In an hearse she rode reclin'd,
Drawn by screech-owls slow and blind :
Close to her, with printless feet,

Crept Stillness, in a winding sheet.
Next to her deaf Silence was seen,
Treading on tip-toes over the

green; Softly, lightly, gently she trips, Still holding her fingers seal’d to her lips.

You could not see a sight,

You could not hear a sound, But what confess’d the night, And horror deepen'd round.

Beneath a myrtle's melancholy shade,

Sophron the wise was laid :
And to the answ'ring wood these sounds convey'd :

While others toil within the town,
And to Fortune smile or frown,
Fond of trifles, fond of toys,
And married to that woman, Noise;
Sacred Wisdom be my care,
And fairest Virtue, Wisdom's heir.

His speculations thus the sage begun,

When, lol the neighbouring bell In solemn sound struck one:--He starts---and recollects---he was engag’d to Nell.

Then

Then

up he sprang nimble and light, And rapp'd at fair Ele’nor's door He laid aside virtue that night,

And next morn por’d in Plato for more.

On the sudden Death of a CLERGYMAN.

O DE

IV.

IF

F, like th’Orphean lyre, my song could charm,

And light to life the ashes in the urn,
Fate of his iron dart I would disarm,

Sudden as thy decease should'st thou return,
Recall’d with mandates of despotic sounds,
And arbitrary grief, that will not hear of bounds.
But, ah! such wishes, artless muse, forbear;

'Tis impotence of frantic love,
Th’ enthusiastic Aight of wild despair,

To hope the Thracian's magic power to prove.
Alas ! thy slender vein,
Nor mighty is to move, nor forgetive to feign,

Impatient of a rein,
• Thou canst not in due bounds the struggling measures kcep,

---But thou, alas ! canst weep---
Thou canst --and o’er the melancholy bier
Canst lend the sad solemnity a tear.
Hail! to that wretched corse, untenanted and cold,
And hail the peaceful shade loos’d from its irksome hold.

Now

Now let me say thou’rt free,

For sure thou paid'st an heavy tax for life,
While combating for thee,
Nature and mortality

Maintain'd a daily strife.
High, on a slender thread thy vital lamp was plac’d,

Upon the mountain's bleakest brow,
To give a nobler light superior was it rais’d,
But more expos'd by eminence it blaz’d;

For not a whistling wind that blew,
Nor the drop-descending dew,

Nor a bat that idly few,
But half extinguish'd its fair flame---but now
See --hear the storms tempestuous sweep --
Precipitate it falls---it falls---falls lifeless in the deep.
Cease, cease, ye weeping youth,
Sincerity's soft fighs, and all the tears of truth.

And you, his kindred throng, forbear

Marble memorials to prepare,
And sculptur’d in your breasts his busto wear.

'Twas thus when Israel's legislator dy'd,
No fragile mortal honours were supply'd,

But even a grave denied.
Better than what the pencil's daub can give,

Better than all that Phidias ever wrought,
Is this---that what he taught shall live,

And what he liv'd for ever shall be taught.

On

.

On the Fifth of December, being the Birth-day

of a beautiful young Lady.

H^ life of the winter drear

,

AIL, eldest of the monthly train,

Sire of the winter drear,
December, in whose iron reign

Expires the chequer'd Year.
Hush all the bluftring blasts that blow,
And proudly plum'd in filver snow,

Smile gladly on this blest of Days.
The livery'd clouds shall on thee wait,
And Phoebus shine in all his state
With more than summer rays.

II.
Tho' jocund June may justly boast

Long days and happy hours,
Tho’ August be Pomona's hoft,

And May be crown'd with flow'rs;
Tell June, his fire and crimfon dies,
By Harriot's blush and Harriot's eyes,

Eclips’d and vanquish’d, fade away:
Tell August, thou canst let him fee
A richer, riper fruit than he,

A sweeter flow'r than May.

The

The PRETTY CHAMBERMAID :

In Imitation of Ne fit Ancillæ tibi amor pudori, &c.

of Horace.

I.
YOLIN, ohl cease thy friend to blame,

Who entertains a servile flame.
Chide not---believe me, 'tis no more
Than great Achilles did before,
Who nobler, prouder far than he is,
Ador'd his chambermaid Briseis.

II.
The thund'ring Ajax Venus lays
In love's inextricable maze:
His Nave Temesfa makes him yield,
Now mistress of the sevenfold shield.
Atrides with his captive play'd,
Who always shar’d the bed she made.

III,
'Twas at the ten years siege, when all
The Trojans fell in Hector's fall,
When Helen ruld the day and night,
And made them love, and made them fight:
D

Each