LOBSTER AND CRAB.
Francis Place, Esq.
-OR under rocks their food
VIRGIL'S TOMB BY MOON-LIGHT.
Joseph Wright.
No fairy rites, no funeral pomp I found,
No trophied walls, with wreaths of laurel round,
A mean, unhonour'd ruin faintly shew'd
The spot where once thy mausoleum stood:
Hardly the form remain'd—a nodding dome
O'ergrown with moss, is now all Virgil's tomb-
"Twas such a scene as gave a sad relief
To memory, in sober pensive grief;
Gloomy, unpleasing images it wrought;
No musing, soft complacency of thought;
For time had canker'd all and worn away
E'en the last mournful graces of decay—
Oblivion, hateful goddess, sat before,
And cover'd, with her dusky wings, the door.
THE mountain roars with dreadful thunders nigh, Now hurls a bursting cloud of cinders high, Involv'd in smoky whirlwinds to the sky;
With wide displosion to the starry frame,
Shoots fiery globes, and furious floods of flame;
Now from her bellowing caverns burst away
Vast piles of melted rocks, in open day.
Her shatter'd entrails wide the mountain
And deep as hell her burning centre glows.
LANDSCAPE-A FISHING PARTY.
WHEN with his lively ray the potent sun
Has pierc'd the streams, and rous'd the finny race,
Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair;
Chief should the western breezes curling play
And light o'er ether bear the shadowy clouds.
High to their fount, this day, amid the hills
And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brook,
The next pursue the rocky-channell'd maże,
Down to the river, in whose ample wave
Their little naïads love to sport at large.
LAUGHING GIRL.
Sir Joshua Reynolds.
COME, thou goddess, fair and frec,
In Heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing mirth,
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Mirth, and joy, and jollity,
Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimples sleek;
Sport, that wrinkled care derides,
And laughter, holding both his sides.
BEFORE his lord the ready spaniel bounds, Panting with hope he tries the furrow'd grounds But when the tainted gales the game betray, Couch'd close he lies, and meditates the prey.
A LANDSCAPE.
Francisco Mola.
DAVID WITH HIS SLING.
Carlo Dolci.
THE sword refus'd, and all the habiliments
Of war, which Israel's king had from his stores
With anxious care selected-Jesse's son
Retir'd, and thus his pray'r address'd to Heav'n-
'O thou, who in the plains of Bethlehem didst nerve
‹ Mine arm, else impotent, against the force
"Tremendous of the lion and the bear,
'Assist me in this harder conflict-Thou
'Alike canst save with many or with few :
'When thine own cause demands, thou canst impart
" Nerve, sinew, strength to him who shows most feeble
'This our forefathers saw, when Anatha's son
'Six hundred of the uncircumcised slew:
'This sling be as his goad! impell'd by thee
"The pebble from the brook shall find its way
'As forcibly and sure, as does the jav❜lin
Hurl'd by the mightiest arm, or as the bolt
Wing'd from thine own artillery in the skies
-I feel thy inspiration-and I go
"'Gainst the blasphemer, who with tongue profane
"Thee and thine armies scornful hath defy'd.'
WOODCOCKS AND KING-FISHER.
Moses Haughton.
THICK around
Thunders the sport of those, who with the gun,
And dog impatient bounding at the shot,
Worse than the season, desolate the fields;
And adding to the ruins of the year,
Distress the footed, or the feather'd game.
The woodcock flutters, how he wavering flies,
The wood resounds, he wheels, he drops, he dies.
PARTRIDGES.
Moses Haughton.
CAUGHT in the meshy snare, in vain they beat
Their idle wings, entangled more and more:
Nor on the surges of the boundless air,
Tho' borne triumphant, are they safe; the gun,
Glanc'd just, and sudden, from the fowler's eye,
O'ertakes their sounding pinions; and again,
Immediate, brings them from the tow'ring wing,
Dead to the ground, or drives them wide dispers'd,
Wounded, and wheeling various, down the wind.
LITTER OF FOXES.
From a celebrated Painting.
In genial spring, beneath the quiv'ing shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand;
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmov'd, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork and bending reed.
|