Works

----Tanto major fam' sitis est, quam
Virtutis.

JUV. SAT. X.


My verse is satire; Dorset, lend your ear,
And patronize a muse you cannot fear.
To poets sacred is a Dorset's name:...

To the Right Honourable Sir Spencer Compton.


Round some fair tree th' ambitious woodbine grows,
And breathes her sweets on the supporting boughs;
So sweet the verse, th' ambitious verse, should be,...

On Women.


O fairest of creation! last and best
Of all God's works! Creature in whom excell'd
Whatever can to sight, or thought, be form'd!
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!...

To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole.


Carmina tum melius, cum venerit ipse, canemus.

VIRG.


On this last labour, this my closing strain,...

Inscribed to the Right Honourable the Lady Elizabeth Germain.


Interdum tamen et tollit comoedia vocem.

HOR.


I sought a patroness, but sought in vain....

St. Andrews! not for ever thine shall be
Merely the shadow of a mighty name,
The remnant only of an ancient fame
Which time has crumbled, as thy rocks the sea.
...

Man knows where first he ships himself; but he
Never can tell where shall his landing be.

Musicians wrestle everywhere:
All day, among the crowded air,
I hear the silver strife;
And -- waking long before the dawn --
Such transport breaks upon the town
I think it that "new life!"
...

What aim had they, the Pair of Monks, in size
Enormous, dragged, while side by side they sate,
By panting steers up to this convent gate?
How, with empurpled cheeks and pampered eyes,...

Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age;
Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught...

Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head:
And these grey rocks; that household lawn;...

From Stirling castle we had seen
The mazy Forth unravelled;
Had trod the banks of Clyde, and Tay,
And with the Tweed had travelled;
And when we came to Clovenford,
Then said my "winsome Marrow,"...

I

To barren heath, bleak moor, and quaking fen,
Or depth of labyrinthine glen;
Or into trackless forest set
With trees, whose lofty umbrage met;
World-wearied Men withdrew of yore;...

Jesu! bless our slender Boat,
By the current swept along;
Loud its threatenings, let them not
Drown the music of a song
Breathed thy mercy to implore,
Where these troubled waters roar!
...

Amid this dance of objects sadness steals
O'er the defrauded heart while sweeping by,
As in a fit of Thespian jollity,
Beneath her vine-leaf crown the green Earth reels:...

What beast of chase hath broken from the cover?
Stern Gemmi listens to as full a cry,
As multitudinous a harmony
Of sounds as rang the heights of Latmos over,
When, from the soft couch of her sleeping Lover,...

Is then the final page before me spread,
Nor further outlet left to mind or heart?
Presumptuous Book! too forward to be read,
How can I give thee licence to depart?
One tribute more: unbidden feelings start...

I.

Behold! we have gathered together our battleships near and afar;
Their decks they are cleared for action, their guns they are shotted for war:...

'Night Speaks'

Grateful is Sleep, my life in stone bound fast;
More grateful still: while wrong and shame shall last,
On me can Time no happier state bestow
Than to be left unconscious of the woe....

Mild the mist upon the hill
Telling not of storms tomorrow;
No, the day has wept its fill,
Spent its store of silent sorrow.

O, I'm gone back to the days of youth,
I am a child once more,...