Hath given his honourable name on earth,

His nights of innocent sleep, his hopes of heaven: When all his triumphs and his deeds of blood,

The fretful changes of his feverish pride;

His midnight murders and perfidious plots,
Are but a tale of years so long gone by,

That they who read distrust the hideous truth,..
Willing to let a charitable doubt

Abate their horror; Grenville, even then

Thy memory will be fresh among mankind!

Afric with all her tongues will speak of thee,
With Wilberforce and Clarkson, he whom Heaven,

To be the apostle of this holy work

Raised up and strengthen'd, and upheld through all
His arduous toil. To end the glorious task,
That blessed, that redeeming deed was thine :
Be it thy pride in life, thy thought in death,
Thy praise beyond the tomb. The statesman's fame
Will fade, the conqueror's laurel crown grow sere;
Fame's loudest trump upon the ear of Time
Leaves but a dying echo. They alone

Are held in everlasting memory,

Whose deeds partake of heaven, Long ages hence

Nations unborn, in cities that shall rise

Along the palmy coast, will bless thy name;

And Senegal and secret Niger's shore,

And Calabar, no longer startled then

With sounds of murder, will, like Isis now,

Ring with the songs that tell of Grenville's praise.

1810.

Botany-Bay Eclogues.

Where a sight shall shuddering Sorrow find,
Sad as the ruins of the human mind.

BOWLES.

BOTANY-BAY ECLOGUES.

ELINOR.

Time, Morning.

Scene, the Shore..

ONCE more to daily toil, once more to wear
The livery of shame, once more to search
With miserable task this savage shore!
O thou, who mountest so triumphantly
In yonder Heaven, beginning thy career
Of glory, O thou blessed Sun! thy beams
Fall on me with the same benignant light.
Here, at the furthest limits of the world,
And blasted as I am with infamy,

As when in better years poor ELINOR
Gazed on thy glad uprise with eye undimm'd
By guilt and sorrow, and the opening morn
Woke her from quiet sleep to days of peace..