A COUNTRY LIFE.

How blest the man who, in these peaceful plains,
Ploughs his paternal field; far from the noise,
The care, and bustle of a busy world!
All in the sacred, sweet, sequester'd vale
Of solitude, the secret primrose-path

Of rural life, he dwells; and with him dwells
Peace and content, twins of the sylvan shade,
And all the graces of the golden age.

Michael Bruce, 1746-'67.

THE IDEAL OF A STATE.

WHAT Constitutes a state?

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound,
Thick wall, or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-born baseness wafts perfume to pride :
No-men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued,
In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;

Men, who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain;
These constitute a state;

And sovereign Law, that with collected will

O'er thrones and globes elate,

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.

Smit by her sacred frown

The fiend Dissension like a vapor sinks,

And e'en the all-dazzling Crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.

Sir William Jones, 1746-'94

1

TO AN INFANT.

THERE, on the nurse's lap, a new-born child,
We saw thee weep while all around thee smiled;
So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep,

Thou still may'st smile, while all around thee weep.
Sir William Jones.

ODE TO THE CUCKOO.

SWEET bird thy bower is ever green,

Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,

No Winter in thy year!

O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.

John Logan, 1748-'88.

OSSIAN'S HYMN TO THE SUN.

O THOU whose beams the sea-girt earth array,
King of the sky and father of the day!

O Sun! what fountain hid from human eyes
Supplies thy circle round the radiant skies,
Forever burning and forever bright,

With heaven's pure fire and everlasting light?

COMPLAINT OF NATURE.

John Logan.

FEW are thy days and full of woe,

O man of woman born!

Thy doom is written, dust thou art,
And shalt to dust return.

Determined are the days that fly
Successive o'er thy head;
The number'd hour is on the wing
That lays thee with the dead.

John Logan.

RESIGNATION.

O GOD, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,
To thee, my only rock, I fly,
Thy mercy in thy justice praise.

Thy mystic mazes of thy will,
The shadows of celestial light,
Are past the powers of human skill;
But what the Eternal acts is right.

O teach me in the trying hour,
When anguish swells the dewy tear,
To still my sorrows, own thy power,
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear.

Thomas Chatterton, 1752-0.

THE PROPHECY.

THIS truth of old was sorrow's friend-
"Times at the worst will surely mend."
The difficulty's then to know

How long Oppression's clock can go;
When Britain's sons may cease to sigh,
And hope that their redemption's nigh.

Thomas Chatie to.

L'AMOUR TIMIDE.

Ir in that breast, so good, so pure,
Compassion ever loved to dwell,

Pity the sorrows I endure;

The cause I must not, dare not tell.

The grief that on my quiet preys,

That rends my heart, that checks my tongue,

I fear will last me all my days,

But feel it will not last me long.

Sir John H. Moore, 1756–'80.

MELANCHOLY.

YET still, enamor'd of the tender tale,

Pale Passion haunts thy grove's romantic gloom,
Yet still soft music breathes in every gale,
Still undecay'd the fairy garlands bloom,
Still heavenly incense fills each fragrant vale,
Still Petrarch's Genius weeps o'er Laura's tomb.
Thomas Russell, 1762-'88.

THE BEGGAR.

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man !

Whose trembling limbs have born him to your door, Whose days are dwindling to the shortest span, Oh! give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

These tattered clothes my poverty bespeak,

These hoary locks proclaim my lengthen'd years;
And many a furrow in my grief-worn cheek
Has been the channel to a stream of tears.

Thomas Moss-1808

RURAL SOUNDS.

Nor rurals sights alone, but rural sounds,
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore

The tone of languid nature. Mighty winds
That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood
Of ancient growth, make music not unlike
The dash of ocean on his winding shore,
And lull the spirit while they fill the mind,
Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast,
And all their leaves fast fluttering all at once.

William Cowper, 1731–1800.

PATRIOTISM.

ENGLAND, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
My country! and while yet a nook is left

Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime

Be fickle, and thy year, most part deformed
With dripping rains, or withered by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sulien skies
And fields without a flower for warmer France
With all her vines, nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers.
To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire
Upon thy foes, was never meant my task;
But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake
Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart
As any thunderer there.

William Cowper.

ENGLISH LIBERTY.

We love

THE king who loves the law, respects his bounds,
And reigns content within them; him we serve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free:
But recollecting still that he is man,

We trust him not too far. King though he be,
And king in England too, he may be weak,
And vain enough to be ambitious still;
May exercise amiss his proper powers,

He is ours

Or covet more than freemen choose to grant :
Beyond that mark is treason.
To administer, to guard, to adorn the state,
But not to warp or change it. We are his
To serve him nobly in the common cause,
True to the death, but not to be his slaves.

William Couper.

ON THE RECEIPT OF HIS MOTHER'S PICTURE.

OH that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away 1"