❜d, Forbid by Fate to change one transient glance ! But we have met-where ills of every form, Where passions rage, and hurricanes descend; Say, shall we nurse the rage, assist the storm, And guide them to the bosom-of a friend? Yes, we have met-through rapine, fraud, and wrong: Might our joint aid the paths of peace explore! Why leave thy friend amid the boisterous throng, Ere death divide us, and we part no more? For, oh! pale Sickness warns thy friend away; And point the wither'd regions of the tomb. Then the keen anguish from thine eye shall start, Sad as thou follow'st my untimely bier; • Fool that I was-if friends so soon must part,To let suspicion intermix a fear.' DECLINING AN INVITATION то VISIT FOREIGN TO INTIMATE COUNTRIES, HE TAKES OCCASION TO LORD TEMPLE. WHILE others, lost to friendship, lost to love, In vain he boasts of his detested prize; See its fresh vigour in a moment fade! The' exotic folly knows its native clime, An aukward stranger, if we waft it o'er : Why then these toils, this costly waste of time, To spread soft poison on our happy shore? I covet not the pride of foreign looms: In search of foreign modes I scorn to rove; Or form these limbs with pliant ease to play; 'Tis long since Freedom fled the' Hesperian clime, Her citron groves, her flower-embroider'd shore; She saw the British oak aspire sublime, And soft Campania's olive charms no more. Let the proud Soldan wound the' Arcadian groves, The cinnamon. No crescent here displays its baneful horns; Presumptuous War, which could thy life destroy, * Written about the time of Captain Grenville's death, IN MEMORY OF A PRIVATE FAMILY,* IN WORCESTERSHIRE. FROM a lone tower with reverend ivy crown'd, So droop'd, I ween, each Briton's breast of old, 'Our hope, (they cried) our kind support, is dead! "Twas good Palemon!-Near a shaded pool, A group of ancient elms umbrageous rose; The flocking rooks, by Instinct's native rule, This peaceful scene for their asylum chose. A few small spires, to gothic fancy fair, Amid the shades emerging, struck the view; "Twas here his youth respir'd its earliest air; 'Twas here his age breath'd out its last adieu. One favour'd son engag'd his tenderest care; One pious youth his whole affection crown'd; In his young breast the virtues sprung so fair, Such charms display'd,such sweets diffus'd around. But whilst gay transport in his face appears, A noxious vapour clogs the poison'd sky, Blasts the fair crop-the sire is drown'd in tears, And, scarce surviving, sees his Cynthio die! *The Penns of Harborough ; a place whose name in the Saxon language alludes to an army: and there is a tradition that there was a battle fought on the Downs adjoining, betwixt the Britons and the Romans. |