Can life, can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be fold? No-all that's worth a wifh-a thought, Fair virtue gives unbrib'd, unbought. Ceafe then on trash thy hopes to bind, Let nobler views engage thy mind. With Science tread the wondrous way, Or learn the Mufes' moral lay; In focial hours indulge thy foul,
Where mirth and temperance mix the bowl; To virtuous love refign thy breast, And be by bleffing beauty-bleft.
Thus taste the feast by nature spread, Ere youth and all its joys are fled; Come taste with me the balm of life, Secure from pomp, and wealth, and strife. I boast whate'er for man was meant, In health, and Stella, and content ; And scorn, Oh! let that scorn be thine! Mere things of clay, that dig the mine.
HE fhades defcend, and midnight o'er the world
Expands her fable wings. Great nature droops Thro' all her works. Now happy he whofe toil Has o'er his languid powerless limbs diffus'd A pleafing laffitude: He not in vain
Invokes the gentle deity of dreams: His powers the moft voluptuously diffolve In foft repofe: On him the balmy dews Of fleep with double nutriment defcend. But would you fweetly wafte the blank of night In deep oblivion; or on fancy's wings Vifit the paradife of happy dreams, And waken cheerful as the lively morn; Opprefs not nature finking down to rest
With feafts too late, too folid or too full. But be the firft concoction half-matur'd, Ere you to nightly indolence refign Your paffive faculties.
Learn temperance, friend; and hear without difdain The choice of water. Thus the * Coan fage
Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of ev'ry school. What least of foreign principles partakes
Is beft: The lightest then; what bears the touch Of fire the leaft, and fooneft mounts in air: The moft infipid; the most void of fmell. Such the wide mountain from his horrid fides Pours down; fuch waters in the fandy vale For ever boil, alike of winter frofts
And fummer's heat fecure. The lucid stream, O'er rocks refounding, or for many a mile Hurl'd down the pebbly channel, wholesome yields And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws, And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Nothing like fimple element dilutes The food, or gives the chyle fo foon to flow. But where the ftomach, indolently given, Toys with its duty, animate with wine Th' infipid stream: Tho' golden Ceres yields A more voluptuous, a more fprightly draught; Perhaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and all The gluey floods that from the vex'd abyss Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught, And furious with intoxicating fire, Retard concoction, and preferve unthaw'd Th' embodied mass.
ON THE MUTABILITY OF ALL THINGS IN NATURE.
WHAT does not fade? the tower that long had
The crufh of thunder, and the warring winds, Shook by the flow but fure deftroyer time, Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base. And flinty pyramids, and walls of brafs, Defcend; the Babylonian fpires are funk ; Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down. Time shakes the ftable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rufh by their own weight. This huge rotundity we tread grows
And all thofe worlds that roll around the fun ; The fun himself shall die; and ancient night Again involve the defolate abyss:
Till the great FATHER thro' the lifeless gloom Exends his arm to light another world, And bid new planets roll by other laws. For thro' the regions of unbounded fpace, Where unconfin'd Omnipotence has room, BEING, in various fyftems fluctuates ftill Between creation and abhorr'd decay; It ever did; perhaps and ever will. New worlds are ftill emerging from the deep; The old defcending, in their turns to rife.
ON A HAIL-STORM IN APRIL.
FRAUGHT with a tranfient, frozen-shower,
If a cloud fhould haply lower,
Sailing o'er the landscape dark, Mute on a fudden is the lark ; But when gleams the fun again O'er the pearl-besprinkled plain,
And from behind his watery veil Looks through the thin defcending hail; She mounts, and leffening to the fight, Salutes the blythe return of light,
And high her tuneful tract pursues Mid th' dim rainbows scatter'd hues.
ON THE USES OF THE DIFFERENT SEASONS, AND OF THE WINDS.
HE feasons all, harmonious as they roll,
With genial heat; to bid its moisture flow Thro' the fine fibres of the shooting plant Slow rais'd; to call thy fair affemblage forth, Triumphant beauty! daughter of the dawn! Queen of the rofy-fmiling mead! to fwell To full luxuriance thy gay-broider'd train, What time from laughing Ceres, o'er the field Loofe drops the yellow fheaf; or when thy wing All-radiant on th' autumnal gale afcends, To pour rich juices thro' the fertile earth; That nature in her robe of living green, Deck'd like a bridegroom for his nuptial hour, All-breathing balm, may hail thy lov'd return.
Loft were this fair harmonious round, that wakes The foul to joy; loft were the vivid bloom Of health that mantles on the cheek of youth In smiles: the herbage of the field would shrink Livid and lank, should conftant fummer scorch
« ÎnapoiContinuă » |