Should then the weary eye of grief,
Befide fome fympathetic stream,
In flumber find a short relief,
Oh visit thou my foothing dream!
ERE, STANLEY, reft, efcap'd this mortal strife,
Above the joys, beyond the woes of life.
Fierce pangs no more thy lively beauties stain,
And sternly try thee with a year
of pain :
No more fweet patience, feigning oft relief,
Lights thy fick eye, to cheat a parent's grief:
With tender art, to fave her anxious groan,
No more thy bofom presses down its own:
Now well-earn'd peace is thine, and blifs fincere:
Ours be the lenient, not unpleasing tear!
O born to bloom, then fink beneath the storm;
To show us Virtue in her fairest form ;
To show us artless Reafon's moral reign,
What boastful science arrogates in vain ;
Th' obedient paffions knowing each their part;
Calm light the head, and harmony the heart!
Yes, we must follow foon, will glad obey,
When a few funs have roll'd their cares away,
Tir'd with vain life, will clofe the willing eye:
'Tis the great birth-right of mankind to die.
Bleft be the bark! that wafts us to the shore,
Where death-divided friends shall part no more:
To join thee there, here with thy duft repose,
Is all the hope thy hapless mother knows.
To the REVEREND
MR MURDOCH,
RECTOR Of Straddifball in Suffolk. 1738
HUS fafely low, my friend, thou canst not fall :-
Here reigns a deep tranquillity o'er alk
No noife, no care, no vanity, no ftrife;
Men, woods and fields, all breathe untroubled life.
Then keep each paffion down, however dear;
Trust me, the tender are the most severe.
Guard, while 'tis thine, thy philofophic ease,
And afk no joy but that of virtuous peace; e
That bids defiance to the storms of fate:
High blifs is only for a higher state.
LATTER PART of the 6th Chapter of St Matthew.
Wand o'er my cheek defcends the falling tear; WHE
7HEN my breast labours with oppreffive care,
While all my warring paffions are at strife,
Oh, let me listen to the words of life!
Raptures deep-felt his doctrine did impart,
And thus he rais'd from earth the drooping heart.
Think not, when all your feanty ftores afford,
Is fpread at once upon the fparing board;
Think not, when worn the homely robe appears,
While, on the roof, the howling tempest bears;
What farther shall this feeble life sustain,
And what fhall cloathe these fhivering limbs again.
Say, does not life its nourishment exceed?
And the fair body its investing weed?
Behold! and look away your low despair—
See the light tenants of the barren air:
To them, nor ftores, nor granaries, belong,
Nought, but the woodland, and the pleafing fong;
Yet your kind Heavenly Father bends his eye
On the leaft wing, that flits along the sky.
To him they fing, when fpring renews the plain,
To him they cry, in winter's pinching reign;
Nor is their mufic, nor their plaint in vain :
He hears the gay, and the distressful call,
And with unfparing bounty fills them all.
Obferve the rifing lilly's fnowy grace,
Obferve the various vegetable race;
They neither toil, nor spin, but careless grow,
Yet fee how warm they blush! how bright they glow!:
What regal vestments can with them compare!
What king fo fhining! or what queen fo fair!
If, ceaseless, thus the fowls of heaven he feeds,
If, o'er the fields fuch lucid robes he spreads;
Will he not care for you, ye faithless, say?
Is he unwife? or, are ye lefs than they?
NE day the God of fond defire,
On mischief bent, to Damon faid,
Why not disclose your tender fire,
Not own it to the lovely maid?
.II.
The fhepherd mark'd his treach'rous art,
And foftly fighing, thus reply'd:
'Tis true you have subdu'd my heart,
But fhall not triumph o'er my pride.
III.
The flave, in private only bears
Your bondage, who his love conceals;
But when his paflion he declares,
You drag him at your chariot-wheels.
ARD is the fate of him who loves,
Yet dares not tell his trembling pain,
But to the fympathetic groves,
But to the lonely listening plain!
Oh! when she bleffes next your fhade,
Oh! when her foot-fteps next are feen
In flowery tracts along the mead,
In fresher mazes o'er the green;
Ye gentle fpirits of the vale,
To whom the tears of love are dean,
From dying lillies waft a gale,
And figh my forrows in her car.
O! tell her, what she cannot blame,
Tho' fear my tongue must ever bind,
Oh tell her that my virtuous flame
Is as her spotlefs foul refin'd.
Not her own guardian angel eyes
With chafter tenderness his care,
Nor purer her own wishes rife,
Not holier her own fighs in prayer.
But if, at firft, her virgin fear
Should start at love's fufpected name, With that of friendship soothe her ear--True love and friendship are the same.
UNLESS with my Amanda bleft,
In vain I twine the woodbine bower
Unless to deck here sweeter breast,
In vain I rear the breathing flower :
II.
Awaken'd by the genial year,
In vain the birds around me fing; In vain the fresh'ning fields appear: Without my love there is no fpring.
SON
OR ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove
An unrelenting foe to love;
And when we meet a mutual heart,
Come in between, and bid us part:
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