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"Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth
Of heaven, and earth! awak'ning Nature hears
The new-created word; and starts to life,
In every heighten'd form, from pain and death
For ever free. The great eternal scheme,
Involving all, and in a perfect whole
Uniting as the prospect wider spreads,
To Reason's eye refin'd clears up apace.
Ye vainly wise! Ye blind presumptuous! now,
Confounded in the dust, adore that Power,
And Wisdom oft arraign'd: see now the cause
Why unassuming Worth in secret liv'd,
And dy'd neglected: why the good man's share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul:
Why the lone widow and her orphans pin'd
In starving solitude; while Luxury,

In palaces, lay straining her low thought,
To form unreal wants: why heaven-born Truth,
And Moderation fair, wore the red marks
Of Superstition's scourge: why licens'd Pain,
That cruel spoiler, that embosom'd foe,
Imbitter'd all our bliss. Ye good distress'd!
Ye noble few! who here unbending stand
Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up a while,
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deem'd evil, is no more:
The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded spring encircle all.

SECTION IV.

On Versification.

MANY by Number judge a Poet's song;
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ;

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Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds, as some to Church repair
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire ;
While expletives their feeble aid to join;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line :
While they ring round the same unvary'd chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees :"
In chrystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep ;"
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught

With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That like a wounded snake,drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow ;.
And praise the easy vigour of a line,

Where Denham's strengh, and Waller's sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense :
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother number flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar :
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn,and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' vary'd lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the World's victor stood subdu'd by Sound!

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SECTION V.

On Pride.

Of all the causes, which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is Pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever Nature has in worth deny'd
She gives in large recruits of needless pride!
For, as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind.
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right Reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but, your defects to know,
Make use of every friend-and every foe.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierean Spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain;
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While, from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But, more advanc'd, behold, with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
The eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last :
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes;
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.

Descriptive Pieces.

SECTION I.

The Morning in Summer.

The meek ey'd Moon appears, mother of dews,
At first faint gleaming in the dappled east ;
Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow :
And from before the lustre of her face

White break the clouds away. With quickened step
Brown Night retires : Young Day pours in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospect wide.

The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top,
Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn.

Blue, through the dusk, the smoaking currents shine;

And from the bladed field the fearful hare

Limps, awkward: while along the forest-glade

The wild dear trip, and often turning gaze

At early passenger. Music awakes

The native voice of undissembled joy ;

And thick around the woodland hymns arise.
Rous'd by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves
His mossy cottage, where with Peace he dwells;
And from the crouded fold, in order, drives
His flock to taste the verdure of the Morn.
Falsely luxurious, will not man awake;
And, springing from the bed of Sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour,
To meditation due and sacred song?

For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losing half

The fleeting moments of too short a life

Total extinction of the enlighten'd soul!
Or else to feverish vanity alive,

Wildered, and tossing through distemper'd dreams ?

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Who would, in such a gloomy state, remain
Longer than Nature craves; when every Muse
And every blooming pleasure waits without,
To bless the wildly devious morning walk?

SECTION II.

The Sabbath Morning.

How still the morning of the hallowed day!'
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd
The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song.-
The scythe lies glitt❜ring in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yester-morn bloom'd waving in the breeze:
Sounds the most faint attract the ear,-the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating, midway up the hill.
Calmness seems thron'd on yon unmoving cloud.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,

The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heav'n-tun'd song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-sunk glen;
While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke
O'ermounts the mist, is heard, at intervals,
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.
With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village broods
The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceas'd; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare

Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man,
Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free,
Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large;

And, as his stiff unwieldly bulk he rolls,

His iron-arm'd hoofs gleam in the morning-ray..

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