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From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings,
If, with adventurous oar and ready sail,
The dusky people drive before the gale;
Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride,
That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide.

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[The following couplet, which was intended to have been introduced in the poem on the Alliance of Education and Government, is much too beautiful to be lost. - Mason, vol. iii., p. 114.]

When Love could teach a monarch to be wise,
And gospel-light first dawned from Bullen's eyes.

STANZAS TO MR. BENTLEY.

A FRAGMENT.

IN silent gaze the tuneful choir among,

Half pleased, half blushing, let the Muse admire,
While Bentley leads her sister-art along,
And bids the pencil answer to the lyre.

See, in their course, each transitory thought
Fixed by his touch a lasting essence take;
Each dream, in Fancy's airy coloring wrought,
To local symmetry and life awake!

The tardy rhymes that used to linger on,

To censure cold, and negligent of fame,

In swifter measures animated run,

And catch a lustre from his genuine flame.

Ah! could they catch his strength, his easy grace,

His quick creation, his unerring line,
The energy of Pope they might efface,
And Dryden's harmony submit to mine.

But not to one in this benighted age
Is that diviner inspiration given,

That burns in Shakspeare's or in Milton's page,
The pomp and prodigality of Heaven.

As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems, that singly charm the sight,
Together dart their intermingled rays,

And dazzle with a luxury of light.

Enough for me, if to some feeling breast
My lines a secret sympathy 'impart; '
And as their pleasing influence 'flows confest,'
A sigh of soft reflection 'heaves the heart.'

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SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER.

WRITTEN IN 1761, AND FOUND IN ONE OF HIS POCKET-BOOKS.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,

He had not the method of making a fortune:

Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd;

No very great wit, he believed in a God:

A post or a pension he did not desire,

But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

AMATORY LINES.

WITH beauty, with pleasure surrounded, to languish
To weep without knowing the cause of my anguish :
To start from short slumbers, and wish for the morning —
To close my dull eyes when I see it returning;

Sighs sudden and frequent, looks ever dejected —
Words that steal from my tongue, by no meaning connected!
Ah! say, fellow-swains, how these symptoms befell me?
They smile, but reply not Sure Delia will tell me!

SONG.

THYRSIS, when we parted, swore
Ere the spring he would return
Ah! what means yon violet flower,

And the bud that decks the thorn?
"T was the lark that upward sprung!
"T was the nightingale that sung!

Idle notes! untimely green!

Why this unavailing haste?
Western gales and skies serene

Speak not always winter past.

Cease, my doubts, my fears to move,
Spare the honor of my love.

TOPHET.

AN EPIGRAM.

THUS Tophet looked; so grinned the brawling fiend,
Whilst frighted prelates bowed, and called him friend.
Our mother-church, with half-averted sight,
Blushed as she blessed her grisly proselyte;

Hosannas rung through hell's tremendous borders,
And Satan's self had thoughts of taking orders.

IMPROMPTU,

SUGGESTED BY A VIEW, IN 1766, OF THE SEAT AND RUINS OF A
DECEASED NOBLEMAN, AT KINGSGATE, KENT.

OLD, and abandoned by each venal friend,
Here Holland formed the pious resolution
To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.

On this congenial spot he fixed his choice;

Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighboring sand;

Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice,
And mariners, though shipwrecked, dread to land.

Here reign the blustering North and blighting East,
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing;
Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast,
Art he invokes new horrors still to bring.

Here mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
Turrets and arches nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled monast'ries delude our eyes,
And mimic desolation covers all.

"Ah!" said the sighing peer, "had Bute been true,

Nor Mungo's, Rigby's, Bradshaw's friendship vain, Far better scenes than these had blest our view, And realized the beauties which we feign:

66

Purged by the sword, and purified by fire,

Then had we seen proud London's hated walls Owls would have hooted in St. Peter's choir, And foxes stunk and littered in St. Paul's."

THE CANDIDATE :

OR, THE CAMBRIDGE COURTSHIP.

WHEN sly Jemmy Twitcher had smugged up his face,
With a lick of court whitewash and pious grimace,
A wooing he went, where three sisters of old
In harmless society guttle and scold.

"Lord! sister," says Physic to Law, "I declare,
Such a sheep-biting look, such a pick-pocket air!
Not I for the Indies: - you know I'm no prude, -
But his nose is a shame,- and his eyes are so lewd!
Then he shambles and straddles so oddly — I fear

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No- at our time of life 't would be silly, my dear.”

"I don't know," says Law, "but methinks for his look, 'T is just like the picture in Rochester's book;

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