Thus cheaply wise, and innocently great, Nor rashly break, nor wish to stop the glass. And when in death my peaceful ashes lie, If e'er some tongue congenial speaks my name, Friendship shall never blush to breathe a sigh, And great ones envy such an honest fame. ELEGY II. WOODSTOCK. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR MDCCLIX. Ан me! what is this mortal life? (I cry'd) Inexorable Destiny pursues, And levels in the chace with rapid wing: Pity in vain, or Mirth, or Merit sues, Equally vain the beggar and the king! Ah! what is Fame, the idol of the great? Thus on the winding Isis' willowed bank, A gloomy mansion open to the view, Disclosing horror heighten'd by the shade; Where round the nodding walls the mournful yew Points to the vault where Rosamond was laid: Where with her birds of night, haggard and foul, Intent I gaz'd, till Terror, ruling sight, Semblance of virgin elegance and grace, Now gently gliding o'er the hallow'd ground, Close by my side the phantom made a stand, Piercing the night-still'd air. An awful sound! And claim'd attention with uplifted hand. "I once was blest with Love's deluding joy, Remembrance of my love, and of my fate? "O had Oblivion in her peaceful cell, Shrouded from every eye my mouldering dust! That on the chissel'd stone no verse might tell, My crime how great! my punishment how just! "But Woodstock's blooming bowers still remain, The scenes, to me, of pleasure and of woe; And Godstow's walls perpetuate the stain My name reproaching, whilst my grave they shew. "O Woodstock, fated long to be the seat Yielding content, in fields and senates lost. "Thy glories now are levell'd low in earth; "But thou whose bosom foreign sorrow heaves, Whose eyes can stream for anguish not thine own; Whose heart the white-rob'd fugitive receives, When forc'd by awful Rigor from her throne; "The scourge of vice, the good man's destiny, Now on the summit of a cloud-built height And round the plain in lambent circles play'd. Sudden the ground with inbred motion shook, Daedalian mystery! from the parted soil, A labyrinth 'rose to sounds of melting note; High over-arch'd in Summer's gayest weed, Deep in a vale impervious to all tread, Save by a flower-hid path, a grotto stood! And ancient oaks their foliage round it spread, O'ershading with their tops the neighbouring wood: And Nature sporting, with a lavish hand |