Illustrious race! sure to protect or please
With patriot freedom, or with courtly ease;
Blest with the graceful form, and tuneful mind,
To Oxford dear, as to the Muses kind!
Thy gifts, O Pomfret, we with wonder view,
And while we praise their beauties, think of you.
Who but a Venus could a Cupid send,
And who a Tully, but Minerva's friend?
A speechless Tully, lest he should commend
The praise you merit you refuse to hear;
No marble orator can wound your ear.
Mere statues, worse than statues we should be,
If Oxford's sons more silent were than he.
Scarce silent, and impatient of the stone,
He seems to thunder from his rostral throne:
He wakes the marble, by some Phidias taught,
And, eloquently dumb, he looks a thought.
With hopes and fears we tremble or rejoice,
Deceiv'd we listen, and expect a voice.
This station satisfies his noble pride,
Disdaining, but in Oxford, to reside.

Here safely we behold fierce Marius frown,
Glad that we have no Marius, save in stone.
So animated by the master's skill,
The Gaul, awe-stricken, dares not-cannot kill.
The sleeping Cupids happily exprest
The fiercer passions foreign to thy breast.
Long strangers to the laughter-loving dame,
They from Arcadia, not from Paphos, came.
Whene'er his lyre thy kindred Sidney strung,
The flocking Loves around their poet hung:
Whene'er he fought, they flutter'd by his side,
And stiffen'd into marble, when he died.
Half-dropt their quivers, and half-seal'd their eyes,
They only sleep:-for Cupid never dies.
"A sleeping Cupid!" cries some well-drest

smart.

His heart, whom such a prospect cannot move,
Is harder, colder, than the Marble-Love.
But Modesty rejects what Justice speaks:
-I see soft blushes stealing o'er their cheeks.
Not Phidian labours claim the verse alone,
The figur'd brass, or fine-proportion'd stone.
To make you theirs the sister Arts conspire,
You animate the canvas or the lyre:
A new creation on your canvas flows,
Life meets your hand, and from your pencil glows:
How swells your various lyre, or melts away,
While every Muse attends on every lay!

The bright contagion of Hesperian skies,
Burn'd in your soul, and lighten'd in your eyes,
To view what Raphael painted, Vinci plann'd,
And all the wonders of the classic land.
Proud of your charms, applauding Rome confest
Her own Cornelia's breathing in your breast.
The virtues, which each foreign realm renown,
You bore in triumph home, to grace your own.
Appelles thus, to form his finish'd piece,
The beauteous Pomfret of adoring Greece,
In one united, with his happy care,
The fair perfections of a thousand fair.

Tho' Virtue may with moral lustre charm,
Religion only can the bosom warm.

In thee Religion wakens all her fires,
Perfumes thy heart, and spotless soul inspires.
A Cato's daughter might of virtue boast,
Nobly to vice, though not to glory, lost:
A Pomfret, taught by piety to rise,
Looks down on glory, while she hopes the skies,
Angels with joy prepare the starry crown,
And seraphs feed a flame, so like their own.
One statue more let Rhedicina raise
To charm the present, brighten future days;
The sculptur'd column grave with Pomfret's name,
A column worthy of thy temple, Fame!
Praxiteles might such a form commend,
And borrow graces which he us'd to lend:
Where ease with beauty, force with softness meet,
Though mild, majestic, and though awful, sweet.
Of gold and elephant, on either hand,
Let Piety and Bounty, graceful, stand:
With fillets this, with roses that entwin'd,
And breathe their virtues on the gazer's mind.
Low at her feet, the sleeping Cupids plac'd,
By Marius guarded, and with Tully grac'd:
A monument of gratitude remain,
The bright Palladium of Minerva's fane.

2 Oxford.