Long did the mighty Stagyrite retain The universal intellectual reign,
Saw his own country's short-liv'd leopard slain;
The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly,
Oftener renew'd his age, and saw that die.
Mecca itself, in spite of Mahomet, possest,
And, chac'd by a wild deluge from the East,
His monarchy new planted in the West.
But, as in time each great imperial race
Degenerates, and gives some new one place:
So did this noble empire waste,
Sunk by degrees from glories past,
And in the school-men's hands it perish'd quite at
Then nought but words it grew,
And those all barbarous too:
[last:
It perish'd, and it vanish'd there; [ty air! The life and soul, breath'd out, became but empThe fields, which answer'd well the ancients' plough,
Spent and out-worn, return no harvest now;
In barren age wild and unglorious lie,
And boast of past fertility,
The poor relief of present poverty.
Food and fruit we now must want,
Unless new lands we plant.
We break-up tombs with sacrilegious hands;
Old rubbish we remove ;
To walk in ruins, like vain ghosts, we love,
And with fond divining wands
We search among the dead For treasures buried;
Whilst still the liberal Earth does hold So many virgin-mines of undiscover'd gold.
Nature and causes, we shall see
That thus it needs must be
To things immortal, Time can do no wrong, And that which never is to die, for ever must be young.
DESTINY.
Fatum.
Hoc quoque fatale est sic ipsum expendero Manil. STRANGE and unnatural! let's stay and see This pageant of a prodigy.
Lo, of themselves th' enliven'd Chess-men move! Lo, the unbred, ill-organ'd pieces prove
As full of art and industry,
Of courage and of policy,
[we!
As we ourselves, who think there's nothing wise but
Here a proud Pawn I admire,
That, still advancing higher,
At top of all became
Another thing and name;
Here I'm amaz'd at th' actions of a Knight,
That does bold wonders in the fight;
Here I the losing party blame,
For those false moves that break the game, That to their grave, the bag, the conquer'd pieces bring, And, above all, th' ill-conduct of the Mated king.
Some wise-men, and some fools, we call; Figures, alas! of speech, for Destiny plays us all.
Me from the womb the midwife Muse did take:
She cut my navel, wash'd me, and mine head
With her own hands she fashioned;
She did a covenant with me make, [spake: And circumcis'd my tender soul, and thus she "Thou of my church shalt be;
Hate and renounce," said she,
[me.
"Wealth, honour, pleasures, all the world, for
Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,
Nor at th' exchange, shalt be, nor at the wrang-
ling bar:
Content thyself with the small barren praise,
That neglected verse does raise."
She spake, and all my years to come
Took their unlucky doom.
Their several ways of life let others chuse,
Their several pleasures let them use,
But I was born for love, and for a Muse.
With Fate what boots it to contend?
Such I began, such am, and so must end.
The star that did my being frame,
Was but a lambent flame,
And some small light it did dispense,
But neither heat nor influence.
No matter, Cowley! let proud Fortune see,
That thou canst her despise no less than she does
[thee.
Ill Fate assum'd a body thee t' affright,
And wrap'd itself i' th' terrours of the night:
"I'll meet thee at Philippi," said the sprite;
"I'll meet thee there," saidst thou,
With such a voice, and such a brow,
As put the trembling ghost to sudden flight;
It vanish'd, as a taper's light
Goes out when spirits appear in sight.
One would have thought 't had heard the morn、
ing crow,
Or seen her well-appointed star
Come marching up the eastern hill afar.
Nor durst it in Philippi's field appear,
But, unseen, attack'd thee there:
Had it presum❜d in any shape thee to oppose,
Thou would'st have forc'd it back upon thy foes:
Or slain 't, like Cæsar, though it be
A conqueror and a monarch mightier far than he.
What joy can human things to us afford,
When we see perish thus, by odd events,
Ill men, and wretched accidents,
The best cause and best man that ever drew a
When we see
The false Octavius and wild Antony,
God-like Brutus! conquer thee?
[sword?
What can we say, but thine own tragic word-
That Virtue, which had worship'd been by thee
As the most solid good, and greatest deity,
By this fatal proof became
An idol only, and a name.
Hold, noble Brutus! and restrain
The bold voice of thy generous disdain :
These mighty gulphs are yet
Too deep for all thy judgment and thy wit.
From thy strict rule some think that thou didst The time's set forth already which shall quell
Stiff Reason, when it offers to rebel;
swerve
Which these great secrets shall unseal,
And new philosophies reveal:
A few years more, so soon hadst thou not dy'd,
Would have confounded human Virtue's pride,
And show'd thee a God crucify'd.
Let all her gifts the portion be
Of Folly, Lust, and Flattery,
Fraud, Extortion, Calumny,
Murder, Infidelity,
Rebellion and Hypocrisy ;
Do thou not grieve, nor blush to be,
As all th' inspired tuneful men,
And all thy great forefathers, were, from Homer
down to Ben.
BRUTUS.
EXCELLENT Brutus! of all human race
The best, till Nature was improv'd by Grace;
Till men above themselves Faith raised more
Than Reason above beasts before.
Virtue was thy life's centre, and from thence
Did silently and constantly dispense
The gentle, vigorous influence
To all the wide and fair circumference;
And all the parts upon it lean'd so easily,
Obey'd the mighty force so willingly,
That none could discord or disorder see
In all their contrariety:
Each had his motion natural and free,
And the whole no more mov'd, than the whole
world, could be.
(Mistaken, honest men!) in Cæsar's blood;
What mercy could the tyrant's life deserve
From him, who kill'd himself rather than serve?
Th' heroic exaltations of good
Are so far from understood,
But as her beams reflected pass
Through our own Nature or Ill-custom's glass:
As 'tis no wonder, so,
If with dejected eye
In standing pools we seek the sky,
That stars, so high above,should seem to us below.
Can we stand by and see
Our mother robb'd, and bound, and ravish'd be,
Yet not to her assistance stir,
Pleas'd with the strength and beauty of the ra-
Or shall we fear to kill him, if before [visher?
The cancell'd name of friend he bore?
Ingrateful Brutus do they call?
Ingrateful Cæsar, who could Rome enthrall!
An act more barbarous and unnatural
(In th' exact balance of true virtue try'd)
Than his successor Nero's parricide!
We count them vice: alas! our sight's so ill,
That things which swiftest move seem to stand
We look not upon Virtue in her height, [still:
On her supreme idea, brave and bright,
In the original light;
There's none but Brutus could deserve
That all men else should wish to serve,
And Cæsar's usurp'd place to him should proffer;
None can deserve 't but he who would refuse the
offer.
TO DR. SCARBOROUGH. How long, alas! has our mad nation been Of epidemic war the tragic scene,
When Slaughter all the while
Seem'd, like its sea, embracing round the isle, With tempests, and red waves, noise, and affright!
Albion no more, nor to be nam'd from white!
What province or what city did it spare?
It, like a plague, infected all the air.
Sure the unpeopled land
Would now untill'd, desert, and naked stand,
Had God's all-mighty hand
At the same time let loose Diseases' rage
Their civil wars in man to wage.
But thou by Heaven wert sent
This desolation to prevent,
A med'cine, and a counter-poison, to the age.
Scarce could the sword dispatch more to the grave
Than thou didst save;
By wondrous art, and by successful care,
The ruins of a civil war thou dost alone repair!
The inundations of all liquid pain,
And deluge Dropsy, thou dost drain. Fevers so hot, that one would say, Thou might'st as soon hell-fires allay (The damn'd scarce more incurable than they) Thou dost so temper, that we find, Like gold, the body but refin'd, No unhealthful dross behind.
Who, whilst thy wondrous skill in plants they see, Fear lest the tree of life should be found out by thee.
The subtle Ague, that for sureness' sake
Takes its own times th' assault to make,
And at each battery the whole fort does shake,
When thy strong guards, and works, it spies,
Trembles for itself, and flies.
The cruel Stone, that restless pain,
That's sometimes roll'd away in vain,
But still, like Sysiphus's stone, returns again,
Thou break'st and meltest by learn'd juices' force,
(A greater work, though short the way appear,
Than Hannibal's by vinegar!)
Oppressed Nature's necessary course
It stops in vain; like Moses, thou Strik'st but the rock, and straight the waters freely flow.
And thy well-travell'd knowledge, too, does give
No less account of th' empire sensitive;
Chiefly of man, whose body is
That active soul's metropolis.
As the great artist in his sphere of glass
Saw the whole scene of heavenly motions pass;
So thou know'st all so well that 's done within,
As if some living crystal man thou 'dst seen.
Nor does this science make thy crown alone,
But whole Apollo is thine own;
His gentler arts, belov'd in vain by me,
Are wedded and enjoy'd by thee.
Thou 'rt by this noble mixture free
From the physician's frequent malady,
Fantastic incivility:
There are who all their patients' chagrin have,
As if they took each morn worse potions than they
[seize,
The Indian son of Lust (that foul disease
Which did on this his new-found world but lately
Yet since a tyranny has planted here,
As wide and cruel as the Spaniard there)
Is so quite rooted out by thee,
That thy patients seem to be
Restor'd, not to health only, but virginity.
The Plague itself, that proud imperial ill,
Which destroys towns, and does whole armies
kill,
From creeping moss to soaring cedar thou
Dost all the powers and several portions know,
Which father-Sun, and mother-Earth below,
On their green infants here bestow :
Canst all those magic virtues from them draw,
That keep Disease and Death in awe;
If thou but succour the besieged heart,
Calls all its poisons forth and does depart,
As if it fear'd no less thy art,
Than Aaron's incense, or than Phineas' dart.
What need there here repeated be by me
The vast and barbarous lexicon
Of man's infirmity?
At thy strong charms it must be gone Though a disease, as well as devil, were called
Legion.
Ah, learned friend! it grieves me, when I think
That thou with all thy art must die,
As certainly as I;
And all thy noble reparations sink [tality.
Into the sure-wrought mine of treacherous mor-
Like Archimedes, honourably in vain,
Thou hold'st out towns that must at last be ta'en,
And thou thyself, their great defender, slain.
Let's e'en compound, and for the present live,
'Tis all the ready-money Fate can give ;
Unbend sometimes thy restless care,
And let thy friends so happy be
T' enjoy at once their health and thee: Some hours, at least, to thine own pleasures spare: Since the whole stock may soon exhausted be, Bestow 't not all in charity.
Let Nature and let Art do what they please,
When all's done, life is an incurable disease.
He, since that toy his death,
[breath. Does fill all mouths, and breathes in all men's 'Tis true, the two immortal syllables remain; But, oh, ye learned men! explain What essence, what existence, this, What substance, whatsubsistence, what hypostasis, In six poor letters is!
In those alone does the great Cæsar live,
Through several orbs which one fair planet bear,
Where I behold distinctly, as I pass,
The hints of Galileo's glass,
I touch at last the spangled sphere:
Here all th' extended sky
Is but one galaxy,
"Tis all so bright and gay,
And the joint eyes of night make up a perfect day.
"Tis all the conquer'd world could give.
We poets, madder yet than all,
With a refin'd fantastic vanity,
Think we not only have, but give, eternity.
Fain would I see that prodigal,
Who his to morrow would bestow,
For all old Homer's life, e'er since he dy'd till 'Twas gaudy all; and rich in every part
Of essences, of gems; and spirit of gold
now!
Was its substantial mould,
Where am I now? Angels, and God is here;
An unexhausted ocean of delight
Swallows my senses quite,
And drowns all what, or how, or where!
Not Paul, who first did thither pass,
And this great world's Columbus was,
The tyrannous pleasure could express. Oh, 'tis too much for man! but let it ne'er be less!
Now into a gentle sea of rolling flame
I'm plung'd, and still mount higher there,
As flames mount up through air:
So perfect, yet so tame,
So great, so pure, so bright a fire,
Was that unfortunate desire,
The mighty Elijah mounted so on high,
That second man who leap'd the ditch where all
The rest of mankind fall,
And went not downwards to the sky!
With much of pomp and show
(As conquering kings in triumph go)
Did he to Heaven approach,
And wondrous was his way, and wondrous was hit
coach.
I pass by th' arched magazines which hold
Th'eternal stores of frost, and rain, and snow;
Dry and secure I go,
Nor shake with fear or cold:
Without affright or wonder
I meet clouds charg'd with thunder,
And lightnings, in my way,
Like harmless lambent fires, about my temples
play.
Drawn forth by chymic angels' art.
Here with moon-beams 'twas silver'd bright,
There double-gilt with the Sun's light;
And mystic shapes cut round in it,
Figures that did transcend a vulgar angel's wit.
The horses were of temper'd lightning made,
Of all that in Heaven's beauteous pastures feed
The noblest, sprightful'st breed ;
And flaming manes their necks array'd:
They all were shod with diamond,
Not such as here are found,
But such light solid ones as shine
On the transparent rocks o' th' Heaven crystal-
line.
TO THE NEW YEAR.
My faithful breast did cover,
GREAT Janus! (who dost,sure, my mysteries view
hen, when I was of late a wretched mortal lover. | With all thine eyes, yet think'st them all too few
If thy fore-face do see
No better things prepar'd for me, Than did thy face behind; If still her breast must shut against me be, (For 'tis not Peace that temple's gate does bind) Oh, let my life, if thou so many deaths a coming With thine old year its voyage take, [find, Borne down that stream of Time which no return can make !
Alas! what need I thus to pray? Th' old avaricious Year, Whether I would or no, will bear At least a part of me away: His well-hors'd troops, the Months, and Days,and Though never any where they stay, [Hours, Make in their passage all their prey; The Months, Days, Hours, that march i' th' rear Nought of value left behind. [can find All the good wine of life our drunken youth devours;
Sourness and lees, which to the bottom sink,
Remain for latter years to drink;
Until, some one offended with the taste,
The vessel breaks, and out the wretched relics run
at last..
If then, young Year ! thou needst must come,
(For in Time's fruitful womb
The birth beyond its time can never tarry,
Nor ever can miscarry)
Chuse thy attendants well; for 'tis not thee
We fear, but 'tis thy company:
Let neither Loss of Friends, or Fame, or Liberty,
Nor pining Sickness, nor tormenting Pain,
Nor Sadness, nor uncleanly Poverty,
Be seen among thy train:
Nor let thy livery be
Either black Sin, or gaudy Vanity:
Nay, if thou lov'st me, gentle Year! Let not so much as Love be there; Vain fruitless love, I mean; for, gentle Year! Although I fear,
There's of this caution little need,
Yet, gentle Year! take heed
How thou dost make
Nascentes Morimur.
WE'RE ill by these grammarians us'd; We are abus'd by words, grossly abus'd: From the maternal tomb
Since, willing or unwilling, we must do it;
They feel least cold and pain who plunge at once
into it.
To the grave's fruitful womb, We call here Life; but Life 's a
That nothing here can truly claime
Such a mistake:
Such love I mean, alone,
As by thy cruel predecessors has been shown;
For, though I'ave too much cause to doubt it, But these fantastic errours of our dream
I fain would try for once if life can live with
out it.
:
This wretched inn, where we scarce stay to bait,
We call our dwelling-place;
We call one step a race:
But angels, in their full enlighten'd state,
Angels, who live, and know what 'tis to be;
Who all the nonsense of our language see;
Who speak things, and our words, their ill-
drawn pictures, scorn;
When we, by a foolish figure, say, "Behold an old man dead!" then they Speak properly, and cry, "Behold a man-child
born!"
My eyes are open'd, and I see
Through the transparent fallacy :
Because we seem wisely to talk
Like men of business; and for business walk
From place to place,
And mighty voyages we take,
And mighty journeys seem to make,
O'er sea and land, the little point that has no
space :
Because we fight, and battles gain;
Some captives call, and say," the rest are slain:"
Because we heap up yellow earth, and so
Rich, valiant, wise, and virtuous, seem to grow:
Because we draw a long nobility
From hieroglyphic proofs of heraldry,
And impudently talk of a posterity,
And, like Egyptian chroniclers,
Who write of twenty thousand years,
With maravedies make th' account,
That single time might to a sum amount:
We grow at last by custom to believe,
That really we live :
Whilst all these shadows, that for things we
take,
Are but the empty dreams which in Death's sleep we make.
Lead us to solid wrong;
We pray God our friends' torments to prolong,
And wish uncharitably for them
To be as long a dying as Methusalem.
The ripen'd soul longs from his prison to come;
But we would seal, and sow up, if we could, the
womb:
We seek to close and plaister up by art
The cracks and breaches of th' extended shell,
And in that narrow cell
Would rudely force to dwell
The noble vigorous bird already wing'd to part.
THE XXXIVth CHAPTER OF THE
PROPHET ISAIAH.
AWAKE, and with attention hear,
Thou drowsy World! for it concerns thee near;
Awake, I say, and listen well,
To what from God, 1, his loud prophet, tell.
|