ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND, THESE POEMS ARE, WITH THE PROFOUNDEST RESPECT, INSCRIBED BY HER LADYSHIP'S MOST HUMBLE AND MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT, WILLIAM THOMPSON. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER. I SHOULD not have troubled the reader with any thing by way of preface, if I did not think myself obliged to return my thanks to my goodnatured subscribers for their patience in waiting so long for their books. A bad state of health, and some other intervening accidents, prevented me from publishing the volume sooner, though above half of it has been printed off for some time. As for the poems themselves, the greater part of them was writen when the author was very young, and without any design of printing them, which is only mentioned with hopes to procure the reader's pardon for the imperfection of some and the lightness of others. Yet Non ego mordaci distrinxi carmine quemquam, Nulla venenato litera mista joco est. OVID. I should not have printed the two Latin odes, if they had not given me an opportunity of publishing the translations along with them, which I believe will be thought the best verses in the collection: they are finished in so casy and masterly a manner, that I must own that I had rather have been the author of them than of the originals themselves. The tragedy was likewise chiefly composed when the author was an under-graduate in the university, as an innocent relaxation from those severer and more useful studies for which the college, where he had the benefit of his education, is so deservedly distinguished. I have caused it (with all its juvenile imperfections on its head) to be printed as it was at first written, and have even added the original motto, that it might be all of a piece. The poem called Sickness was republished at the request of several of my subscribers, to which, without regarding the additional expense, I very readily agreed: I have made some alterations, which, in the divisions of the books, I hope will be thought improvements. I return my most humble thanks to my friends for their many kind offices in the course of the subscription, and shall leave the poems to the candour of the courteous reader with part of a verse from Horace, Si placeo, tuum est. POEMS OF WILLIAM THOMPSON. Her Thamis (on his golded urn he lean'd) Ne4 whispered the breeze the leaves cmong, A brighter gladness blest the face of day, [May. "Ah sacred ship, to Albion wafting good, Our wish, our hope, our joy! who safe convey'd This beauty's paragon, this royal maid, Through perilous sea, from Ila's little flood, Isprung, iwist, of high empyreal seed; The child of Heav'n, the daughter of Delight, Nurst by a Grace, with milk and honey fed! Oh Frederick! oh, certes, blessed wight, [hight6. To whom the Gods consign the nymph Augusta "Ah sacred ship! may favourable gales, The kindest breath of Heav'n attend thy way, And swell the winged canvass of thy sails: May calmness be thy path, and pleausance lay On the soft bosom of the yielding sea, Where-e'er thou wind; or to the spicy shore Of Araby the blest, or India's bay, Where diamonds kindle, and the golden ore Flames into purity, to deck Augusta more! |