A FABLE FROM PHÆDRUS.
ON MY BIRTHDAY, JULY 21.
EPITAPH. EXTEMPORE.
FOR MY OWN MONUMENT.
CUPID IN AMBUSH.
THE TURTLE AND SPARROW.
APPLICATION OF THE ABOVE; WRITTEN LONG AFTER THE TALE.
DOWN-HALL: A BALLAD, TO THE TUNE OF KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY, 1715.
VERSES SPOKEN TO LADY HENRIETTA CAVENDISH-HOLLES HARLEY.
PROLOGUE TO THE ORPHAN.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.
THE CONVERSATION.
THE FEMALE PHAETON.
THE JUDGMENT OF VENUS.
DAPHNE AND APOLLO.
THE MICE.
TWO RIDDLES.
EPIGRAM EXTEMPORE.
NELL AND JOHN.
BIBO AND CHARON.
GABRIEL AND HIS WIVES.
FATAL LOVE.
A SAILOR’S WIFE.
ON A FART, LET IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
THE MODERN SAINT
THE PARALLEL.
TO A YOUNG LADY WHO WAS FOND OF FORTUNE-TELLING.
A GREEK EPIGRAM IMITATED.
TO A FRIEND ON HIS NUPTIALS.
THE WANDERING PILGRIM.
VENUS’S ADVICE TO THE MUSES.
CUPID TURNED PLOUGHMAN.
PONTIUS AND PONTIA.
CUPID TURNED STROLLER.
TO A POET OF QUALITY.
THE PEDANT.
CAUTIOUS ALICE.
THE INCURABLE.
TO FORTUNE.
NONPAREIL.
CHASTE FLORIMEL.
DOCTORS DIFFER.
EPIGRAM ON BISHOP ATTERBURY.
ON BISHOP ATTERBURY’S BURYING THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, MDCCXX.
UPON HONOUR. A FRAGMENT.
ENIGMA.
ANOTHER.
THE OLD GENTRY.
THE INSATIABLE PRIEST.
A FRENCH SONG IMITATED.
A CASE STATED.
UPON PLAYING AT OMBRE WITH TWO LADIES.
CUPID’S PROMISE.
TO THE EARL OF OXFORD.
A LETTER TO THE HONOURABLE LADY MARGARET CAVENDISH HOLLES-HARLEY, WHEN A CHILD.
LINES WRITTEN UNDER THE PRINT OF TOM BRITTON.
TRUTH TOLD AT LAST.
WRITTEN IN LADY HOWE’S OVID’S EPISTLES.
AN EPISTLE. MDCCXVI.
ANOTHER EPISTLE.
TRUE’S EPITAPH.
EPIGRAM.
THE VICEROY. A BALLAD.
WHEN THE CAT IS AWAY, THE MICE MAY PLAY.
THE WIDOW AND HER CAT,
ON THE MARRIAGE OF GEORGE PRINCE OF DENMARK, AND THE LADY ANNE, 1683.
COLIN’S MISTAKES.
QUEEN MARY’S DEATH.
AD REGIOS FRATES.
COUPLET IN WIMPOLE LIBRARY.
TO DORSET.
A COMPLIMENT.
CONSCIENCE.
EPIGRAM ALLUDED TO IN POPE’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD OXFORD.
VOLUME I.
AN ODE. ON EXODUS III. 14
Man! foolish man!
Scarce know’st thou how thyself began,
Scarce hadst thou thought enough to prove thou art,
Yet, steel’d with studied boldness, thou darest try
To send thy doubting Reason’s dazzled eye
Through the mysterious gulf of vast immensity;
Much thou canst there discern, much thence impart.
Vain wretch! suppress thy knowing pride,
Mortify thy learned lust:
Vain are thy thoughts while thou thyself art dust. 10
Let wit her sails, her oars let wisdom lend,
The helm let politic experience guide;
Yet cease to hope thy short-lived bark shall ride
Down spreading Fate’s unnavigable tide.
What though still it farther tend?
Still ’tis farther from its end,
Still finds its error lengthen with its way.
With daring pride and insolent delight,
Your doubts resolved you boast, your labours crown’d, 20
And, EYPHKA your God, forsooth, is found
Incomprehensible and infinite.
But is he therefore found? vain searcher! no:
Let your imperfect definition show
That nothing you, the weak definer, know.
Say, why should the collected main
Itself within itself contain!
Why to its caverns should it sometimes creep,
And with delighted silence sleep
On the loved bosom of its parent deep. 30
Why should its numerous waters stay
In comely discipline and fair array,
Till winds and tides exert their high commands!
Then, prompt and ready to obey,
Why do the rising surges spread
Their opening ranks o’er earth’s submissive head,
Marching through different paths to different lands?
Why does the constant sun
With measured steps his radiant journeys run?
Why does he order the diurnal hours 40
To leave earth’s other part, and rise in ours?
Why does he wake the correspondent moon,
And fill her willing lamp with liquid light,
Commanding her with delegated powers
To beautify the world, and bless the night?
Why does each animated star
Love the just limits of its proper sphere,
Why does each consenting sign
With prudent harmony combine
In turns to move, and subsequent appear, 50
To gird the globe, and regulate the year?
Man does with dangerous curiosity
These unfathom’d wonders try:
With fancied rules and arbitrary laws
Matter and motion he restrains:
And studied lines and fictious circles draws:
Then with imagined sovereignty
Lord of his new hypothesis he reigns.
He reigns; how long? till some usurper rise!
And he, too, mighty thoughtful, mighty wise,
Studies new lines, and other circles feigns. 60
From this last toil again what knowledge flows?
Just as much, perhaps, as shows
That all his predecessor’s rules
Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools:
That he on t’other’s ruin rears his throne,
And shows his friend’s mistake, and thence confirms his own.
On earth, in air, amidst the seas and skies,
Mountainous heaps of wonders rise,
Whose towering strength will ne’er submit
To Reason’s batteries or the mines of Wit:
Yet still inquiring, still mistaking man, 70
Each hour repulsed, each hour dares onward press,
And, levelling at God his wandering guess,
(That feeble engine of his reasoning war,
Which guides his doubts and combats his despair)
Laws to his Maker the learn’d wretch can give,
Can bound that nature and prescribe that will
Whose pregnant Word did either ocean fill,
Can tell us whence all beings are, and how they move and live.
Through either ocean, foolish man!
That pregnant Word sent forth again 80
Might to a world extend each atom there,
For every drop call forth a sea, a heaven for every star.
Let cunning earth her fruitful wonders hide,
And only lift thy staggering reason up
To trembling Calvary’s astonish’d top,
Then mock thy knowledge and confound thy pride.
Explaining how Perfection suffer’d pain,
Almighty languish’d, and Eternal died;
How by her patient victor Death was slain,
And earth profaned, yet bless’d with
Deicide. 90
Then down with all thy boasted volumes, down;
Only reserve the sacred one:
Low, reverently low,
Make thy stubborn knowledge bow;
Weep out thy reason’s and thy body’s eyes;
Deject thyself that thou may’st rise:
To look to heaven, to blind to all below.
Then Faith for Reason’s glimmering light shall give
Her immortal perspective,
And Grace’s presence Nature’s loss retrieve; 100
Then thy enliven’d soul shall see
That all the volumes of philosophy,
With all their comments, never could invent
So politic an instrument,
To reach the heaven of heavens, the high abode
Where Moses places his mysterious God,
As was the ladder which old Jacob rear’d,
When light divine had human darkness clear’d,
And his enlarged ideas found the road
Which faith had dictated and angels trod. 110
TO THE COUNTESS OF EXETER. PLAYING ON THE LUTE
What charms you have, from what high race you sprung,
Have been the pleasing subjects of my song:
Unskill’d and young, yet something still I writ
Of Ca’ndish’ beauty, join’d to Cecil’s wit.
But when you please to show the labouring muse
What greater theme your music can produce,
My babbling praises I repeat no more,
But hear, rejoice, stand silent, and adore.
The Persians thus, first gazing on the sun,
Admired how high ’twas placed, how bright it shone; 10
But as his power was known their thoughts were raised,
And soon they worshipp’d what at first they praised.
Eliza’s glory lives in Spenser’s song,
And Cowley’s verse keeps fair Orinda young;
That as in birth and beauty you excel,
The muse might dictate and the poet tell:
Your art no other art can speak; and you
To show how well you play, must play anew:
Your music’s power your music must disclose,
For what light is ’tis only light that shows. 20
Strange force of harmony that thus controls
Our thoughts, and turns and sanctifies our souls.
While with its utmost art your sex could move
Our wonder only or at best our love,
You far above both these your god did place,
That your high power might worldly thoughts destroy,
That with your numbers you our zeal might raise,
And like himself communicate your joy.
When to your native heaven you shall repair,
And with your presence crown the blessings there, 30
Your lute may wind its strings but little higher
To tune their notes to that immortal quire.
Your art is perfect here; your numbers do
More than our books make the rude atheist know
That there’s a heaven by what he hears below.
As in some piece while Luke his skill exprest,
A cunning angel came and drew the rest,
So when you play, some godhead does impart
Harmonious aid; divinity helps art;
Some cherub finishes what you begun,
And to a miracle improves a tune. 40
To burning Rome when frantic Nero play’d,
Viewing that face, no more he had survey’d
The raging flames, but, struck with strange surprise,
Confess’d them less than those of Anna’s eyes;
But, had he heard thy lute, he soon had found
His rage eluded and his crime atoned:
Thine, like Amphion’s hand, had waked the stone
And from destruction call’d the rising town;
Malice to music had been forced to yield,
Nor could he burn so fast as thou couldst build. 50
ON A PICTURE OF SENECA DYING IN A BATH BY JORDAIN
While cruel Nero only drains
The moral Spaniard’s ebbing veins,
By study worn, and slack with age,
How dull, how thoughtless is his rage!
Heighten’d revenge he should have took,
He should have burnt his tutor’s book;
And long have reign’s supreme in vice;
One noble wretch can only rise;
’Tis he whose fury shall deface
The Stoic’s Image in this piece, 10
For, while unhurt, divine Jordain,
Thy work and Seneca’s remain,
He still has body, still has soul,
And lives and speaks restored and whole.
AN ODE: WHILE BLOOMING YOUTH AND GAY DELIGHT
While blooming youth and gay delight
Sit on thy rosy cheeks confess’d,
Thou hast, my dear, undoubted right
To triumph o’er this destined breast.
My reason bends to what thy eyes ordain;
For I was born to love, and thou to reign.
But would you meanly thus rely
On power you know I must obey?
Exert a legal tyranny,
And do an ill because you may?
Still must I thee, as Atheists Heaven, adore; 10
Not see thy mercy, and yet dread thy power?
Take heed, my dear: youth flies apace;
As well as Cupid, Time is blind:
Soon must those glories of thy face
The fate of vulgar beauty find:
The thousand Loves, that arm thy potent eye,
Must drop their quivers, flag their wings, and die.
Then wilt thou sigh, when in each frown
A hateful wrinkle more appears:
And putting peevish humours on, 20
Seems but the sad effect of years:
Kindness itself too weak a charm will prove
To raise the feeble fires of aged love.
Forced compliments, and formal bows,
Will show thee just above neglect;
The heat with which thy lover glows,
Will settle into cold respect:
A talking dull Platonic I shall turn;
Learn to be civil, when I cease to burn.
Then, shun the ill, and know, my dear, 30
Kindness and constancy will prove
The only pillars, fit to bear
So vast a weight as that of love.
If thou canst wish to make my flames endure,
Thine must be very fierce, and very pure.
Haste, Celia, haste, while youth invites,
Obey kind Cupid’s present voice;
Fill every sense with soft delights,
And give thy soul a loose to joys:
Let millions of repeated blisses prove
That thou all kindness art, and I all love.
Be mine, and only mine; take care
Thy looks, thy thoughts, thy dreams, to guide 40
To me alone; nor come so far,
As liking any youth beside:
What men e’er court thee, fly them, and believe
They’re serpents all, and thou the tempted Eve.
So shall I court thy dearest truth,
When beauty ceases to engage;
So, thinking on thy charming youth,
I’ll love it o’er again in age;
So time itself our raptures shall improve,
While still we wake to joy, and live to love. 50
AN EPISTLE TO FLEETWOOD SHEPHARD, ESQ.
When crowding folks, with strange ill faces,
Were making legs, and begging places,
And some with patents, some with merit,
Tired out my good Lord Dorset’s spirit:
Sneaking I stood amongst the crew,
Desiring much to speak with you.
I waited while the clock str
uck thrice,
And footman brought out fifty lies;
Till, patience vex’d, and legs grown weary,
I thought it was in vain to tarry! 10
But did opine it might be better,
By penny-post to send a letter;
Now, if you miss of this epistle,
I’m baulk’d again, and may go whistle.
My business, Sir, you’ll quickly guess,
Is to desire some little place;
And fair pretensions I have for’t,
Much need, and very small desert.
Whene’er I writ to you, I wanted;
I always begg’d, you always granted. 20
Now, as you took me up when little,
Gave me my learning and my vittle;
Ask’d for me, from my lord, things fitting,
Kind as I’d been your own begetting;
Confirm what formerly you’ve given,
Nor leave me now at six and seven,
As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen.
No family, that takes a whelp
When first he laps, and scarce can yelp,
Neglects or turns him out of gate
When he’s grown up to dog’s estate:
No parish, if they once adopt
The spurious brats by strollers dropp’d, 30
Leave them, when grown up lusty fellows,
To, the wide world, that is, the gallows:
No thank them for their love, that’s worse,
Than if they’d throttled them at nurse.
My uncle, rest his soul! when living,
Might have contrived me ways of thriving;
Taught me with cyder to replenish
My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish.
So when for hock I drew prickt white-wine,
Swear’t had the flavour, and was right wine.
Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni-
val’s Inn, to some good rogue attorney;
Where now, by forging deeds, and cheating,
I’d found some handsome ways of getting.
All this you made me quit, to follow
That sneaking whey-faced god Apollo;
Sent me among a fiddling crew
Of folks, I’d never seen nor knew,
Calliope, and God knows who,
To add no more invectives to i,
You spoil’d the youth, to make a poet.
In common justice, Sir, there’s no man
That makes the whore, but keeps the woman.
Amongst all honest Christian people,
Whoe’er breaks limbs, maintains the cripple.