TO SIR HENRY VANE.

VANE, young in years, but in sage counsel old,

Than whom a better senator ne'er held

The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled

The fierce Epirot, and the African bold,

Whether to settle peace, or to unfold The drift of hollow states, hard to be spelled;

Then to advise how War may, best upheld,

Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,

In all her equipage: besides to know

Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,

What severs each, thou hast learned, which few have done: The bounds of either sword to thee we owe:

Therefore on thy firm hand
Religion leans

In peace, and reckons thee her
eldest son.

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait." MILTON.

SONNET.

O, FOR my sake do you with Fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide,

Than public means, which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:

Pity me then, and wish I were renewed;

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink

Potions of eyesell, 'gainst my strong infection:

No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance, to correct correction.

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,

Even that your pity is enough to

And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,

A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;

Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,

And so obliging that he ne'er obliged; Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; Whilst wits and Templars every sentence raise,

And wonder with a foolish face of praise:

Who but must laugh, if such a one there be?

Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

POPE.

LINES TO ALEXANDER POPE.

WHILE malice, Pope, denies thy page Its own celestial fire;

While critics, and while bards in rage, Admiring, won't admire:

While wayward pens thy worth assail,

And envious tongues decry;

These times, though many a friend bewail,

These times bewail not I.

But when the world's loud praise is thine,

And spleen no more shall blame: When with thy Homer thou shalt shine

In one unclouded fame:

When none shall rail, and every lay Devote a wreath to thee;

That day, (for come it will,) that day Shall I lament to see.

DAVID LEWIS.

THE MAN OF ROSS.

BUT all our praises why should lords

engross?

Rise, honest muse! and sing the Man of Ross:

Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.

Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?

Whose seats the weary traveller repose?

Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?

"The Man of Ross," each lisping babe replies.

Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!

The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread:

He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,

Where age and wart sit smiling at the gate:

Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blest,

The young who labor, and the old who rest.

Is any sick? The Man of Ross relieves,

Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes and gives.

Is there a variance? enter but his door,

Balked are the courts, and contest is

no more:

Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,

And vile attorneys, now a useless race. Thrice happy man! enabled to pur

sue

What all so wish but want the power to do!

Oh say, what sums that generous hand supply?

What mines to swell that boundless charity?

Of debts and taxes, wife and children clear,

This man possessed - five hundred pounds a year.

Blush grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze;

Ye little stars! hide your diminished rays.

And what? no monument, inscription, stone,

His race, his form, his name almost unknown?

Who builds a church to God, and not to fame

Will never mark the marble with his

name.

POPE.

ELEGY ON MISTRESS ELIZABETH DRURY.

SHE, of whose soul, if we may say, 'twas gold,

Her body was the Electrum, and did hold

Many degrees of that; we understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,

That one might almost say, her body thought.

She, she thus richly, largely housed, is gone,

And chides us slow-paced snails who crawl upon

Our prison's prison, Earth, nor think us well

Longer than whilst we bear our little shell.

(As to their number,) to their dignities.

She whom we celebrate is gone be

fore:

She who had here so much essential joy,

As no chance could distract, much less destroy;

Who with God's presence was acquainted so,

(Hearing and speaking to him,) as to know

His face in any natural stone or tree
Better than when in images they be:
Who kept by diligent devotion
God's image in such reparation
Within her heart, that what decay
was grown

Was her first Parent's fault, and not her own:

Who, being solicited to any act, Still heard God pleading his safe pre-contract:

Who, by a faithful confidence was here

Betrothed to God, and now is married there:

Whose twilights were more clear than our mid-day;

Who dreamed devoutlier than most use to pray:

Who being here filled with grace, yet strove to be

Both where more grace and more capacity

At once is given. She to Heaven is gone,

Who made this world in some pro

The

great Emathian conqueror bid spare

The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower

Went to the ground; and the repeated

air

Of sad Electra's poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.

MILTON

ROB ROY'S GRAVE.

A FAMOUS man is Robin Hood, The English ballad-singer's joy! And Scotland has a thief as good, An outlaw of as daring mood; She has her brave Rob Roy!