Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aile and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. But knowledge to their eyes her ample page Chill penury repressed their noble rage, Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast, The applause of listening senates to command, And read their history in a nation's eyes, Their lot forbade nor circumscribed alone The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenour of their way. Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse, And many a holy text around she strews, For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing lingering look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonoured dead, Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate,— 'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. 'One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he: 'The next, with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne :Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.' The Epitaph. Here rests his head upon the lap of earth Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to misery (all he had) a tear, He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. SONNET ON THE DEATH OF MR. RICHARD WEST. In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, A different object do these eyes require: To warm their little loves the birds complain: SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER. Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune; He had not the method of making a fortune: Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd; No very great wit, he believed in a God: A post or a pension he did not desire, But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire IMPROMPTU, ON LORD HOLLAND'S SEAT At Kingsgate Old, and abandoned by each venal friend, Here Holland formed the pious resolution To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend A broken character and constitution. On this congenial spot he fixed his choice; Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand; Here reign the blustering North and blighting East, Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast, Here mouldering fanes and battlements arise, 'Ah!' said the sighing peer, 'had Bute been true, 'Purged by the sword, and purified by fire, Then had we seen proud London's hated walls; Owls would have hooted in St. Peter's choir, And foxes stunk and littered in St. Paul's.' |