tears.”

Richly paint the vernal year :

HYMN TO ADVERSITY. Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless pow'r, This can unlock the gates of Joy;

Thou tamer of the human breast, Of Horror that, and thrilling fears,

Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic The bad affright, afflict the best!

Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,

And purple tyrants vainly groan
Nor second he, that rode sublime

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,

alone. The secrets of th' abyss to spy. He pass'd the flaming bounds of place When first thy sire to send on earth and time :

Virtue, his darling child, design’d, The living throne, the sapphire- To thee he gave the heav'nly birth, blaze,

And bade thee form her infant mind. Where angels tremble, while they Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore gaze,

With patience many a year she bore : He saw; but, blasted with excess of What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know light,

And from her own she learn'd to melt Closed his eyes in endless night.

at others' woe. Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly Wide o'er the field of Glory bear Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood, Two coursers of ethereal race,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless With necks in thunder clothed, and Joy, long-resounding pace.

And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go

The summer Friend the flatt'ring Foe;
Hark, his hands the lyre explore !
Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er,

By vain Prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are Scatters from her pictured urn

again believed. Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

Wisdom in sable garb array’d, But ah! 'tis heard no more

Immersed in rapt'rous thought profound, Oh! lyre divine, what daring spirit And Melancholy, silent maid, Wakes thee now? Though he in- With leaden eye, that loves the ground, herit

Still on thy solemn steps attend: Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, Warm Charity, the gen’ral friend,

That the Theban eagle bear, With Justice, to herself severe, Sailing with supreme dominion

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly pleas Through the azure deep of air :

ing tear. Yet oft before his infant eyes would

O, gently on thy suppliant's head, Such forms as glitter in the Muse's Dread Goddess lay they chastning hand! ray

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, With orient hues, unborrow'd of the Nor circled with the vengeful band Sun:

(As by the impious thou art seen) Yet shall he mount, and keep his dis- With thund'ring voice, and threatning

mien, Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Beneath the good how far ! — but far Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly above the great.

Poverty.

run

tant way

And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.

Of such, as wand'ring near her secret

bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew

tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a moul

d'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,
More hideous than their queen;
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every lab'ring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo, Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow consuming Age.

To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their

fate
Since Sorrow never comes too late,
And Happiness too swiftly flies;
Thought would destroy their Paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

The breezy call of incense-breathing

Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-

built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing

horn, No more shall rouse them from their

lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth

shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her ev'ning care :
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to

share.

me.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUN

broke : TRY CHURCHYARD.

How jocund did they drive their team

afield! The curfew tolls the knell of parting How bow'd the woods beneath their day,

sturdy stroke! The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea,

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, The ploughman homeward plods his

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; weary way,

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful And leaves the world to darkness and to

smile

The short and simple annals of the poor. Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,

The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Pow'r, Save where the beetle wheels his dron- And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e'er ing flight,

gave, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant Await alike th' inevitable hour, folds;

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the tower,

fault, The moping owl does to the moon com- If Mem’ry o'er their tombs no trophies piain

raise,

Where through the long drawn aisle, Forbade to wade through slaughter to and fretted vault,

a throne, The pealing anthem swells the note of And shut the gates of mercy on manpraise.

kind; Can storied urn, or animated bust, The struggling pangs of conscious truth Back to its mansion call the fleeting to hide, breath?

To quench the blushes of ingenuous Can Honor's voice provoke the silent

shame, dust,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride Or Flatt'ry sooth the dull cold ear of With incense kindled at the Muse's death?

flame. Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble Some heart once pregnant with celestial

strife fire;

Their sober wishes never learn'd to Hands, that the rod of empire might

stray;
have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstacy the living lyre.

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their

way.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample
page,

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to proRich with the spoils of time, did ne'er

tect, unroll;

Some frail memorial still erected nigh, Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless And froze the genial current of the soul.

sculpture deck's,

Implores the pleasing tribute of a sigh. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean

Their names, their years, spelt by th' bear;

unletter'd Muse, Full many a flow'r is born to blush up

The place of fame and elegy supply; seen,

And many a holy text around she strews, And waste its sweetness on the desert

That teach the rustic moralist to die. air.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast

This pleasing anxious being e'er reThe little tyrant of his fields withstood;

sign'd, Some mute inglorious Milton here may

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful

day, rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's

Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look be

hind? blood. Th’applause of list ning senates to com- On some fond breast the parting soul mand,

relies, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, Some pious drops the closing eye reTo scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, quires; And read their hist’ry in a nation's eyes,

Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature

cries, Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires

alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes For thee, who, mindful of th' unhon confin'd;

or'd dead,

THE EPITAPH.

On a rock, whose haughty brow HERE rests his head upon the lap of Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming Earth,

flood, A youth to Fortune and to Fame un- Robed in the sable garb of woe, known:

With haggard eyes the poet stood; Fair Science frown'd not on his humble (Loose his beard, and hoary hair birth,

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. air)