HYMN TO ADVERSITY. DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless pow'r, Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour The bad affright, afflict the best! Bound in thy adamantine chain, The proud are taught to taste of pain, And purple tyrants vainly groan With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth Virtue, his darling child, design'd, To thee he gave the heav'nly birth, And bade thee form her infant mind. Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore With patience many a year she bore: What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know And from her own she learn'd to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless
Joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer Friend the flatt'ring Foe;
By vain Prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb array'd, Immersed in rapt'rous thought profound, And Melancholy, silent maid, With leaden eye, that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend: Warm Charity, the gen'ral friend, With Justice, to herself severe, And Pity, dropping soft the sadly pleasing tear.

O, gently on thy suppliant's head, Dread Goddess lay they chast'ning hand! Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, Nor circled with the vengeful band (As by the impious thou art seen) With thund'ring voice, and threat'ning mien,

With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

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

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.

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 mould'ring heap,

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

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

The swallow twitt'ring from the strawbuilt 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.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Pow'r,

And all that Beauty, all that Wealth e'er gave,

Await alike th' inevitable hour,

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,

If Mem❜ry o'er their tombs no trophies raise,

Now drooping, woful, wan, like one forlorn,

Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn, I miss'd him on th' accustom'd hill,

Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree;

Another came, nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne,

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,

Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH.

HERE rests his head upon the lap of Earth,

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown:

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.