He, with a hundred arts refined,

Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind : To him each rival shall submit,

Make but his riches equal to his wit.

Then shall thy form the marble grace,

15

(Thy Grecian form) and Chloe lend the face: 20 His house, embosom'd in the grove,

Sacred to social life and social love, Shall glitter o'er the pendent green,

Where Thames reflects the visionary scene: Thither the silver-sounding lyres

25

Desires;

Shall call the smiling Loves, and young There, every Grace and Muse shall throng,

Exalt the dance, or animate the song;

There youths and nymphs, in consort gay,

Shall hail the rising, close the parting day. 30 With me, alas! those joys are o'er ;

For me, the vernal garlands bloom no more. Adieu! fond hope of mutual fire,

The still-believing, still-renew'd desire; Adieu! the heart-expanding bowl,

And all the kind deceivers of the soul!

But why? ah tell me, ah too dear!

Steals down my cheek the involuntary tear? Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,

Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee? Thee, dress'd in fancy's airy beam,

Absent I follow through the extended dream; Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,

35

And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms;

Nocturnis te ego somniis

Jam captum teneo, jam volucrem sequor Te per gramina Martii

Campi, te per aquas, dure, volubiles.

And swiftly shoot along the Mall,

Or softly glide by the canal,

Now shown by Cynthia's silver ray,

And now on rolling waters snatch'd away.

55

LIBER IV.

ODE IX.

NE fortè credas interitura, quæ
Longè sonantem natus ad Aufidum
Non antè vulgatas per artes

Verba loquor socianda chordis.
Non, si priores Mæonius tenet
Sedes Homerus, Pindaricæ latent,
Ceæque, et Alcæi minaces,
Stesichorique graves Camœnæ :
Nec, si quid olim lusit Anacreon,
Delevit ætas: spirat adhuc amor,
Vivuntque commissi calores
Æoliæ fidibus puellæ.

Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi; sed omnes illacrymabiles
Urgentur ignotique longâ

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.

NOTES.

Ver. 8. Original--Stesichorique graves] The loss of the works of no two writers is perhaps more to be lamented than of Stesichorus and Menander. The former is thus characterized by Quintilian, 1. 10. "Stesichorus quam sit ingenio validus, materiæ quoque ostendunt, maxima bella et clarissimos duces canentem, et epici carminis onera Lyra sustinentem. Reddit enim personis in agendo simul loquendoque debitam dignitatem; ac si tenuisset modum, videtur æmulari proximus Homerum potuisse." Of the fragments of Menander, see a paper in the Adventurer, vol. iv. Warton.

PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE FOURTH

LEST

BOOK.

A FRAGMENT.

you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught on the wings of truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;

Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay---
Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Cæsar was, or Newton named;

Those raised new empires o'er the earth,

And these, new heavens and systems framed.

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.

5

10

In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.

15

NOTES.

Ver. 6. In Spenser] How much this author was his favourite from his early to his latter years, will appear from what he said to Mr. Spence, from whose Anecdotes I transcribe literally this passage: "There is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I read the Fairy Queen, when I was about twelve, with a vast deal of delight; and I think, it gave me as much when I read it over about a year or two ago."

Warton.