Lo, by thy charming rod all breathing things
Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd,
And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou spar'st, alas! who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, O come, but with that face
To inward light which thou art wont to show,
With fained solace ease a true-felt woe,
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace,
Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath,
I long to kiss the image of my death.
peared on the same subject. And his admirers may safely defy the most bigoted and industrious scholars to produce, from the collected works of all antiquity, an invocation of such transcendant merit :
Since I am thine, O come, &c.
In the original spirit of the Greek Epigram, the following lines are composed, and, as I have been informed, were intended to have been placed under a statue of Somnus, in the garden of the late learned James Harris, Esq. of Salisbury. It will be no derogation to their beauties to compare them with the conclusion of Drummond's Son
Somne veni, et quanquam certissima mortis imago es,
Consortem cupio te tamen esse tori!
Huc ades, haud abiture cito: nam sic sine vitâ
Vivere, quam suave est, sic sine morte mori!
It may be necessary to inform some readers, that they are written by the present Poet Laureat*. In Popham's Selecta Poemata, p. 57, they occur; but they appear to have undergone a revisal considerably for the better, in the copy from which I have printed them. A translation of them is to be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1775, p. 144.
* That is, the late Thomas Warton. Editor.
CLEAR Anker, on whose silver-sanded shore,
My soul-shrin'd saint, my fair Idea, lies,
O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore
Thy crystal stream refined by her eyes,
Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the Spring
Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers,
Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing
Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers;
Say thus, fair brook, when thou shalt see thy queen,
Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand'ring years;
And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft had been,
And here to thee he sacrific'd his tears :
Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone,
And thou, sweet Anker, art my Helicon *.
* Drayton has here, in the compass of fourteen lines only, been very profuse of fine compound epithets. Silver-sanded shore, soulshrined saint, milk white swans, myrrh-breathing Zephyr, nectardropping showers, dew-impearled flowers. Browne compliments Drayton as the swain
Who on the banks of Ancor tun'd his pipe.
See B. I. Song v. p. 179.
KNOW that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In Time's great periods shall return to nought,
That fairest states have fatal nights and days.
I know that all the Muses' heavenly lays,
With toil of sp'rit which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,
And that nought lighter is than airy praise.
I know frail beauty like the purple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords,
That love a jarring is of minds accords,
Where Sense and Will envassal Reason's power:
Know what I list, all this can not me move,
But that (oh me!) I both must write and love.
RESTORE thy tresses to the golden ore;
Yield Cytherea's son those arks of love;
Bequeath the heavens the stars that I adore,
And to th' orient do thy pearls remove.
Yield thy hands pride unto the ivory white,
T' Arabian odours give thy breathing sweet;
Restore thy blush unto Aurora bright,
To Thetis give the honour of thy feet.
The fairest states have fatal nights and days.] Fatal here means destined by the Fates, like the word fatalis in Latin:
Non licuit fines Italos, fataliaque arva
Nec tecum Ausonium, quicumque est, quærere Tybrim.
Let Venus have thy graces her resign'd,
And thy sweet voice give back unto the spheres;
But yet restore thy fierce and cruel mind
To Hyrcan tigers and to ruthless bears.
Yield to the marble thy hard heart again,
So shalt thou cease to plague, and I to pain.
SINCE there's no help, come, let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows;
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
My Lute, be as thou wast, when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds on thee their ramage did bestow.
Sith that dear voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which used in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphan wailings to the fainting ear;
Each stop a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear,
Be therefore silent as in woods before:
Or if that any hand to touch thee deign,
Like widow'd turtle still her loss complain.
immelodious.] A word very harmonious and uncom
Milton uses "ineloquent," Paradise Lost, VIII. 219.
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