To grace romantic Glory's genial rites :
Associate of the gorgeous festival,
The minstrel struck his kindred string,
And told of many a steel-clad king,
Who to the turney train'd his hardy
knights;
Or bore the radiant red-cross shield
Mid the bold peers of Salem's field;
Who travers'd Pagan climes to quell
The wisard foe's terrific spell;
In rude affrays untaught to fear
The Saracen's gigantic spear.
The listening champions felt the fabling
rhyme
With fairy trappings fraught, and shook
their plumes sublime.
"Such were the themes of regal praise
Dear to the bard of elder days;
The songs, to savage virtue dear,
That won of yore the public ear;
Ere Polity, sedate and sage,
Had quench'd the fires of feudal rage,
Had stemm'd the torrent of eternal strife,
And charm'd to rest an unrelenting age.—
No more, in formidable state,
The castle shuts its thundering gate!
New colours suit the scenes of soften'd life;
No more, bestriding barbed steeds,
Adventurous Valour idly bleeds:
And now the bard in alter'd tones,
A theme of worthier triumph owns ;
By social imagery beguil'd,
He moulds his harp to manners mild; Nor longer weaves the wreath of war alone,
Nor hails the hostile forms that grac'd the
Gothic throne.
"And now he tunes his plausive lay
To kings, who plant the civic bay!
Who choose the patriot sovereign's part,
Diffusing commerce, peace, and art;
Who spread the virtuous pattern wide,
And triumph in a nation's pride;
Who seek coy Science in her cloister'd
nook,
Where Thames, yet rural, rolls an artless
tide;
Who love to view the vale divine,
Where revel Nature and the Nine,
And clustering towers the tufted grove
o'erlook ;
To kings, who rule a filial land,
Who claim a people's vows and
pray'rs,
Should Treason arm the weakest
hand!
To these his heart-felt praise he bears, And with new rapture hastes to greet This festal morn, that longs to meet, With luckiest auspices, the laughing Spring:
And opes her glad career, with blessings on her wing!
ON HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTH-DAY, JUNE 4TH, 1788.
"The noblest bards of Albion's choir
Have struck of old this festal lyre.
E'er Science, struggling oft in vain,
Had dar'd to break her Gothic chain,
Victorious Edward gave the vernal bough
Of Britain's bay to bloom on Chaucer's brow:
Fir'd with the gift, he chang'd to sounds sublime
His Norman minstrelsy's discordant chime :
In tones majestic hence he told
The banquet of Cambuscan bold;
And oft he sung (howe'er the rhyme
Has mouldered to the touch of time)
His martial master's knightly board,
And Arthur's ancient rites restor'd;
The prince in sable steel that sternly frown'd,
And Gallia's captive king, and Cressy's wreath renown'd
"Won from the shepherd's simple meed,
The whispers wild of Mulla's reed,
Sage Spenser wak'd his lofty lay
To grace Eliza's golden sway:
O'er the proud theme new lustre to diffuse,
He chose the gorgeous allegoric Muse,
And call'd to life old Uther's elfin tale,
And rov'd through many a necromantic vale,
Portraying chiefs that knew to tame
The goblin's ire, the dragon's flame,
To pierce the dark enchanted hall,
Where virtue sate in lonely thrall.
From fabling Fancy's inmost store
A rich romantic robe he bore;
A veil with visionary trappings hung,
And o'er his virgin queen the fairy texture flung.
"At length the matchless Dryden came,
To light the Muses' clearer flame;
To lofty numbers grace to lend,
And strength with melody to blend;
To triumph in the bold career of song,
And roll the unwearied energy along.
Does the mean incense of promiscuous praise,
Does servile fear, disgrace his regal bays?
I spurn his panegyric strings,
His partial homage, tuned to kings!
Be mine, to catch his manlier chord,
That paints the impassion'd Persian lord,
By glory fired, to pity sued,
Rous'd to revenge, by love subdued;
And still, with transport, new, the strains to trace,
That chant the Theban pair, and Tancred's deadly vase.
"Had these blest bards been call'd, to pay
The vows of this auspicious day,
Each had confess'd a fairer throne,
A mightier sovereign than his own!
Chaucer had made his hero-monarch yield
The martial fame of Cressy's well-fought field
To peaceful prowess, and the conquests calm,
That braid the sceptre with the patriot's palm :
His chaplets of fantastic bloom,
His colourings, warm from Fiction's loom,
Spenser had cast in scorn away,
And deck'd with truth alone the lay;
All real here, the bard had seen
The glories of his pictur'd queen!
The tuneful Dryden had not flatter'd here,
His lyre had blameless been, his tribute all sincere!"
Warton had a fine eye and a feeling heart for nature-as indeed he had for every thing good-and perhaps some of his unambitious descriptive verses may please you more than his statelier Odes. It has been said that they are rather deficient in sentiment-too purely descriptive; some of them are so -others not-and we think that objection will by none be felt to lie against his delightful lines entitled "The Hamlet.' Headley calls it "a most exquisite little piece," and says "it contains such a selection of beautiful rural images as perhaps no other poem of equal length in our language presents us with." Headley, we think, was a Trinity man, and as such must have loved Warton, and his praise may need pruning; but he was a good judge because a fine genius. "The Hamlet" is "written on Whichwood Forest" which lies towards the western side of Oxfordshire, and near the Poet's parish of Cuddington.
INSCRIPTION IN A HERMITAGE.
"Beneath this stony roof reclin'd
I sooth to peace my pensive mind;
And while, to shade my lowly cave,
Embowering elms their umbrage wave;
And while the maple dish is mine,
The beechen cup, unstain'd with wine;
I scorn the gay licentious crowd,
Nor heed the toys that deck the proud.
"Within my limits lone and still
The blackbird pipes in artless trill;
Fast by my couch, congenial guest,
The wren has wove her mossy nest;
From busy scenes, and brighter skies,
To lurk with innocence, she flies;
Here hopes in safe repose to dwell,
Nor aught suspects the sylvan cell.
"At morn I take my custom'd round,
To mark how buds yon shrubby mound,
And every opening primrose count,
That trimly paints my blooming mount:
Or o'er the sculptures, quaint and rude,
That grace my gloomy solitude,
I teach in winding wreaths to stray Fantastic ivy's gadding spray.
"At eve, within yon studious nook,
I ope my brass-embossed book,
Portray'd with many a holy deed
Of martyrs, crown'd with heavenly meed :
Then as my taper waxes dim,
Chant, ere I sleep, my measur'd hymn;
And at the close, the gleams behold
Of parting wings bedropt with gold.
"While such pure joys my bliss create,
Who would but smile at guilty state?
Who would but wish his holy lot
In calm Oblivion's humble grot?
Who but would cast his pomp away,
To take my staff, and amice gray;
And to the world's tumultuous stage Prefer the blameless hermitage ?"
Headley remarks, too, that the leading idea of these lines was suggested by an account of the life of a peasant in Phineas Fletcher's "Purple Island." Dr Mant agrees with him; but we see small reason or none for thinking so, and believe that the "leading idea," which is obvious to all mankind, was suggested to Warton many hundred times during his walks in the Forest of Whichwood. Fletcher's stanzas, however, are" beautiful exceedingly". as these two declare.
"His certain life that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content:
The smooth leaved beeches on the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noon-tide rage is spent:
His life is neither tost on boisterous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease;
Pleased and full blest he lives where he his God can please.
"His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps, While by his side his faithful spouse hath place, His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively picture of his father's face;
Never his humble house or state torment him,
Lesse he could like, if lesse his God had sent him,
And when he dies, green turfs -with grassie tomb content him."
Joseph and Thomas Warton, as all the world once knew, were most affectionate brothers-and Tom seldom left Oxford but to visit Joe at Winchester, which he did annually as long as he lived, and where he was the delight of the boys, writing for them their themes and tasks, and mingling with their amusements till the very last. Before Joseph's elevation to the mastership, he went abroad with the Duke of Bolton, and on that occasion Thomas indited the beautiful lines, "Sent to a Friend on his leaving a favourite Cottage in Hampshire."
"Ah mourn, thou lov'd retreat! No more Shall classic steps thy scenes explore! When morn's pale rays but faintly peep O'er yonder oak-crown'd airy steep, Who now shall climb its brows to view The length of landscape, ever new, Where Summer flings, in careless pride, Her varied vesture far and wide! Who mark, beneath, each village-charm, Or grange, or elm-encircled farm:
The flinty dove-cote's crowded roof,
Watch'd by the kite that sails aloof:
The tufted pines, whose umbrage tall
Darkens the long-deserted hall:
The veteran beech, that on the plain
Collects at eve the playful train:
The cot that smokes with early fire,
The low-roof'd fane's embosom'd spire!
"Who now shall indolently stray
Through the deep forest's tangled way;
Pleas'd at his custom'd task to find
The well known hoary-tressed hind,
That toils with feeble hands to glean
Of wither'd boughs his pittance mean!
Who mid thy nooks of hazle sit,
Lost in some melancholy fit;
And listening to the raven's croak,
The distant flail, the falling oak!
Who, through the sunshine and the
shower,
Descry the rainbow-painted tower?
Who, wandering at return of May,
Catch the first cuckow's vernal lay?
Who musing waste the summer hour,
Where high o'er-arching trees embower
The grassy lane, so rarely pac'd,
With azure flow'rets idly grac'd!
Unnotic'd now, at twilight's dawn
Returning reapers cross the lawn;
Nor fond attention loves to note
The wether's bell from folds remote:
While, own'd by no poetic eye,
Thy pensive evenings shade the sky!
"For lo! the Bard who rapture found
In every rural sight or sound;
Whose genius warm, and judgment chaste,
No charm of genuine nature pass'd;
Who felt the Muse's purest fires,
Far from thy favour'd haunt retires :
Who peopled all thy vocal bowers
With shadowy shapes, and airy powers.
"Behold, a dread repose resumes,
As erst, thy sad sequester'd glooms!
From the deep dell, where shaggy roots
Fringe the rough brink with wreathed
shoots,
Th' unwilling genius flies forlorn,
His primrose chaplet rudely torn.
With hollow shriek the nymphs forsake
The pathless copse and hedge-row brake:
Where the delv'd mountain's headlong
Its chalky entrails opens wide,
On the green summit, ambush'd high,
No longer Echo loves to lie.
No pearl-crown'd maids with wily look,
Rise beckoning from the reedy brook.
Around the glow-worm's glimmering bank,
No fairies run in fiery rank;
Nor brush, half-seen, in airy tread
The violet's unprinted head.
But Fancy, from the thickets brown,
The glades that wear a conscious frown,
The forest-oaks, that, pale and lone,
Nod to the blast with hoarser tone,
Rough glens, and sullen waterfalls,
Her bright ideal offspring calls.
"So by some sage enchanter's spell, (As old Arabian fablers tell,) Amid the solitary wild, Luxuriant gardens gaily smil'd: From sapphire rocks the fountains stream'd,
With golden fruit the branches beam'd;
Fair forms, in every wondrous wood,
Or lightly tripp'd, or solemn stood;
And oft, retreating from the view,
Betray'd, at distance, beauties new:
While gleaming o'er the crisped bowers
Rich spires arose, and sparkling towers.
If bound on service new to go,
The master of the magic show,
His transitory charm withdrew,
Away th' illusive landscape flew :
Dun clouds obscur'd the groves of gold,
Blue lightning smote the blooming mould :
In visionary glory rear'd,
The gorgeous castle disappeared; And a bare heath's unfruitful plain Usurp'd the wizard's proud domain." We call these beautiful lines; nor does it detract much from their merit that they have little or no claim to origina
lity for if much of the images be borrowed from books, as much is taken from nature, and the whole is finely fused together by an affectionate heart and a glowing fancy, and comes from the process, Poetry. The close was, perhaps, imitated from Akenside—
The adventurous hero, bound on hard ex-
ploits,
Beholds with glad surprise, by secret spells
Of some kind sage, the patron of his toils,
A visionary paradise disclosed
Amid the dubious wild," &c.
But Akenside imitated Addison, and of the three fine pictures, Addison's is the finest as you will confess. We have it by heart. "We are every where entertained with pleasing shows and apparitions; we discover imaginary glories in the heavens and in the earth, and see some of their visionary beauty poured out on the whole creation. But what a rough unsightly sketch of nature should we be entertained with, did all her colouring disappear, and the several distinctions of light and shade vanish? In short, our souls are at present delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing delusion, and we walk about like the enchanted hero in a romance, who sees beautiful castles, woods, and meadows, and at the same time hears the warbling of birds and purling of streams; but, upon the finishing of some secret spell, the fantastic scene breaks up, and the disconsolate knight finds himself on a barren heath, or in a solitary forest."
It is something—much—to deserve the name of a descriptive Poet even of the lowest order. No man can describe natural objects well, without some feeling of their beauty-without the power of re-awakening in himself that feeling, by an act of the imagination. The feeling keeps him to the truth, and inspires him to paint it. And he who has this power of feeling is so far a Poet. He who has it not, or in whom it is faint and fluctuating, may have no inconsiderable pleasure, even beyond that of the senses, in the charms of nature; but in attempting to describe them, he makes but sorry work of it, and the more gorgeous his imagery, and the more laboriously gathered, the more prosaic is his picture. Often nowa-days they who have little or no knowledge of nature, and therefore
who can have little or no pleasure in her appearances, try to deceive themselves into the belief that they are haunted-possessed by a sense of her most potent charms, and to escape the tame assume the intense! Such gentry would despise Warton's lines "On the approach of Summer." But you will not despise them-you will read them with delight.
"Oft when thy season, sweetest queen, Has dress'd the groves in liv'ry green; When in each fair and fertile field Beauty begins her bow'r to build! While Evening, veil'd in shadows brown, Puts her matron-mantle on,
And mists in spreading streams convey More fresh the fumes of new-shorn hay: Then, goddess, guide my pilgrim feet Contemplation hoar to meet,
As slow he winds in museful mood,
Near the rush'd marge of Cherwell's
flood;
Or o'er old Avon's magic edge,
Whence Shakspeare cull'd the spiky sedge,
All playful yet, in years unripe,
To frame a shrill and simple pipe.
There thro' the dusk but dimly seen,
Sweet ev'ning-objects intervene :
His wattled cotes the shepherd plants,
Beneath her elm the milk-maid chants,
The woodman, speeding home, awhile
Rests him at a shady stile.
Nor wants there fragrance to dispense
Refreshment o'er my soothed sense;
Nor tangled woodbine's balmy bloom,
Nor grass besprent to breathe perfume:
Nor lurking wild-thyme's spicy sweet
To bathe in dew my roving feet:
Nor wants there note of Philomel,
Nor sound of distant tinkling bell:
Nor lowings faint of herds remote,
Nor mastiff's bark from bosom'd cot:
Rustle the breezes lightly borne,
O'er deep embattled ears of corn:
Round ancient elm, with humming noise,
Full loud the chaffer-swarms rejoice.
Meantime, a thousand dyes invest
The ruby Chambers of the West!
That all aslant the village tow'r
A mild reflected radiance pour,
While, with the level-streaming rays
Far seen its arched windows blaze:
And the tall grove's green top is dight
In russet tints, and gleams of light:
So that the gay scene by degrees
Bathes my blithe heart in ecstacies;
And Fancy to my ravish'd sight
Portrays her kindred visions bright.
At length the parting light subdues
My softened soul to calmer views,
And fainter shapes of pensive joy,
As twilight dawns, my mind employ,
Till from the path I fondly stray
In musings lap'd, nor heed the way;
Wandering through the landscape still,
Till Melancholy has her fill;
And on each moss-wove border damp
The glow-worm hangs his fairy lamp.
"But when the sun, at noontide hour,
Sits throned in his highest tow'r;
Me, heart-rejoicing goddess, lead
To the tann'd haycock in the mead:
To mix in rural mood among
The nymphs and swains, a busy throng;
Or, as the tepid odours breathe,
The russet piles to lean beneath :
There as my listless limbs are thrown
On couch more soft than palace down,
I listen to the busy sound
Of mirth and toil that hums around;
And see the team shrill tinkling pass,
Alternate o'er the furrow'd grass.
"But ever, after summer shower,
When the bright Sun's returning power,'
With laughing beam has chased the storm,
And cheered reviving Nature's form;
By sweet-brier hedges, bathed in dew,
Let me my wholesome path pursue;
There issuing forth the frequent snail
Wears the dank way with slimy trail,
While, as I walk, from pearled bush
The sunny sparkling drop I brush;
And all the landscape fair I view
Clad in robe of fresher hue;
And so loud the blackbird sings,
That far and near the valley rings.
From shelter deep of shaggy rock
The shepherd drives his joyful flock;
From bowering beach the mower blithe
With new-born vigour grasps the scythe;
While o'er the smooth unbounded meads
His last faint gleam the rainbow spreads.
But ever against restless heat,
Bear me to the rock-arched seat,
O'er whose dim mouth an ivy'd oak
Hangs nodding from the low-brow'd rock;
Haunted by that chaste nymph alone,
Whose waters cleave the smoothed stone;
Which, as they gush upon the ground,
Still scatter misty dews around;
A rustic, wild, grotesque alcove,
Its side with mantling woodbines wove;
Cool as the cave where Clio dwells,
Whence Helicon's fresh fountain wells;
Or noon-tide grot where Sylvan sleeps
In hoar Lyceum's piny steeps.
"Me, goddess, in such cavern lay, While all without is scorch'd in day; Sore sighs the weary swain, beneath His with'ring hawthorn on the heath; The drooping hedger wishes eve, In vain, of labour short reprieve! Meantime, on Afric's glowing sand, Smote with keen heat, the trav`ller stands; Low sinks his heart, while round his eye Measures the scenes that boundless lie,
|