THOU fairest, sweetest daughter of the skies,
Indulgent, gentle, life restoring Peace!
With what auspicious beauties dost thou rise,
And Britain's new-revolving Janus bless!
Hoary Winter smiles before thee,
Dances merrily along:
Hours and seasons all adore thee,
And for thee are ever young:
Ever, goddess, thus appear,
Ever lead the joyful year.
In thee the night, in thee the day is blest;
In thee the dearest of the purple east:
'Tis thine immortal pleasures to impart,
Mirth to inspire, and raise the drooping heart:
To thee the pipe and tuneful string belong,
Thou theme eternal for the poet's song.
Awake the golden lyre,
Ye Heliconian choir;
Swell every note still higher,
And melody inspire
At Heaven and Earth's desire.
Hark, how the sounds agree,
With due complacency!
Sweet Peace, 'tis allby thee,
For thou art harmony.
Who, by Nature's fairest creatures,
Can describe her heavenly features?
What comparison can fit her?
Sweet are roses, she is sweeter;
Light is good, but Peace is better.
Would you see her such as Jove
Form'd for universal love,
Bless'd by men and gods above?
Would you every feature trace,
Every sweetly smiling grace?
Seek our Carolina's face.
Peace and she are Britain's treasures,
Fruitful in eternal pleasures:
Still their bounty shall increase us,
Still their smiling offspring bless us.
Happy day, when each was given
By Cæsar and indulging Heaven.
Hail, ye celestial pair!
Still let Britannia be your care,
And Peace and Carolina crown the year.
FOR THE KING'S BIRTH-DAY, 1718.
On touch the string, celestial Muse, and say,
Why are peculiar times and seasons blest?
Is it in fate, that one distinguish'd day
Should with more hallow'd purple paint the east?
Look on life and nature's race!
How the careless minutes pass,
How they wear a common face: One is what another was!
Till the happy hero's worth
Bid the festival stand forth;
Till the golden light he crown,
Till he mark it for his own.
How had this glorious morning been forgot,
Unthought-of as the things that never were;
Had not our greatest Cæsar been its lot,
And call'd it from amongst the vulgar year!
Now, Nature, be gay
In the pride of thy May, To court let thy graces repair; Let Flora bestow
The crown from her brow, For our brighter Britannia to wear. Through every language of thy peopled Earth, Far as the sea's or Cæsar's influence goes, Let thankful nations celebrate his birth, And bless the author of the world's repose.
Let Volga tumbling in cascades,
And Po that glides through poplar shades,
And Tagus bright in sands of gold,
And Arethusa, rivers old,
Their great deliverer sing.
Not, Danube, thou whose winding flood
So long has blush'd with Turkish blood,
To Cæsar shall refuse a strain,
Since now thy streams without a stain
Run crystal as their spring.
To mighty George, that heals thy wounds,
That names thy kings and marks thy bounds,
The joyful voice, O Europe, raise:
In the great mediator's praise
Let all thy various tongues combine,
And Britain's festival be thine.
ODE TO THE THAMES',
FOR THE YEAR 1719.
KING of the floods, whom friendly stars ordain
To fold alternate in thy winding train,
The lofty palace and the fertile vale;
King of the floods, Britannia's darling, hail!
Hail with the year so well begun,
And bid his each revolving sun,
Taught by thy streams, in smooth succession run.
From thy never-failing urn
Flowers, bloom and fair increase
With the seasons take their turn;
From thy tributary seas
Tides of various wealth attend thee;
Seas and seasons all befriend thee.
Here on thy banks, to mate the skies,
Augusta's hallow'd domes arise;
And there thy ample bosom pours
Her numerous souls and floating towers; [known,
Whose terrours late to vanquish'd Spain were
And Etna shook with thunder not her own.
Fullest flags thou dost sustain,
While thy banks confine thy course;
Emblem of our Caesar's reign,
Mingling clemency and force.
This ode was written for Rowe by Mr. Jeff reys, and is claim'd by him in his works, p. 57. A.
So may'st thou still, secur'd by distant wars,
Ne'er stain thy crystal with domestic jars:
As Cæsar's reign, to Britain ever dear,
Shall join with thee to bless the coming year.
On thy shady margin,
Care its load discharging,
Is lull'd to gentle rest:
Britain thus disarming,
Nor no more alarming,
Shall sleep on Cæsar's breast.
Sweet to distress is balmy sleep,
To sleep auspicious dreams,
Thy meadows, Thames, to feeding sheep,
To thirst, thy silver streams:
More sweet than all, the praise
Of Cæsar's golden days:
Cæsar's praise is sweeter;
Britain's pleasure greater;
Still may Cæsar's reign excel;
Sweet the praise of reigning well.
Gentle Janus, ever wait,
As now, on Britain's kindest fate;
Crown all our vows, and all thy gifts bestow;
Till Time no more renews his date,
And Thames forgets to flow.
THE STORY Of glaucus AND SCYLLA.
FROM OVID'S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK XIII.
HERE ceas'd the nymph; the fair assembly broke;
The sea-green Nereids to the waves betook:
While Scylla, fearful of the wide-spread main,
Swift to the safer shore returns again.
There o'er the sandy margin, unarray'd,
With printless footsteps flies the bounding maid;
Or in some winding creek's secure retreat
6he bathes her weary limbs, and shuns the noon-
day's heat.
Her Glaucus saw, as o'er the deep he rode,
New to the seas, and late receiv'd a god.
He saw, and languish'd for the virgin's love,
With many an artful blandishment he strove
Her flight to hinder, and her fears remove.
The more he sues, the more he wings his flight,
And nimbly gains a neighbouring mountain's
height,
Steep shelving to the margin of the flood,
A neighbouring mountain bare and woodless stood;
Here, by the place secur'd, her steps she stay'd,
And, trembling still, her lover's form survey’d.
His shape, his hue, her troubled sense appall,
And dropping locks that o'er his shoulders fall;
She sees his face divine and manly brow
End in a fish's wreathy tail below:
She sees, and doubts within her anxious mind,
Whether he comes of god or monster kind.
This Glaucus soon perceiv'd; and, "Oh! forbear"
(His hand supporting on a rock lay near)
Forbear," he cry'd," fond maid, this needless
[fear.
I, nor monster of the main,
But equal with the watery gods I reign;
Nor Proteus nor Palæmon me excel,
Nor he whose breath inspires the sounding shell.
My birth, 'tis true, I owe to mortal race,
And I myself but late a mortal was:
E'en then in seas, and seas alone, I joy'd;
The seas my hours, and all my cares, employ'd.
In meshes now the twinkling prey I drew,
Now skilfully the slender line I threw,
And silent sat the moving float to view.
Not far from shore, there lies a verdant mead,
With herbage half, and half with water spread:
There, nor the horned heifers browsing stray,
Nor shaggy kids nor wanton lambkins play;
There, nor the sounding bees their nectar cull,
Nor rural swains their genial chaplets pull;
Nor flocks, nor herds, nor mowers, haunt the place,
To crop the flowers, or cut the bushy grass:
Thither, sure first of living race came I,
And sat by chance, my dropping nets to dry.
My scaly prize, in order all display'd,
By number on the green-sword there I lay'd,
My captives, whom or in my nets I took,
Or hung unwary on my wily hook.
Strange to behold! yet what avails a lie?
I saw them bite the grass, as I sat by;
Then sudden darting o'er the verdant plain,
They spread their fins, as in their native main:
I paus'd, with wonder struck, while all my prey
Left their new master, and regain'd the sea.
Amaz'd, within my secret self I sought,
What god, what herb, the miracle had wrought:
'But sure no herbs have power like this,' I cry'd;
And straight I pluck'd some neighbouring herbs,
and try'd.
Scarce had I bit, and prov'd the wondrous taste,
When strong convulsions shook my troubled breast;
And my whole nature labouring with a change.
I felt my heart grow fond of something strange,
Restless I grew, and every place forsook,
And still upon the seas I bent my look.
'Farewell, for ever! farewell, land!' I said;
And plung'd amidst the waves my sinking head.
The gentle powers, who that low empire keep,
Receiv'd me as a brother of the deep;
To Tethys, and to Ocean old, they pray,
To purge my mortal earthy parts away.
The watery parents to their suit agreed,
And thrice nine times a secret charm they read,
Then with lustrations purify my limbs,
And bid me bathe beneath a hundred streams:
A hundred streams from various fountains run,
Thus far each passage I remember well,
And on my head at once come rushing down.
And faithfully thus far the tale I tell;
Again at length my thought reviving came,
But then oblivion dark on all my senses fell.
When I no longer found myself the same;
Then first this sea-green beard I felt to grow,
And these large honours on my spreading brow,
My long-descending locks the billows sweep,
And my broad shoulders cleave the yielding deep;
My fishy tail, my arms of azure hue,
And every part divinely chang'd, I view.
What joys can immortality bestow?
But what avail these useless honours now?
What boots it, while fair Scylla scorns my love?"
What, though our Nereids all my form approve?
Thus far the god; and more he would have said;
When from his presence flew the ruthless maid.
Stung with repulse, in such disdainful sort,
He seeks Titanian Circe's horrid court,
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