Trembling and poor, I saw the light,
New waking from unconscious night :
Trembling and poor I still remain
To meet unconscious night again.
Time in my pathway strews few flowers,
To cheer or cheat the weary hours;
And those few strangers, dear indeed,
Are choked, are check'd, by many a weed.
THE Hebrew king, with spleen possest,
By David's harp was soothed to rest;
Yet, when the magic song was o'er,
The soft delusion charm'd no more:
The former fury fired the brain,
And every care return'd again.
But, had he known Eliza's skill
To bless the sense and bind the will,
To bid the gloom of care retire,
And fan the flame of fond desire,
Remembrance then had kept the strain,
And not a care return'd again.
THINK ye the joys that fill our early day,
Are the poor prelude to some full repast.
Think you they promise?—ah! believe they pay;
The purest ever, they are oft the last.
The jovial swain that yokes the morning team,
And all the verdure of the field enjoys,
See him, how languid! when the noontide beam
Plays on his brow, and all his force destroys.
So 'tis with us, when, love and pleasure fled,
We at the summit of our hill arrive :
Lo! the gay lights of Youth are past
are dead, But what still deepening clouds of Care survive!
O! SACRED gift of God to man,
A faith that looks above,
And sees the deep amazing plan
Of sanctifying love.
Thou dear and yet tremendous God,
Whose glory pride reviles;
How did'st thou change thy awful rod
To pard'ning grace and smiles!
Shut up with sin, with shame, below,
I trust, this bondage past,
A great, a glorious change to know,
And to be bless'd at last.
The verse is written, and the medicine made;
Shall thus a boaster, with his fourfold powers,
In triumph scorn this sacred art of ours?
Insulting quack! on thy sad business go,
And land the stranger on this world of woe.
Still I pass on, and now before me find
The restless ocean, emblem of my mind;
There wave on wave, here thought on thought succeeds, Their produce idle works, and idle weeds:
Dark is the prospect o'er the rolling sea,
But not more dark than my sad views to me;
Yet from the rising moon the light beams dance
In troubled splendour o'er the wide expanse;
So on my soul, whom cares and troubles fright,
The Muse pours comfort in a flood of light.
Shine out, fair flood! until the day-star flings
His brighter rays on all sublunar things.
Why in such haste? by all the powers of wit,
I have against thee neither bond nor writ;
If thou 'rt a poet, now indulge the flight
Of thy fine fancy in this dubious light;
Cold, gloom, and silence shall assist thy rhyme,
And all things meet to form the true sublime."
"Shall I, preserver deem'd around the place,
With abject rhymes a doctor's name disgrace?
Nor doctor solely, in the healing art
I'm all in all, and all in every part;
Wise Scotland's boast let that diploma be
Which gave me right to claim the golden fee:
Praise, then, I claim, to skilful surgeon due,
For mine th' advice and operation too;
And, fearing all the vile compounding tribe,
I make myself the med'cines I prescribe;
Mine, too, the chemic art; and not a drop
Goes to my patients from a vulgar shop.
But chief my fame and fortune I command
From the rare skill of this obstetric hand:
This our chaste dames and prudent wives allow,
With her who calls me from thy wonder now."
WRITTEN IN LONDON, FEBRUARY, 1780.
"THE clock struck one! we take no thought of Time," Wrapt up in night, and meditating rhyme :
All big with vision, we despise the powers
That vulgar beings link to days and hours;
Those vile, mechanic things, that rule our hearts,
And cut our lives in momentary parts.
"That speech of Time was Wisdom's gift," said Young: Ah, Doctor! better Time would hold his tongue : What serves the clock?" To warn the careless crew
How much in little space they have to do;
To bid the busy world resign their breath,
And beat each moment a soft call for death
To give it, then, a tongue, was wise in man.'
Support the assertion, Doctor, if you can :
It tells the ruffian when his comrades wait;
It calls the duns to crowd my hapless gate;
It tells my heart the paralysing tale,
Of hours to come, when Misery must prevail.
WRITTEN IN LONDON, FEBRUARY, 1780.
WHAT vulgar title thus salutes the eye,
The schoolboy's first attempt at poesy?
The long-worn theme of every humbler Muse,
For wits to scorn and nurses to peruse;
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