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Myce is in eternal silence bound,
And all my soul falls prostrate to the ground."
He ceased: when, lo! again the' Almighty spoke;
The same dread voice from the black whirlwind
broke!

Can that arm measure with an arm divine?
And can'st thou thunder with a voice like mine?
Or in the hollow of thy hand contain
The bulk of waters, the wide-spreading main,
When, mad with tempests, all the billows rise
In all their rage, and dash the distant skies?

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
May crush her young in their neglected bed:
What time she skims along the field with speed,*
She scorns the rider and pursuing steed.t

How rich the peacock !t what bright glories run
From plume to plume, and vary in the sun!
He proudly spreads them to the golden ray,
Gives all his colours, and adorns the day;
With conscious state the spacious round displays,
And slowly moves amid the waving blaze.

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:
An eagle, when, deserting human sight,
She seeks the sun in her unwearied flight:
Did thy command her yellow pinion lift
So high in air, and seat her on the clift,
Where far above thy world she dwells alone,
And proudly makes the strength of rocks her own;
Thence wide o'er nature takes her dread survey,
And with a glance predestinates her prey ?ll
She feasts her young with blood, and, hovering o'er

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?
Who in the stupid ostricht has subdued
A parent's care, and fond inquietude?
While far she flies, her scattered eggs are found,
Without an owner on the sandy ground;
Cast out on fortune, they at mercy lie,

And borrow life from an indulgent sky:
Adopted by the Sun, in blaze of day,
They ripen under his prolific ray;

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?
They bend in anguish, and cast forth their pain.
Hale are their young, from human frailties freed,
Walk unsustained, and unassisted feed:
They live at once, försake the dam's warm side,
Take the wide world, with Nature for their guide;
Bound o'er the lawn, or seek the distant glade,
And find a home in each delightful shade.

Will the tall reem, which knows no lord but me,
Low at the crib, and ask an alms of thee?
Submit his unworn shoulder to the yoke,
Break the stiff clod, and o'er thy furrow smoke?
Since great his strength, go trust him, void of care,
Lay on his neck the toil of all the year;
Bid him bring home the seasons to thy doors,
And cast his load among the gathered stores.

Didst thou from service the wild ass discharge,
And break his bonds, and bid him live at large;
Through the wide waste, his ample mansion, roam,
And lose himself in his unbounded home?
By Nature's hand magnificently fed,

His meal is on the range of mountains spread;
As in pure air aloft he bounds along,
He sees in distant smoke the city throng;
Conscious of freedom, scorns the smothered train,
The threatening driver, and the servile rein.

Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest
With thunder his robust distended chest?
No sense of fear his dauntless soul allays;
"Tis dreadful to behold his nostrils blaze:
To paw the vale he proudly takes delight,
And triumphs in the fulness of his might:
High raised, he snuffs the battle from afar,
And burns to plunge amid the raging war;
And mocks at death, and throws his foam around,
And in a storm of fury shakes the ground.
How does his firm, his rising heart, advance
Full on the brandished sword and shaken lance
While his fixed eye-balls meet the dazzling shield,
Gaze, and return the lightning of the field!
He sinks the sense of pain in generous pride,
Nor feels the shaft that trembles in his side;
But neighs to the shrill trumpet's dreadful blast,
Till death, and when he groans, he groans his last.
But fiercer still, the lordly lion stalks,
Grimly majestic in his lonely walks:
When round he glares, all living creatures fly;
He clears the desart with his rolling eye.
Say, mortal, does he rouse at thy command,
And roar to thee, and live upon thy hand?
Dost thou for him in forests bend thy bow,
And to his gloomy den the morsel throw,
Where, bent on death, lie hid his tawny brood,
And, crouched in dreadful ambush, pant for blood;
Or stretched on broken limbs, consume the day,
In darkness wrapt, and slumber o'er their prey?

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,⚫
And lash their sides and furious tear the ground
Now shrieks and dying groans the desart fill ;
They rage, they rend; their ravenous jaws distil
With crimson foam; and when the banquet's o'e
They stride away, and paint their steps with gora
In flight alone the shepherd puts his trust,
And shudders at the talon in the dust.

Mild is my Behemoth, though large his frame
Smooth is his temper, and repressed his flame;
While unprovoked. This native of the flood
Lifts his broad foot, and puts ashore for food:
Earth sinks beneath him as he moves along
To seek the herbs, and mingle with the throng.
See, with what strength his hardened loins are
bound,

All over proof, and shut against a wound!
How like a mountain cedar moves his tail!
Nor can his complicated sinews fail.
Built high and wide, his solid bones surpass
The bars of steel; his ribs are ribs of brass;
His port majestic, and his armed jaw,
Give the wide forest and the mountain law.
The mountains feed him; there the beasts admire
The mighty stranger, and in dread retire;
At length his greatness nearer they survey,
Graze in his shadow, and his eye obey.
The fens and marshes are his cool retreat,
His noontide shelter from the burning heat;
Their sedgy bosoms his wide couch are made,
And groves of willows give him all their shade.

His eye drinks Jordan up, when, fired with

drought,

He trusts to turn its current down his throat;
In lessened waves it creeps along the plain ;
He sinks a river, and he thirsts again.

Go to the Nile, and, from its frui.ful side,
Cast forth thy line into the swelling tide;
With slender hair Leviathant command,
And stretch his vastness on the loaded strand
Will he become thy servant? will he own
Thy lordly nod, and tremble at thy frown?
Or with his sport amuse thy leisure day,
And, bound in silk with thy soft maidens play?

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;
The bravest shrink to cowards in his sight;
The rashest dare not rouse him up:* who then
Shall turn on me, among the sons of men?

Am I a debtor? hast thou ever heard
Whence come the gifts which are on me conferred?
My lavish fruit a thousand vallies fills,
And mine the herds that graze a thousand hills:
Earth, sea, and air, all Nature is my own,
And stars and sun are dust beneath my throne;
And dar'st thou with the world's great Father vie,
Thou, who dost tremble at my creature's eye?

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!
And what a deep abyss between them lies!
Mete with thy lance, and with thy plumbet sound,
The one how long, the other how profound!

His bulk is charged with such a furious soul,
That clouds of smoke from his spread nostrils roll
As from a furnace; and, when roused his ire,
Fate issues from his jaws in streams of fire.
The rage of tempests, and the roar of seas,
Thy terror, this thy great superior please;
Strength on his ample shoulder sits in state;
His well joined limbs are dreadfully complete;
His flakes of solid flesh are slow to part;
As steel his nerves, as adamant his heart.
When, late awaked, he rears him from the floods,
And stretching forth his stature to the clouds,
Writhes in the sun aloft his scaly height,

| Far round are fatal damps of terror spread,
The mighty fear, nor blush to own their dread.
Large is his front; and when his burnished eyes
Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise.

In vain may death in various shapes invade,
The swift-winged arrow, the descending blade;
His naked breast their impotence defies;
The dart rebounds, the brittle faulchion flies.
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears;
The cumbered strand their wasted vollies strow;
His sport the rage and labour of the foe.

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:
But, oh! thy ways are wonderful, and lie
Beyond the deepest reach of mortal eye.
Oft have I heard of thine Almighty power,
But never saw thee till this dreadful hour.
O'erwhelmed with shame, the Lord of life I see,
Abhor myself, and give my soul to thee;
Nor shall my weakness tempt thine anger more:
Man is not made to question, but adore."

• 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,
Of man's too rapid race!

Each leaving as it swiftly flies,
A shorter in its place.

They who the longest lease enjoy,
Have told us with a sigh,
That to be born seems little more
Than to begin to die.

Numbers there are who feel this truth
With fears alarmed; and yet,
In life's delusion lulled asleep,
This weighty truth forget.

And am I not to these akin?
Age slumbers o'er the quill;
its honour blots whate'er it writes,
And am I writing still?

Conscious of Nature in decline,
And languor in my thoughts,
To soften censure and abate
Its rigour on my faults,

Permit me, Madam! ere to you
The promised verse I pay,

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
Too many suns have rolled.

Happy the patriarch! he rejoiced
His second world to see;

My second world, though gay the scene,
Can boast no charms for me.

To me this brilliant age appears
With desolation spread!

Near all with whom I lived and smiled,
Whilst life was life, are dead;

And with them died my joys: the grave
Has broken Nature's laws,

And closed against this feeble frame
Its partial cruel jaws :

Cruel to spare! condemned to life!
A cloud impairs my sight!
My weak hand disobeys my will,
And trembles as I write.

What shall I write? Thalia tell;
Say, long abandoned muse!
What field of fancy shall I range?
What subject shall I choose?

A choice of moment high inspire,
And rescue me from shame,
For doting on thy charms so late,
By grandeur in my theme.

Psalm Ixil. 6

Beyond the themes which most admire,
Which dazzle or amaze;
Beyond renowned exploits of war,
Bright charms, or empire's blaze,

Are themes, which, in a world of wo,
Can best appease our pain,
And in an age of gaudy guilt,
Gay Folly's flood restrain;

Amidst the storms of life support

A calm unshaken mind,
And with unfading laurels crown
The brow of the resigned.

O Resignation! yet unsung,
Untouched by former strains,
Though claiming every muse's smile,
And every poet's pains:

Beneath life's evening solemn shade

I dedicate my page

To thee, thou safest guard of youth!
Thou sole support of age!

All other duties crescents are
Of virtue faintly bright;
The glorious consummation thou!
Which fills her orb with light:

How rarely filled! the love divine
In evils to discern:

This the first lesson which we want,
The latest which we learn:

A melancholy truth! for know,
Could our proud hearts resign,

The distance greatly would decrease "Twixt haman and divine.

But though full noble is my theme,
Full urgent is my call
To soften sorrow, and forbid
The bursting tear to fall:

The task I dread: dare I to leave
Of human prose the shore,
And put to sea! a dangerous sea!
What throngs have sunk before!

How proud the poet's billows swell!
The God! the God! his boast;

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
And in my winter sing?

When nightingales, when sweetest bards,
Confine their charming song

To summer's animating heats,
Content to warble young.

Yet write I must; a lady* sues;
How shameful her request!
My brain in labour for dull rhyme!
Hers teeming with the best!

But you a stranger will excuse,
Nor scorn his feeble strain;
To you a stranger, but, through fate,
No stranger to your pain.

The ghost of Grief deceased ascends,
His old wound bleeds anew;
His sorrows are recalled to life
By those he sees in you:

Too well he knows the twisted strings
Of ardent hearts combined,
When rent asunder, how they bleed,
How hard to be resigned.

Those tears you pour his eyes have shed;
The pang you feel he felt;

Thus Nature, loud as Virtue, bids
His heart at yours to melt.

But what can heart or nead suggest?
What sad Experience say?

Through truths austere to peace we work
Our rugged gloomy way.

What are we? whence? for what? and whither?
Who know not needs must mourn:

But Thought, bright daughter of the Skies!
Can tears to triumph turn.

· Mrs. M

Thought is our armour; 'Tis the mind's
Impenetrable shield,

When, sent by Fate, we meet our foes
In sore Affliction's field:

It plucks the frightful mask from ills,
Forbids pale fear to hide,
Beneath that dark disguise a friend,
Whion turns Affection's tide.

Affection frail! trained up by Sense,
From Reason's channel strays,
And whilst it blindly points at peace,
Our peace to pain betrays.

Thought winds its fond erroneous stream
From daily-dying flowers,

To nourish rich immortal blooms,
In amaranthine bowers:

Whence throngs, in ecstacy, look down
On what once shocked their sight,
And thank the terrors of the past
For ages of delight.

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
Still vainer from its end.

How wretched! who, through cruel fate,
Have nothing to lament,

With the poor alms this world affords,
Deplorably content?

Had not the Greek his world mistook,
His wish had been most wise;
To be content with but one world,
Like him, we should despise.

Of earth's revenue would you state

A full account and fair?

We hope, and hope, and hope, then cast
The total up-despair.

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,
Blind Error domineers,

And on fools' errands in the dark,
Sends out our hopes and fears;

Bids us for ever pains deplore,
Our pleasures over-prize;
These oft persuade us to be weak,
Those urge us to be wise.

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