. Myce is in eternal silence bound, Can that arm measure with an arm divine? Come forth, in Beauty's excellence arrayed, And be the grandeur of thy power displayed; Put on omnipotence, and, frowning, make The spacious round of the creation shake; Despatch thy vengeance, bid it overthrow Triumphant Vice, lay lofty tyrants low, And crumble them to dust. When this is done, I grant thy safety lodged in thee alone; Of thee thou art, and may'st undaunted stand Behind the buckler of thine own right hand. Fond man! the vision of a moment made! Dream of a dream! and shadow of a shade! What worlds hast thou produced, what creatures framed, What insects cherished, that thy God is blamed? When, pained with hunger, the wild raven's brood Loud calls on God,* importunate for food; Unmindful she that some unhappy tread How rich the peacock !t what bright glories run Who taught the hawk to find, in seasons wise, Perpetual summer, and a change of skies? When clouds deform the year, she mounts the wind, Shoots to the south, nor fears the storm behind; The sun returning, she returns again, Lives in his beams, and leaves ill days to men. Though strong the hawk, though practised well to fly,s An eagle drops her in a lower sky: Who hears their cry, who grants their hoarse re- The unslaughtered host, enjoys the promised gore. quest, And still the clamour of the craving nest? And borrow life from an indulgent sky: Another argument that Moses was the author is, that most of the creatures here mentioned are Egyptian. The reason given why the raven is particularly mentioned as an object of the care of Drovidence is, because by her clamorous and Importunate voice she particularly seems always calling upon it. And since there were ravens on the Nile more clamorous than the rest of that species, those probably are meant in this place. There are many instances of this bird's stupidity: let two suffice. First, it covers its head in the reeds, and thinks itself out of sight. Secondly, They that go in the pursuit of them draw the skin of an ostrich's neck on one hand, which proves a sufficient lure o take them with the other. Knowest thou how many moons, by me assigned, Roll o'er the mountain goat and forest hind,¶ • Here is marked another peculiar quality of this creatura, which neither flies nor runs directly, but has a motion com posed of both, and using its wings as sails, makes great speed + Xenophon says, Cyrus had horses that could overtake the goat and the wild ass, but none that could reach this creature. A thousand golden ducats, or an hundred camels, was the stated price of a horse that could equal their speed. Though this bird is but just mentioned in my author, I could not forbear going a little further, and spreading those beautiful plumes (which are shut up) into half a dozen lines. The circumstance I have marked of his opening his plumes to the sun is true: Expandit colores adversa marim sole, quia sic fulgentius radiant. Plin. lx. c. 20. § Thuanus (De re Accip.) mentions a hawk that flew froma Paris to London in a night. And the Egyptians, in regard to its swiftness, made it their symbol for the wind; for which reason we may suppose the hawk, as well as the crow above, to have been a bird of note in Egypt. I The eagle is said to be of so acute a sight, that when she is so high in the air that man can not see her, she can discern the smallest fish under water. My author accurately understood the nature of the creatures he describes, and seems to have been a naturalist as well as a poet, which the next note will They have so little brain, that Heliogabalus had six hundred confirm. heads for his supper. Here we may see that our judicious as well as sublime author just touches the points of distinction in each creature, and then hastens to another. A description is exact when you can uot add, but what is common to another thing; nor withdraw, out something peculiarly belonging to the thing described. A keness is lost in too much description, as a meaning often in touch ustration The meaning of this question is, Knowest thou the time and circumstances of their bringing forth for to know the time only was easy, and had nothing extraordinary in it; but the circumstance had something peculiarly expressave of God's providence, which makes the question proper in this place. Pliny observes, that the hind with young is by instinct direct ed to a certain herb called Seselis, which facilitates the birth. Thunder also (which looks like the more immediate hand of While pregnant, they a mother's load sustain? Will the tall reem, which knows no lord but me, Didst thou from service the wild ass discharge, His meal is on the range of mountains spread; Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest Providence) has the same effect, Ps. xxix. In so early an age to observe these things may style our author a naturalist. By the pale moon they take their destined round,⚫ Mild is my Behemoth, though large his frame All over proof, and shut against a wound! His eye drinks Jordan up, when, fired with drought, He trusts to turn its current down his throat; Go to the Nile, and, from its frui.ful side, Shall pompous banquets swell with such a prize} And the bowl journey round his ample size? Or the debating merchant share the prey, And various limbs to various marts convey? Through his firm skull what steel its way can win? What forceful engine can subdue his skin? ⚫ Pursuing their prey by night is true of most wild beasts. particularly the lion, Psal. civ. 20. The Arabians have one among their five hundred names for the lion, which signifle the hunter by moonshine. 1 The taking the crocodile is most difficult. Diodorus says, they are not to be taken but by iron nets. When Augustus conquered Egypt, he struck a medal, the impress which was a crocodile chained to a palm-tree, with this inscription Nemo antea religavit. Fly far, and live; tempt not his matchless might; Am I a debtor? hast thou ever heard At full my huge Leviathan shall rise, Boast all his strength, and spread his wondrous size: Who, great in arms, e'er stript his shining mail, Or crowned his triumph with a single scale? Whose heart sustains him to draw near? Behold Destruction yawns;† his spacious jaws unfold, And, marshalled round the wide expanse, disclose Teeth edged with death, and crowding rows on rows: What hideous fangs on either side arise! His bulk is charged with such a furious soul, | Far round are fatal damps of terror spread, In vain may death in various shapes invade, His pastimes like a caldron boil the flood, And blacken ocean with a rising mud; The billows feel him as he works his way, His hoary footsteps shine along the sea; The foam high-wrought, with white divides the green, And distant sailors point where death has been. His like earth bears not on her spacious face; Alone in nature stands his dauntless race, For utter ignorance of fear renowned: In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around; Makes every swoln disdainful heart subside, And holds dominion o'er the sons of Pride. Then the Chaldean eased his labouring breast, With full conviction of his crime oppressed. "Thou can'st accomplish all things, Lord of might! And every thought is naked to thy sight: • His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. I think this And strikes the distant hills with transient light, gives us as great an image of the thing it would express as • This alludes to a custom of this creature, which is when sated with fish, to come ashore and sleep among the reeds. The crocodile's mouth is exceeding wide. When he gapes, says Pliny, sit totum os. Martial says to his old woman, Curn comparata rictibus tuis ora Niliacus habet crocodilus augusta. So that the expression there is barely just. ¡This too is nearer truth than at first view may be imagined. The crocodile, say the naturalists, lying long under water, and being there forced to hold its breath, when it emerges, the breath long repressed is hot, and bursts out so violently, that it resembles fire and smoke. The horse suppresses not his breath by any means so long, neither is he so fierce and animated; yet the most correct of poets ventures to use the same metaphor concerning him. Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem. By this and the foregoing note, I would caution against a false opinion of the Eastern boldness, from passages in them ill un erstoo can enter the thought of man. It is not improbable that the Egyptians stole their hieroglyphic for the morning, which is the crocodile's eye, from this passage, though no commentator I have seen mentions it. It is easy to conceive how the Egyp tians should be both readers and admirers of the writings of Moses, whom I suppose the author of this poem. I have observed already that three or four of the creatures here described are Egyptian; the two last are notoriously so; habitants of the Nile; and on these two it is that our author they are the river-horse and the crocodile, those celebrated inchiefly dwells. It would have been expected from an author more remote from that river than Moses, in a catalogue of the two largest works of his hand, viz. the elephant and the creatures produced to magnify their Creator, to have dwelt on whale. This is so natural an expectation, that some come mentators have rendered behemoth and leviathan the elephant and whale, though the descriptions in our author will not ad mit of it; but Moses being, as we may well suppose, unger an immediate terror of the hippopotamus and crocodile, from their daily mischiefs and ravages around him, it is ve` y accountable why he should permit them to take place. Resignation. IN TWO PARTS. AND A POSTSCRIPT. TO MRS. B****· My soul shall be satisfied, even as it were with marrow and fatness; when my mouth praiseth thee with joyful PART I THE days how few, how short the years, Each leaving as it swiftly flies, They who the longest lease enjoy, Numbers there are who feel this truth And am I not to these akin? Conscious of Nature in decline, Permit me, Madam! ere to you To touch on felt Infirmity, Sad sister of Decay. One world deceased, another born, Like Noah they behold, O'er whose white hairs and furrowed brows Happy the patriarch! he rejoiced My second world, though gay the scene, To me this brilliant age appears Near all with whom I lived and smiled, And with them died my joys: the grave And closed against this feeble frame Cruel to spare! condemned to life! What shall I write? Thalia tell; A choice of moment high inspire, Psalm Ixil. 6 Beyond the themes which most admire, Are themes, which, in a world of wo, Amidst the storms of life support A calm unshaken mind, O Resignation! yet unsung, Beneath life's evening solemn shade I dedicate my page To thee, thou safest guard of youth! All other duties crescents are How rarely filled! the love divine This the first lesson which we want, A melancholy truth! for know, The distance greatly would decrease "Twixt haman and divine. But though full noble is my theme, The task I dread: dare I to leave How proud the poet's billows swell! A boast how vain! what wrecks abound! Dead bards stench every coast. What then am I? shall I presume, On such a moulten wing, Above the general wreck to rise When nightingales, when sweetest bards, To summer's animating heats, Yet write I must; a lady* sues; But you a stranger will excuse, The ghost of Grief deceased ascends, Too well he knows the twisted strings Those tears you pour his eyes have shed; Thus Nature, loud as Virtue, bids But what can heart or nead suggest? Through truths austere to peace we work What are we? whence? for what? and whither? But Thought, bright daughter of the Skies! · Mrs. M Thought is our armour; 'Tis the mind's When, sent by Fate, we meet our foes It plucks the frightful mask from ills, Affection frail! trained up by Sense, Thought winds its fond erroneous stream To nourish rich immortal blooms, Whence throngs, in ecstacy, look down All withers here; who most possess Are losers by their gain; Stung by full proof, that, bad at best, Life's idle, all is vain: Vain, in its course, life's murm'ring stream; Did not its course offend, But murmur cease, life, then, would seem How wretched! who, through cruel fate, With the poor alms this world affords, Had not the Greek his world mistook, Of earth's revenue would you state A full account and fair? We hope, and hope, and hope, then cast Since vain all here, all future, vast, Embrace the lot assigned; Heaven wounds to heal; its frowns are friends; Its strokes severe most kind. But in lapsed nature rooted deep, And on fools' errands in the dark, Bids us for ever pains deplore, |