F When Heaven to all thy joys bestows, Where trampling Tyranny with Fate; Britannia watch!-remember peerless Rome, (Fame, virtue, courage, property, forgot) Be doom'd some death-dispensing tyrant's lot; TO HEALTH. WRITTEN ON A RECOVERY FROM THE SMALL-POX. O WHETHER with laborious clowns, Or in the temperate Brachman's cell; In Bath or in Montpellier's plains, Or the cold North, whose fur-clad swains O lovely queen of mirth and ease, Nature's kind nurse, to whom by gracious Heav'n, To aid a languid wretch repair, Drive to some lonely rock the giant Pain, And bind him howling with a triple chain! O come, restore my aching sight, How nearly had my spirit pass'd, Till stop'd by Metcalf's skilful hand, To Death's dark regions, wide and waste, And the black river's mournful strand; Or to those vales of joy and meadows bless'd, Where sages, heroes, patriots, poets rest: Where Maro and Musæus sit Listening to Milton's loftier song, And to the Briton gives his amaranthine crown. TO SUPERSTITION. HENCE to some Convent's gloomy aisles, Where cheerful daylight never smiles: Tyrant! from Albion haste, to slavish Rome; There by dim tapers' livid light, At the still solemn hours of night, In pensive musings walk o'er many a sounding tomb. Thy clanking chains, thy crimson steel, Thy venom'd darts, and barbarous wheel, Malignant fiend, bear from this isle away, Nor dare in error's fetters bind One active, freeborn, British mind; [sway. That strongly strives to spring indignant from thy Thou bad'st grim Moloch's frowning priest Snatch screaming infants from the breast, Regardless of the frantic mother's woes; Thou led'st the ruthless sons of Spain To wondering India's golden plain, From deluges of blood where tenfold harvests rose. But lo! how swiftly art thou fled, Thy daughter, trembling Fear, retire; So by the Magi hail'd from far, When Phoebus mounts his early car, The shrieking ghosts to their dark charnels flock; The full gorg'd wolves retreat; no more The prowling lionesses roar, [rock. But hasten with their prey to some deep-cavern'd Hail then, ye friends of Reason, hail! Ye foes to Mystery's odious veil, To Truth's high temple guide my steps aright, With Locke and Newton by their side, TO A GENTLEMAN, UPON HIS TRAVELS THROUGH ITALY. WHILE I with fond officious care, Perhaps you cull each valley's bloom; The shades of ancient bards repair, Or wander in the cooling shade Of Sabine bowers where Homer stray'd, |