O Lyttelton! my honour'd gueft, Thy firm, yet polith'd mind; The fong fhould please mankind. VERSES written towards the Clofe of the Year 1748, to WILLIAM LYTTELTON, Efq; HOW blithely pafs'd the summer's day! How bright was every flower! While friends arriv'd, in circles gay, To vifit Damon's bower! But now, with filent ftep, I range And Damon's bower, alas the change! Ah let me not, with heavy eye, This dying scene survey! Hafte, Winter, hafte; ufurp the sky; Compleat my bower's decay. Ill can I bear the motley caft Yon fickening leaves retain ; At home unbleft, I gaze around, My distant scenes require; Where all in murky vapours drown'd Though Thomson, fweet defcriptive bard! Yet how should we the months regard, Ah lucklefs months, of all the reft, And fee, the fwallows now difown The wood-nymph eyes, with pale affright, The sportsman's frantic deed; To drown the Mufe's reed. Ye fields with blighted herbage brown, Ye fkies no longer blue! Too much we feel from fortune's frown, 3 Where Where is the mead's unfullied green? The zephyr's balmy gale? And where fweet friendship's cordial mien, That brighten'd every vale? What though the vine disclose her dyes, And boast her purple store; He! he is gone, whofe moral strain Fast by the streams he deign'd to praise, To him a votive urn I raife; To him, and friendly love. Yes there, my friend! forlorn and fad, There leaves, in fpite of Autumn green, To call forth flowers around. But But no kind funs will bid me share, Once more, his focial hour; LOVE AND MUSIC. Written at Oxford, when young. SHALL Love alone for ever claim Or has not Mufic equal charms, To fill the breaft with ftrange alarms, The Thracian Bard, as Poets teil, His arts, no more than Love's, we find Drew brutes in crouds to hear. Whatever favourite paffion reign'd, In milder lays the Bard began; And And echoing charm'd the place: Affume a gentler grace. When Cymon view'd the fair-one's charms, Her ruby lips, and fnowy arms, And told her beauties o'er: When love reform'd his awkward tone, The Bard now tries a fprightlier found, The foaring lark the note purfues; An equal power of Love I 've seen And chace his barking foe. Sometimes has Love, with greater might, When Silvia treads the fmiling plain, When Handel's folemn accents roll, In fweet confufion loft. If the her melting glances dart, Or he his dying airs impart, |