Rags, relics, witches, ghosts, fiends, crowd your page; Our fathers' mummeries we well-pleased behold, And, proudly conscious of a purer age,
Forgive some fopperies in the times of old.
Verse-honouring Phoebus, Father of bright Days, Must needs bestow on you both good and many, Who, building trophies of his Children's praise,
Run their rich Zodiac through, not missing any.
Dan Phoebus loves your book—trust me, friend
The title only errs, he bids me say:
For while such art, wit, reading, there are shown,
He swears, 'tis not a work of every day.
ON HIS ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POEMS OF MR. ROGERS.
CONSUMMATE Artist, whose undying name
With classic Rogers shall go down to fame,
Be this thy crowning work! In my young days
How often have I, with a child's fond gaze,
Pored on the pictured wonders* thou hadst done:
Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison!
*Illustrations of the British Novelists.
All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view,
I saw, and I believed the phantoms true.
But, above all, that most romantic tale*
Did o'er my raw credulity prevail,
Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things,
That serve at once for jackets and for wings.
Age, that enfeebles other men's designs,
But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines.
In several ways distinct you make us feel-
Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel.
Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; And warmly wish you Titian's length of days.
TO A FRIEND ON HIS MARRIAGE.
WHAT makes a happy wedlock? What has fate
Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate?
Good sense-good-humour;-these are trivial things,
Dear M, that each trite encomiast sings.
But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt
From every low-bred passion, where contempt,
Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found
A harbour yet; an understanding sound;
Just views of right and wrong; perception full
Of the deformed, and of the beautiful,
In life and manners; wit above her sex,
Which, as a gem, her sprightly converse decks;
Exuberant fancies, prodigal of mirth,
To gladden woodland walk, or winter hearth;
A noble nature, conqueror in the strife
Of conflict with a hard discouraging life,
Strengthening the veins of virtue, past the power
Of those whose days have been one silken hour,
Spoiled fortune's pampered offspring; a keen sense
Alike of benefit, and of offence,
With reconcilement quick, that instant springs
From the charged heart with nimble angel wings;
While grateful feelings, like a signet signed
By a strong hand, seem burned into her mind.
If these, dear friend, a dowry can confer
Richer than land, thou hast them all in her;
And beauty, which some hold the chiefest boon,
Is in thy bargain for a make-weight thrown.
[In a leaf of a quarto edition of the "Lives of the Saints, written in Spanish by the learned and reverend father, Alfonso Villegas, Divine, of the Order of St. Dominick, set forth in English by John Heigham, Anno 1630," bought at a Catholic book-shop in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, I found, carefully inserted, a painted flower, seemingly coeval with the book itself; and did not, for some time, discover that it opened in the middle, and was the cover to a very humble draught of a St. Anne, with the Virgin and Child; doubtless the performance of some poor but pious Catholic, whose meditations it assisted.]
O LIFT with reverent hand that tarnished flower,
That shrines beneath her modest canopy
Memorials dear to Romish piety;
Dim specks, rude shapes, of Saints! in fervent hour
The work perchance of some meek devotee,
Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth
The sanctities she worshipped to their worth,
In this imperfect tracery might see
Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal.
Cheap gifts best fit poor givers. We are told
Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold,
That in their way approved the offerer's zeal.
True love shows costliest, where the means are scant;
And, in their reckoning, they abound, who want.
I HAD a sense in dreams of a beauty rare,
Whom Fate had spell-bound, and rooted there,
Stooping, like some enchanted theme,
Over the marge of that crystal stream,
Where the blooming Greek, to Echo blind,
With Self-love fond, had to waters pined,
Ages had waked, and ages slept,
And that bending posture still she kept:
For her eyes she may not turn away,
"Till a fairer object shall pass that way-
'Till an image more beauteous this world can show
Than her own which she sees in the mirror below.
Pore on, fair Creature! for ever pore,
Nor dream to be disenchanted more:
For vain is expectance, and wish in vain,
'Till a new Narcissus can come again.
WHOM I USED TO CALL "MONKEY."
LOUISA, serious grown and mild,
I knew you once a romping child,
Obstreperous much and very wild.
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