Fled to some eminence, the husbandman,
Helpless, beholds the miserable wreck
Driving along; his drowning ox at once
Descending, with his labours scattered round,
He sees; and instant o'er his shivering thought
Comes Winter unprovided, and a train
Of clamant children dear. Ye masters, then,
Be mindful of the rough laborious hand
351
That sinks you soft in elegance and ease;
Be mindful of those limbs, in russet1 clad,
Whose toil to yours is warmth and graceful
pride;

And, oh, be mindful of that sparing board
Which covers yours with luxury profuse,

Makes your glass sparkle, and your sense rejoice!

Nor cruelly demand what the deep rains
And all-involving winds have swept away.

FROM THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE

ΙΟ

In lowly dale, fast by a river's side With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,

A most enchanting wizard did abide,
Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere
found.

It was,
I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
And there a season atween June and May,
Half prankt with spring, with summer half
imbrowned,

A listless climate made, where, sooth to say, No living wight could work, ne cared for play.

Was nought around but images of rest: Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between;

20

And flowery beds, that slumbrous influence kest,2

From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green,

Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played,

And hurled everywhere their waters sheen; That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,

Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

"Behold! ye pilgrims of this earth, behold!
See all but man with unearned pleasure gay:
See her bright robes the butterfly unfold,
Broke from her wintry tomb in prime of
May!

What youthful bride can equal her array?
Who can with her for easy pleasure vie?
From mead to mead with gentle wing to
stray,

From flower to flower on balmy gales to
fly,
80

Is all she has to do beneath the radiant sky.

"Behold the merry minstrels of the morn, The swarming songsters of the careless1 grove;

Ten thousand throats that, from the flowering thorn,

Hymn their good God, and carol sweet of love,

Such grateful kindly raptures them emove !" They neither plough, nor sow; ne,3 fit for flail,

E'er to the barn the nodding sheaves they drove:

Yet theirs each harvest dancing in the gale, Whatever crowns the hill, or smiles along the vale.

90

life

Push hard up-hill; but as the farthest steep

You trust to gain, and put an end to strife, Down thunders back the stone with mighty sweep,

And hurls your labours to the valley deep,
Forever vain: come, and, withouten fee,
I in oblivion will your sorrows steep,

Your cares, your toils; will steep you in a

sea

Of Sybarite of old, all Nature, and all Art.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies, Serves but to root thy native oak. Rule, Britannia, etc.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe and thy renown.
Rule, Britannia, etc.

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main,1 And every shore it circles thine. Rule, Britannia, etc.

The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;

Blest isle, with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair!
Rule, Britannia, etc.

JOHN DYER (1700?-1758)

FROM GRONGAR HILL3

Silent Nymph, with curious eye,
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,*
Beyond the noise of busy man,
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
Come with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister Muse;
Now while Phoebus riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,
Draw the landskip 5 bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells
Sweetly musing Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,
Sate upon a flowery bed,
With my hand beneath my head;

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30

10

20

always 3 a hill in southwest Wales

4 peak cf. L'Allegro, 1. 70

While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's1 flood, Over mead, and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill,
'Till Contemplation had her fill.

About his chequered sides I wind,
And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves, and grottoes where I lay,
And vistas shooting beams of day:
Wide and wider spreads the vale;
As circles on a smooth canal:
The mountains round, unhappy fate!
Sooner or later, of all height,
Withdraw their summits from the skies,
And lessen as the others rise:
Still the prospect wider spreads,
Adds a thousand woods and meads,
Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly-risen hill.

Now, I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landskip lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene,
But the gay, the open scene
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of heaven's bow!
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.

Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies;
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires;
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain-heads,
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks.

Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:
The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beach, the sable yew,
The slender fir, that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs;

And beyond the purple grove,

Haunt of Phillis, queen of love,
Gaudy as the opening dawn,

Lies a long and level lawn

On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye.
Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,

His sides are cloth'd with waving wood,
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an aweful look below;
Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps,
And with her arms from falling keeps;

1 a river that flows into Carmarthen Bay in southwest Wales

"How could you say my face was fair, And yet that face forsake?

William Congreve descended from a family in Staffordshire, of so great antiquity that it claims a place among the few that extend their line beyond the Norman Conquest; and was the son of William Congreve, second son of Richard Congreve, of Congreve and Stratton. He visited, once at least, the residence of his ancestors; and, I believe, more places than one are still shown, in groves and gardens, where he is related to have written his "Old Bachelor."

Neither the time nor place of his birth are

certainly known; if the inscription upon his monument be true, he was born in 1672. For the place; it was said by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and by every body else that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country. The biographers assign his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as they suppose, to Jacob.1

To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth, is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported. Boileau, who desired to be thought a rigorous and steady moralist, having told a petty lie to Lewis XIV, continued it afterwards by false dates; "thinking himself obliged in honour,” says his admirer, "to maintain what, when he said it, was so well received."

Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Dublin, his father having some military employment that stationed him in Ireland: but, after having passed through the usual preparatory studies, as may be reasonably supposed, with great celerity and success, his father thought it proper to assign him a profession, by which something might be gotten; and about the time of the Revolution sent him, at the age of sixteen, to study law in the Middle Temple,2 where he lived for several years, but with very little attention to Statutes or Reports.

His disposition to become an author appeared very early, as he very early felt that force of imagination, and possessed that copiousness of sentiment, by which intellectual pleasure can be given. His first performance was a novel, called "Incognita, or Love and Duty reconciled:" it is praised by the biographers, who quote some part of the Preface, that is, indeed, for such a time of life, uncommonly judicious. I would rather praise it than read it.

His first dramatic labour was "The Old Bachelor;" of which he says, in his defence

1 Giles Jacob, compiler of the Poetical Register, an account of poets 2 in London