THE PRAISE OF PINDAR.

IN IMITATION OF HORACE'S SECOND ODE, B. IV. Pindarum quisquis studet æmulari, &c.

PINDAR is imitable by none;

pours along;

The ocean meets with such a voice, From his enlarged mouth, as drowns the ocean's noise.

So Pindar does new words and figures roll
Down his impetuous dithyrambic tide,

Which in no channel deigns t'abide,
Which neither banks nor dykes control:
Whether th' immortal gods he sings,
In a no less immortal strain,

Or the great acts of god-descended kings,
Who in his numbers still survive and reign;
Each rich-embroider'd line,
Which their triumphant brows around,

By his sacred hand is bound,
Does all their starry diadems outshine.
Whether at Pisa's race he please
To carve in polish'd verse the conqueror's images;
Whether the swift, the skilful, or the strong,
Be crowned in his nimble, artful, vigorous song;
Whether some brave young man's untimely fate,
In words worth dying for, he celebrate-

Such mournful, and such pleasing words, As joy to his mother's and his mistress' grief af.

fords

He bids him live and grow in fame; Among the stars he sticks his name; The grave can but the dross of him devour, So small is Death's, so great the poet's power! Lo, how th' obsequious wind and swelling air The Theban swan does upwards bear Into the walks of clouds, where he does play, And with extended wings opens his liquid way! Whilst, alas! my timorous Muse Unambitious tracts pursues; Does with weak, unballast wings, About the mossy brooks and springs, About the trees' new-blossom'd heads, About the gardens' painted beds, About the fields and flowery meads, And all inferior beauteous things, Like the laborious bee,

For little drops of honey flee,

And there with humble sweets contents her in,

dustry.

THE RESURRECTION.

Nor winds to voyagers at sea,
Nor showers to earth, more necessary be,
(Heaven's vital seed cast on the womb of Earth
To give the fruitful Year a birth)
Than Verse to Virtue; which can do
The midwife's office and the nurse's too;
It feeds it strongly, and it clothes it gay,
And, when it dies, with comely pride

Embalms it, and erects a pyramid
That never will decay

Till Heaven itself shall melt away,
And nought behind it stay.

Begin the song, and strike the living lyre;

And neither sink too low nor soar too high ?

What could he who follow'd claim, But of vain boldness the unhappy fame,

And by his fall a sea to name?

VOL. VII.

well-fitted quire,

All hand in hand do decently advance,

:

And to my song with smooth and equal mea

sures dance!

K

Whom thunder's dismal noise,

And all that prophets and apostles louder spake,
And all the creatures' plain conspiring voice,

Could not, whilst they liv'd, awake,
This nightier sound shall make

When dead t' arise;

And open tombs, and open eyes,

To the long sluggards of five thousand years! This mightier sound shall make its hearers ears. Then shall the scatter'd atoms crowding come Back to their ancient home;

Some from birds, from fishes some;

Some from earth, and some from seas;
Some from beasts, and some from trees;
Some descend from clouds on high,
Some from metals upwards fly,

And, where th' attending soul naked and shiver

ing stands,

Meet, salute, and join their hands;

As dispers'd søldiers, at the trumpet's call,
Haste to their colours all.

Unhappy most, like tortur'd men,
Their joints new set, to be new-rack'd again,
To mountains they for shelter pray,

The mountains shake, and run about no less con

But fly

With an unwearied wing the other way on high,
Where Fates among the stars do grow;
There into the close nests of Time dost peep,
And there, with piercing eye,

Through the firm shell and the thick white, dost

spy

Years to come a-forming lie,

Close in their sacred fecundine asleep,

Till hatch'd by the Sun's vital heat,

Which o'er them yet does brooding set,
They life and motion get,

And, ripe at last, with vigorous might

Break through the shell, and take their everlast

ing flight!

And sure we may

The same too of the present say,

If past and future times do thee obey.

Thou stop'st this current, and dost make
This running river settle like a lake;
Thy certain hand holds fast this slippery snake:

The fruit which does so quickly waste,
Men scarce can see it, much less taste,

Thou comfitest in sweets to make it last.
This shining piece of ice,
Which melts so soon away
With the Sun's ray,

Thy verse does solidate and crystallize,
"Till it a lasting mirror be!
Nay, thy immortal rhyme
Makes this one short point of time
To fill up half the orb of round eternity.

TO MR. HOBBES.

VAST bodies of philosophy

I oft have seen and read;
But all are bodies dead,
Or bodies by art fashioned;

I never yet the living soul could see,
But in thy books and thee!

'Tis only God can know

Whether the fair idea thou dost show
Agree entirely with his own or no.

This 1 dare boldly tell,

'Tis so like truth, 'twill serve our turn as well.
Just, as in Nature, thy proportions be,
As full of concord their variety,

As firm the parts upon their centre rest,
And all so solid are, that they, at least
As much as Nature, emptiness detest.

Long did the mighty Stagyrite retain
The universal intellectual reign,
Saw his own country's short-liv'd leopard slain;
The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly,
Oftener renew'd his age, and saw that die.
Mecca itself, in spite of Mahomet, possest,
And, chac'd by a wild deluge from the East,
His monarchy new planted in the West.
But, as in time each great imperial race
Degenerates, and gives some new one place:

So did this noble empire waste,

Sunk by degrees from glories past,

And in the school-men's hands it per.sh'd quite at

Then, when they 're sure to lose the combat by't.
Nor can the snow, which now cold Age does shed

Upon thy reverend head,
Quench or allay the noble fires within;
But all which thou hast been,

And all that youth can be thou 'rt yet!
So fully still dost thou

Enjoy the manhood and the bloom of Wit,
And all the natural heat, but not the fever too!
So contraries on Etna's top conspire;
Here boary frosts, and by them breaks out fire!
A secure peace the faithful neighbours keep;
Th' embolden'd snow next to the flame does sleep!

And if we weigh, like thee,
Nature and causes, we shall see
That thus it needs must be-

To things immortal, Time can do no wrong,
And that which never is to die, for ever must be

young.

Then nought but words it grew, And those all barbarous too:

[last:

Spent and out-worn, return no harvest now;
In barren age wild and unglorious lie,

And boast of past fertility,

The poor relief of present poverty.

Food and fruit we now must want,
Unless new lands we plant.

We break-up tombs with sacrilegious hands;
Old rubbish we remove;

To walk in ruins, like vain ghosts, we love,
And with fond divining wands
We search among the dead
For treasures buried;

Whilst still the liberal Earth does hold
So many virgin-mines of undiscover'd gold.

The Baltic, Euxine, and the Caspian,
And slender-limb'd Mediterranean,
Seem narrow creeks to thee, and only fit
For the poor wretched fisher-boats of wit:
Thy nobler vessel the vast ocean tries,

And nothing sees but seas and skies,
Till unknown regions it descries.

Thou great Columbus of the golden lands of new

philosophies!

Thy task was harder much than his;

For thy learn'd America is

Not only found-out first by thee,

And rudely left to future industry;

But thy eloquence and thy wit,

Has planted, peopled, built, and civiliz'd it.

I little thought before,
(Nor, being my own self so poor,
Could comprehend so vast a store)

As we ourselves, who think there's nothing wise but

Here a proud Pawn I admire,

That, still advancing higher,

At top of all became

Another thing and name;

Here I'm amaz'd at th' actions of a Knignt,
That does bold wonders in the fight;

Here I the losing party blame,

For those false moves that break the game, That to their grave, the bag, the conquer'd

pieces bring,

And, above all, th' ill-conduct of the Mated king.

"Whate'er these seem, whate'er philosophy
And sense or reason tell," said I,
"These things have life, election, liberty;

'Tis their own wisdom moulds their state, Their faults and virtues make their fate. They do, they do," said I; but straight, Lo! from my enlighten'd eyes the mists and

shadows fell,

That hinder spirits from being visible;
And, lo! I saw two angels play'd the Mate.
With man, alas! no otherwise it proves;
An unseen band makes all their moves;

And some are great, and some are small, Some climb to good, some from good-fortune fall;

Me from the womb the midwife Muse did take: She cut my navel, wash'd me, and mine head With her own hands she fashioned;

She did a covenant with me make, [spake: And circumcis'd my tender soul, and thus she "Thou of my church shalt be;

Hate and renounce," said she, [me. "Wealth, honour, pleasures, all the world, for Thou neither great at court, nor in the war, Nor at th' exchange, shalt be, nor at the wrang

ling bar:

As all th' inspired tuneful men,

down to Ben.

BRUTUS.

But as her beams reflected pass Through our own Nature or Ill-custom's glass:

As 'tis no wonder, so,
If with dejected eye

In standing pools we seek the sky,

That stars, so high above, should seem to us below.

Can we stand by and see

Our mother robb'd, and bound, and ravish'd be,
Yet not to her assistance stir,
Pleas'd with the strength and beauty of the ra-
Or shall we fear to kill him, if before [visher ?
The cancell'd name of friend he bore ?
Ingrateful Brutus do they call?
Ingrateful Cæsar, who could Rome enthrall!
An act more barbarous and unnatural
(In th' exact balance of true virtue try'd)
Than his successor Nero's parricide!

There's none but Brutus could deserve
That all men else should wish to serve,
And Cæsar's usurp'd place to him should proffer;
None can deserve 't but he who would refuse the

Or seen her well-appointed star Come marching up the eastern hill afar. Nor durst it in Philippi's field appear, But, unseen, attack'd thee there:

EXCELLENT Brutus! of all human race

The best, till Nature was improv'd by Grace;
Till men above themselves Faith raised more
Than Reason above beasts before.
Virtue was thy life's centre, and from thence
Did silently and constantly dispense
The gentle, vigorous influence
To all the wide and fair circumference;
And all the parts upon it lean'd so easily,
Obey'd the mighty force so willingly,
That none could discord or disorder see

In all their contrariety:

Each had his motion natural and free,

And the whole no more mov'd, than the whole

Thou would'st have forc'd it back upon thy foes: Or slain 't, like Cæsar, though it be

A conqueror and a monarch mightier far than he.

What joy can human things to us afford,
When we see perish thus, by odd events,
Ill men, and wretched accidents,

[sword?

The best cause and best man that ever drew a

When we see

The false Octavius and wild Antony,
God-like Brutus! conquer thee?

What can we say, but thine own tragic word-
That Virtue, which had worship'd been by thee
As the most solid good, and greatest deity,

By this fatal proof became
An idol only, and a name.

Hold, noble Brutus! and restrain

The bold voice of thy generous disdain:
These mighty gulphs are yet
Too deep for all thy judgment and thy wit.
The time's set forth already which shall quell
Stiff Reason, when it offers to rebel;

Which these great secrets shall unseal,
And new philosophies reveal :

A few years more, so soon hadst thou not dy'd,
Would have confounded human Virtue's pride,
And show'd thee a God crucify'd.

TO DR. SCARBOROUGH.

How long, alas! has our mad nation been Of epidemic war the tragic scene,

When Slaughter all the while Seem'd, like its sea, embracing round the isle,

With tempests, and red waves, noise, and affright!

Albion no more, nor to be nam'd from white!

What province or what city did it spare ?
It, like a plague, infected all the air.

Sure the unpeopled land

Would now untill'd, desert, and naked stand,

Had God's all-mighty hand
At the same time let loose Diseases' rage

Their civil wars in man to wage.
But thou by Heaven wert sent
This desolation to prevent,

A medicine, and a counter-poison, to the age.
Scarce could the sword dispatch inore to the grave

Than thou didst save;

By wondrous art, and by successful care,

The ruins of a civil war thou dost alone repair!

The inundations of all liquid pain,

And deluge Dropsy, thou dost drain.
Fevers so hot, that one would say,
Thou might'st as soon hell-fires allay
(The damn'd scarce more incurable than they)
Thou dost so temper, that we find,
Like gold, the body but refin'd,
No unhealthful dross behind.

The subtle Ague, that for sureness' sake
Takes its own times th'assault to make,
And at each battery the whole fort does shake,

When thy strong guards, and works, it spies,
Trembles for itself, and flies.
The cruel Stone, that restless pain,

That's sometimes roll'd away in vain,
But still, like Sysiphus's stone, returns again,
Thou break'st and meltest by learn'd juices' force,
(A greater work, though short the way appear,
Than Hannibal's by vinegar!)
Oppressed Nature's necessary course
It stops in vain; like Moses, thou

Strik'st but the rock, and straight the waters freely flow.

The Indian son of Lust (that foul disease
Which did on this his new-found world but lately
Yet since a tyranny has planted here,
As wide and cruel as the Spaniard there)

Is so quite rooted out by thee,
That thy patients seem to be

Restor'd, not to health only, but virginity.
The Plague itself, that proud imperial ill,

[seize,

Who, whilst thy wondrous skill in plants they see, Fear lest the tree of life should be found out by

thee.

And thy well-travell'd knowledge, too, does give
No less account of th' empire sensitive;
Chiefly of man, whose body is
That active soul's metropolis.

As the great artist in his sphere of glass
Saw the whole scene of heavenly motions pass;
So thou know'st all so well that 's done within,
As if some living crystal man thou 'dst seen.

Nor does this science make thy crown alone,
But whole Apollo is thine own;
His gentler arts, belov'd in vain by me,
Are wedded and enjoy'd by thee.
Thou 'rt by this noble mixture free
From the physician's frequent malady,
Fantastic incivility:

There are who all their patients' chagrin have,
As ifthey took each morn worse potions than they

gave.

And this great race of learning thou hast run,
Ere that of life be half yet done;
Thou see'st thyself still fresh and strong,
And like t' enjoy thy conquests long.

The first fam'd aphorism thy great master spoke,
Did he live now he would revoke,
And better things of man report;

For thou dost make life long, and art but short.
Ah, learned friend! it grieves me, when I think
That thou with all thy art must die,
As certainly as I;

And all thy noble reparations sink
[tality.
Into the sure-wrought mine of treacherous mor-
Like Archimedes, honourably in vain,
Thou hold'st out towns that must at last be ta'en,
And thou thyself, their great defender, slain.
Let 's e'en compound, and for the present live,
'Tis all the ready-money Fate can give;

Unbend sometimes thy restless care,
And let thy friends so happy be

T enjoy at once their health and thee: Some hours, at least, to thine own pleasures spare: Since the whole stock may soon exhausted be, Bestow 't not all in charity.

Let Nature and let Art do what they please,
When all 's done, life is an incurable disease,

LIFE AND FAME.

Он, Life! thou Nothing's younger brother!

kill,

other!

What's somebody, or nobody?

In all the cobwebs of the schoolmen's trade,

We no such nice distinction woven see,
As 'tis " to be," or " not to be."
Dream of a shadow! a reflection made
From the false glories of the gay reflected bow,
Is a more solid thing than thou.

Vain weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise

Up betwixt two eternities!

Yet canst nor wave nor wind sustain,

But, broken and o'erwhelm'd, the endless oceans

meet again.

And with what rare inventions do we strive

Ourselves then to survive?

Wise, subtle arts, and such as well befit
That Nothing, man's no wit!-