Shall glitter o'er the pendent green, Where Thames reflects the visionary scene: Shall call the smiling Loves and young Desires; 25 39 35 Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee! 40 Thee dress'd in Fancy's airy beam, Absent I follow tho' th'extended dream; Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms, And now you burst (ah, cruel!) from my arms! And swiftly shoot along the Mall, 45 Or softly glide by the Canal; Now shown by Cynthia's silver ray, And now on rolling waters snatch'd away. 48 A FRAGMENT. LEST you should think that verse shall die Tho' daring Milton sits sublime, In Spenser native Muses play ; Nor yet shall Waller yield to time, Sages and Chiefs long since had birth These rais'd new empires o'er the earth, And those new heav'ns and systems fram'd. Vain was the chief 's, the sage's pride! 5 10 EPISTLE I. TO ROBERT EARL OF OXFORD AND LORD MORTIMER*. SUCH were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung, Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue. Oh, just beheld and lost! admir'd and mourn'd! With softest manners, gentlest arts, adorn'd! Bless'd in each science! bless'd in ev'ry strain! 5 Dear to the Muse! to Harley dear-in vain! For him thou oft' hast bid the world attend, 10 *Sent to the Earl of Oxford with Dr. Parnell's Poems, published by our Author after the Earl's imprisonment in the Tower, and retreat into the country, in the year 1721. Dext❜rous the craving, fawning, crowd to quit, (A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear,) Who, careless now of int'rest, fame, or fate, And sure if aught below the seats divine, 20 20 25 The Muse attends thee to thy silent shade: 'Tis her's the brave man's latest steps to trace, Rejudge his acts, and dignify disgrace. 30 When Int'rest calls off all her sneaking train, And all th' oblig'd desert, and all the vain, She waits, or to the scaffold or the cell, When the last ling'ring friend has bid farewell. Ev'n now she shades thy ev'ning walk with bays, 35 (No hireling she, no prostitute to praise,) |