The leafless flock, that Fortune dooms
To wither, with returning spring
(While the glad flocks of Freedom sing) Profuse of promis'd sweets, with double vigour blooms.
Hark! hark! 'tis Brutus' name I hear, Join'd with his fair, heroic bride; To Honour's hallow'd fane they steer Along the favourable tide; To her and Safety there to place The tablet, vow'd to human race : Blow, every kind and gentle gale Of gratitude, and fan the swelling sail. High on a fleecy couch reclin'd, Of white and amber clouds confin'd, Rome's genius lifts his august head; Now slow descending nearer draws, Hail'd with the popular applause, And bids the solemn pageantry proceed. Go, the triumphal ornaments display: Ye sacred Salii lead the way:
Next led the order of Patrician blood,
In awful march a num'rous train compose, And follow'd by the jubilating crowd; As Cybelé thro' Phrygian cities goes, Majestic, and with golden turrets crown'd: A hundred gods her gorgeous car surround, A thousand tongues acclaim; the clanging cymbals sound.
EXPATIATE long in nice debate, On Chance, Necessity, and Fate: With learn'd Lucretius stray In Epicurus' magic grove,
Where the self-motion'd atoms rove In mazy mystic play.
Some vain hypothesis admit,
The specious cobweb-work of wit;
And daringly deny
What every object round avows,
What every act of Reason shews, An All-wise Deity.
The clearest evidence contest, Divinely stampt on every breast, Since Time was taught to roll; In Errors gloomy coverts stray, From Truth's indisputable ray Remote, as pole from pole.
So shuts the moping bird of night Her feeble eyes against the light, That glads the cheerful day; And when prevailing darkness reigns, Thro' groves obscene, or dreary plains, She wings her dubious way.
Consult the blue expanse on high,
The blush that paints the morning sky, The cloud that nimbly rides, The orbs that mark with lustre bright The spangled mantle of the night, Who there supreme resides.
Question the gaudy flowers around, That scent the air, or paint the ground, Whose influence they obey:
Whose hand imparts the various dyes, At whose command they bud and rise, At whose command decay.
Say ye, on down, or mountain steep, That stately tread, or lowly creep; And ye aerial throng,
That cheer the woodland scene and fields With vocal strains; whose bounty yields,
Or sustenance or song:
Who, in the ocean's waste domain,
The tenants of the watry plain
With liberal hand supplies?
The floods in icy fetters binds,
Smooths the rough surge, and lulls the winds, Or bids the tempest rise?
Nature in every mystic scene Declares a plastic author's reign:
Above the morning's wings,
Beyond the sea's remotest tides, Beneath the daedal earth resides Th' Almighty King of Kings.
BY WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, ESQ. [Late Poet-Laureat.]
ONCE, I remember well the day, 'Twas ere the blooming sweets of May Had lost their freshest hues: When every flower on ev'ry hill, In ev'ry vale had drank its fill Of sun-shine and of dews.
In short, 'twas that sweet season's prime, When Spring gives up the reins of Time To Summer's glowing hand,
And doubting mortals hardly know, By whose command the breezes blow Which fan the smiling land.
'Twas then, beside a green-wood shade, Which cloth'd a lawn's aspiring head, I urg'd my devious way,
With loitering steps regardless where, So soft, so genial was the air,
So wondrous bright the day.
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