When, fond of power, of beauty vain,
Her nets she spread for every swain;
I strove to hate, but vainly strove :
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?
SAY, Myra, why is gentle Love
A stranger to that mind,
Which Pity and Esteem can move;
Which can be just and kind?
Is it, because you fear to share
The ills that Love molest;
The jealous doubt, the tender care,
That rack the amorous breast?
Alas! by some degree of woe
We every bliss must gain :
The heart can ne'er a transport know,
That never feels a pain.
THE heavy hours are almost pass'd
That part my love and me:
My longing eyes may hope at last
Their only wish to see.
But how, my Delia, will you meet
The man you've lost so long?
Will love in all your pulses beat,
And tremble on your tongue
Your heart is still the same;
And heal each idly-anxious care
Our fears in absence frame?
Thus, Delia, thus I paint the scene,
When shortly we shall meet;
And try what yet remains between
Of loitering time to cheat.
But, if the dream that soothes my mind
Shall false and groundless prove;
If I am doom'd at length to find
You have forgot to love:
All I of Venus ask, is this;
No more to let us join:
But grant me here the flattering bliss,
To die, and think you mine.
THOMSON'S CORIOLANUS.
(SPOKEN BY MR. QUIN.)
I COME not here your candour to implore
For scenes, whose author is, alas! no more;
He wants no advocate his cause to plead ;
You will yourselves be patrons of the dead.
No party his benevolence confin'd,
No sect-alike it flow'd to all mankind.
He lov'd his friends (forgive this gushing tear:
Alas! I feel, I am no actor here)
PROLOGUE TO THOMSON'S CORIOLANUS.
He lov'd his friends with such a warmth of heart,
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,
Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal,
No words can speak it; but our tears may tell.-
O candid truth, O faith without a stain,
O inanners gently firm, and nobly plain,
O sympathizing love of others' bliss,
Where will you find another breast like his?
Such was the man-the poet well you know:
Oft has be touch'd your hearts with tender woe:
Oft, in this crowded house, with just applause,
You heard him teach fair Virtue's purest laws;
For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire,
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line, which dying he could wish to blot.
Oh! may to-night your favourable doom
Another laurel add, to grace his tomb:
Whilst he, superior now to praise or blame,
Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.
Yet, if to those whom most on earth he lov'd,
From whom his pious care is now remov'd,
With whom his liberal hand, and bounteous heart,
Shar'd all his little fortune could impart,
If to those friends your kind regard shall give
What they no longer can from his receive;
That, that, ev'n now, above yon starry pole,
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul,
You, who, supreme o'er every work of wit,
In judgment here, unaw'd, unbiass'd sit,
The Palatines and guardians of the pit;
If to your minds this merely modern play,
No useful sense, no generous warmth convey;
If fustian here, through each unnatural scene,
In strain'd conceits sound high, and nothing mean;
If lofty dullness for your vengeance call;
Like Elmeric judge, and let the guilty fall.
But if simplicity, with force and fire,
Unlabour'd thoughts and artless words inspire;
If, like the action which these scenes relate,
The whole appear irregularly great;
If master-strokes the nobler passions move:
Then, like the King, acquit us, and approve.
SAY, dearest friend, how roll thy hours away?
What pleasing study cheats the tedious day?
Dost thou the sacred volumes oft explore
Of wise Antiquity's immortal lore,
Where virtue, by the charms of wit refin'd,
At once exalts and polishes the mind?
How different from our modern guilty art,
Which pleases only to corrupt the heart;
Whose curs'd refinements odious vice adorn,
And teach to honour what we ought to scorn!
Dost thou in sage historians joy to see
How Roman greatness rose with liberty;
How the same hands, that tyrants durst control,
Their empire stretch'd from Atlas to the Pole;
Till wealth and conquest into slaves refin'd
The proud luxurious masters of mankind?
Dost thou in letter'd Greece each charm admire,
Each grace, each virtue, freedom could inspire;
I Dr. A. was his lordship's tutor at Oxford, and afterwards his brother in law, by marrying his sister; and died Dean of Bristol, 1763.
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