WRITTEN IN 1783.
If yet, unbless’d with learning’s guardian aids,
I rov’d the labyrinths of Aonian shades,
And in the gloomy and the silent hour
Wove the dun foliage of their cypress bower,
The oak-crown’d Chief, and laurel’d Warrior’s tomb
Solemn to strew;—and cropt their floral bloom
For a fair votary’s urn, my priz’d reward
Lives in the smile of Repton’s classic Bard.
Yet not the letter’d smile’s inspiring ray,
When most its warmth shall gild my pensive lay,
Such intellectual luxury can impart,
Or pour such sweet sensations on my heart,
As when, ingenious Lyrist, brightly shine
Through the clear medium of thy classic line,
On every hill, and vale, and plain, and grove,
The seraph forms of Beauty, Truth, and Love.
Sing on, sweet Bard! for to thy happy lyre,
When beams the setting sun with chasten’d fire,
And evening clouds, half pierc’d with light, have spread
Their floating purple round his golden head,
High o’er their edge, as soft they sail along,
Shall bend the spirits of congenial song;
THOMSON, great Nature’s darling votary, bow
The leafy honours of his placid brow,
And lofty AKENSIDE shall hail the strains
That Beauty decks, and Energy sustains.
Sing on, sweet Bard! when spring’s gay warblers cease
To celebrate the jocund year’s increase,
And summer must no more his thirst subdue
In the expanding rose-bud’s lucid dew;
But, with their fading hues, and closing bells,
The pale, shrunk flowers shall strew the whiten’d dells,
And autumn’s lingering steps, retreating, press
Their fallen petals down the lone recess,
Still may thy song, to every rising gale,
Sigh through the dim and melancholy vale;
And when the aerial archer, as he flies,
Wings the red arrow through the gloomy skies,
And furious Trent, high o’er his banks shall pour
The turbid waters round thy favourite bower,
Ceaseless do thou the rising strain prolong,
And hail stern winter with thy solemn song!
While for the lyre, that erst to the soft days
Of bloomy summer breath’d the lovely lays,
On thy nerv’d arm the Eolian shell be slung,
Full to the tempest’s angry wailing flung;
And he, whose strains, on cold Temora’s hill,
Mourn’d o’er the eddies of the darken’d rill,
The fame resounding of the fallen brave,
O’er Erin’s heath, and Ullin’s stormy wave,
He, on his thin, grey mist descending slow,
Shrill as the frequent blast is heard to blow,
’Mid the lone rocks thy wandering steps shall find,
And lift thy harp to winter’s loudest wind.
O! when its tones fall murmuring on the floods,
Deeply respondent to the groaning woods,
Each lofty note, that hymns the rifled year,
With force impressive shall assail the ear,
As when thou call’st the shuddering thoughts to mourn
O’er talents wither’d in the untimely urn;
To grieve that Penury’s resistless storm
Beat cold and deadly o’er the shrinking form,
Where mighty Genius had those powers enshrin’d,
Whose reign is boundless o’er each feeling mind;
To mourn that anguish durst the heart invade
Beneath the regal purple’s awful shade,
That, steep’d in blood, at the fanatic frown,
From Charles’ pale brows should fall the thorny crown;
That England’s virgin majesty should close
A long illustrious life in bitterest woes;
She, who, in wisdom firm, as vast in power,
On grateful millions shed the prosperous hour.
O! how unlike those councils dark, that hurl’d
The torch of Discord o’er the western world!
Whatever ills may to the past succeed,
Though lust of war may doom a world to bleed,
And bleed in vain, yet may no public gloom
Nor private sorrow, blight thy classic bloom!
And to the Sons of Genius, whose sad fate
Thy mournful lines, with sacred force, relate,
O! may thy fortunes no resemblance bear,
Yet may thy rising fame their deathless laurels share!