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SIR JOHN DENHAM—A. D. 1615-1668.

COOPER'S HILL.

SURE there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those,

And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,
So where the Muses and their train resort,
Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee
A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.

Nor wonder if (advantag'd in my flight,
By taking wing from thy auspicious height)
Through untrac'd ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye;
My eye, which swift as thought contracts the space
That lies between, and first salutes the place
Crown'd with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,
That whether 'tis a part of earth or sky
Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud
Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud;
Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse, whose flight
Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy height;
Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal, more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings,
Preserv'd from ruin by the best of kings.
Under his proud survey the city lies,

And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise,

Nor can he call it choice, when what we choose
Folly or blindness only could refuse.

A crown of such majestic towers doth grace
The Gods' great mother, when her heav'nly race
Do homage to her; yet she cannot boast,
Among that numerous and celestial host,
More heroes than can Windsor; nor doth Fame's
Immortal book record more noble names.
Not to look back so far, to whom this isle
Owes the first glory of so brave a pile,
Whether to Cæsar, Albanact, or Brute,
The British Arthur, or the Danish C'nute;
(Though this of old no less contest did move
Than when for Homer's birth seven cities strove)
(Like him in birth, thou should'st be like in fame,
As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame)
But whosoe'er it was, Nature design'd
First a brave place, and then as brave a mind.
Not to recount those sev'ral kings to whom
It gave a cradle, or to whom a tomb;
But thee, great Edward! and thy greater son,
(The lilies which his father wore he won);
And thy Bellona, who the consort came
Not only to thy bed but to thy fame;
She to thy triumph led one captive king,

And brought that son which did the second bring;
Then didst thou found that order (whether love
Or victory the royal thoughts did move);

Whose state and wealth, the bus'ness and the crowd, Each was a noble cause, and nothing less

Seems at this distance but a darker cloud,

And is, to him who rightly things esteems,
No other in effect than what it seems;

Than the design has been the great success,
Which foreign kings and emperors esteem
The second honour to their diadem.

Where, with like haste, though several ways, they run, Had thy great destiny but given thee skill

Some to undo, and some to be undone;

While luxury and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the other's ruin and increase;

As rivers lost in seas some secret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.
Oh! happiness of sweet retir'd content!
To be at once secure and innocent.

Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells,
Beauty with strength) above the valley swells
Into my eye, and doth itself present
With such an easy and unforc'd ascent,
That no stupendous precipice denies
Access, no horror turns away our eyes;
But such a rise as doth at once invite
A pleasure and a rev'rence from the sight:
Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose face
Sat meekness, heighten'd with majestic grace;
Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud
To be the basis of that pompous load,
Than which a nobler weight no mountain bears,
But Atlas only, which supports the spheres.
When Nature's hand this ground did thus advance,
"Twas guided by a wiser power than Chance;
Mark'd out for such a use, as if 'twere meant
T'invite the builder, and his choice prevent;

To know, as well as power to act her will,
That from those kings, who then thy captives were,

In after-times should spring a royal pair,
Who should possess all that thy mighty power,
Or thy desires more mighty, did devour;
To whom their better fate reserves whate'er
The victor hopes for or the vanquish'd fear:
That blood which thou and thy great grandsire shed,
And all that since these sister nations bled,·
Had been unspilt, and happy Edward known
That all the blood he spilt had been his own.
When he that patron chose in whom are join'd
Soldier and martyr, and his arms confin'd
Within the azure circle, he did seem
But to foretel and prophesy of him
Who to his realms that azure round hath join'd,
Which Nature for their bound at first design'd;
That bound which to the world's extremest ends,"
Endless itself, its liquid arms extends.

Nor doth he need those emblems which we paint,
But is himself the soldier and the saint.
Here should my wonder dwell, and here my praise,
But my fix'd thoughts my wand'ring eye betrays,
Viewing a neighb'ring hill, whose top of late
A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate

[more:

Th' adjoining abbey fell. (May no such storm
Fall on our times, where ruin must reform!)
Tell me, my Muse! what monstrous dire offence,
What crime could any Christian king incense
To such a rage? Was 't luxury or lust?
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just?
Were these their crimes? they were his own much
But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor,
Who having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own;
And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.
No crime so bold but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming good.

Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects and spoils;
But princes' swords are sharper than their styles:
And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did Religion in a lazy cell,
In empty airy contemplations dwell,

And like the block unmoved lay; but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temp'rate region can be known
Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?
And for that lethargy was there no cure
But to be cast into a calenture?

Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance?
And rather in the dark to grope our way
Than led by a false guide to err by day?
Who sees those dismal heaps but would demand
What barbarous invader sack'd the land?
But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring
This desolation, but a Christian king;
When nothing but the name of zeal appears
"Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs;
What does he think our sacrilege would spare,
When such th' effects of our devotion are?

Parting from thence, 'twixt anger, shame, and fear,
Those for what's past, and this for what's too near;
My eye descending from the Hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays.
Thames! the most loved of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold:
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,
And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring;
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil

The mower's hopes, or mock the ploughman's toil;
But Godlike his unweary'd bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
Nor are his blessings to his banks confin'd,
But free and common as the sea or wind:

When he to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,
Visits the world, and in his flying towers
Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours;
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants,
Cities in deserts, woods in cities, plants.
So that to us no thing, no place, is strange,
While his fair bosom is the world's exchange.
O could I flow like thee! and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme;
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
Heaven her Eridanus no more shall boast,
Whose fame in thine, like lesser currents, 's lost:
Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes,
To shine among the stars, and bathe the gods.
Here Nature, whether more intent to please
Us or herself with strange varieties,

(For things of wonder give no less delight
To the wise Maker's than beholder's sight;
Though these delights from several causes move,
For so our children, thus our friends, we love)
Wisely she knew the harmony of things,
As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.
Such was the discord which did first disperse
Form, order, beauty, through the universe;
While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,
All that we have, and that we are, subsists;
While the steep horrid roughness of the wood
Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,
Such huge extremes when Nature doth unite,
Wonder from thence results, from thence delight.
The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,
That had the self-enamour'd youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceiv'd he had not been,
While he the bottom, not his face, had seen.
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat;
The common fate of all that's high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is plac'd,
Between the mountain and the stream embrac'd,
Which shade and shelter from the Hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives,
And in the mixture of all these appears
Variety, which all the rest endears.

This scene had some bold Greek or British bard
Beheld of old, what stories had we heard
Of Fairies, Satyrs, and the Nymphs their dames,
Their feasts, their revels, and their am'rous flames!
'Tis still the same, although their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.
There Faunus and Sylvanus keep their courts,
And thither all the horned host resorts
To graze the ranker mead; that noble herd
On whose sublime and shady fronts is rear'd
Nature's great masterpiece, to shew how soon
Great things are made, but sooner are undone.
Here have I seen the King, when great affairs
Gave leave to slacken and unbend his cares,
Attended to the chase, by all the flow'r
Of youth, whose hopes a noble prey devour;
Pleasure with praise and danger they would buy,
And wish a foe that would not only fly.

The stag now conscious of his fatal growth,
At once indulgent to his fear and sloth,
To some dark covert his retreat had made,
Where no man's eye, nor heaven's should invade
His soft repose; when th' unexpected sound
Of dogs and men his wakeful ear does wound.
Rous'd with the noise, he scarce believes his ear,
Willing to think th' illusions of his fear
Had given this false alarm, but straight his view
Confirms that more than all he fears is true.
Betray'd in all his strengths, the wood beset,
All instruments, all arts of ruin met,

He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,
His winged heels, and then his armed head;
With these t' avoid, with that his fate to meet:
But fear prevails, and bids him trust his feet.
So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye
Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry;
Exulting, till he finds their nobler sense
Their disproportion'd speed doth recompense;
Then curses his conspiring feet, whose scent
Betrays that safety which their swiftness lent:
Then tries his friends; among the baser herd,
Where he so lately was obey'd and fear'd,
His safety seeks: the herd, unkindly wise,
Or chases him from thence or from him flies.
Like a declining statesman, left forlorn
To his friends' pity, and pursuers' scorn,
With shame remembers, while himself was one
Of the same herd, himself the same had done.
Thence to the coverts and the conscious groves,
The scenes of his past triumphs and his loves,
Sadly surveying where he rang'd alone,
Prince of the soil, and all the herd his own,
And like a bold knight-errant did proclaim
Combat to all, and bore away the dame,
And taught the woods to echo to the stream
His dreadful challenge, and his clashing beam;
Yet faintly now declines the fatal strife,
So much his love was dearer than his life.
Now ev'ry leaf, and ev'ry moving breath
Presents a foe, and ev'ry foe a death.
Weary'd, forsaken, and pursu'd, at last
All safety in despair of safety plac'd,
Courage he thence resumes, resolv'd to bear
All their assaults, since 'tis in vain to fear.
And now, too late, he wishes for the fight
That strength he wasted in ignoble flight;
But when he sees the eager chase renew'd,
Himself by dogs, and dogs by men pursu'd,
He straight revokes his bold resolve, and more
Repents his courage than his fear before;
Finds that uncertain ways unsafest are,
And doubt a greater mischief than despair.
Then to the stream, when neither friends, nor force,
Nor speed, nor art avail, he shapes his course;
Thinks not their rage so desp'rate to essay
An element more merciless than they.
But fearless they pursue, nor can the flood
Quench their dire thirst: alas! they thirst for blood.
So towards a ship the oar-finn'd gallies ply,
Which wanting sea to ride, or wind to fly,
Stands but to fall reveng'd on those that dare
Tempt the last fury of extreme despair.
So fares the stag; among th' enraged hounds,
Repels their force, and wounds returns for wounds:

And as a hero, whom his baser foes
In troops surround, now these assails, now those,
Though prodigal of life, disdains to die
By common hands; but if he can descry
Some nobler foe approach, to him he calls,
And begs his fate, and then contented falls.
So when the King a mortal shaft lets fly
From his unerring hand, then glad to die,
Proud of the wound, to it resigns his blood,
And stains the crystal with a purple flood.
This a more innocent and happy chase
Than when of old, but in the self-same place,
Fair Liberty pursu'd, and meant a prey

To lawless Power, here turn'd, and stood at bay;
When in that remedy all hope was plac'd
Which was, or should have been at least, the last.
Here was that Charter seal'd wherein the crown
All marks of arbitrary power lays down;
Tyrant and slave, those names of hate and fear,
The happier style of king and subject bear:
Happy when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty and subjects love.
Therefore not long in force this Charter stood;
Wanting that seal, it must be seal'd in blood.
The subjects arm'd, the more their princes gave,
Th' advantage only took the more to crave;
Till kings, by giving, gave themselves away,
And ev'n that power that should deny betray.
"Who gives constrain'd, but his own fear reviles,
Not thank'd, but scorn'd; nor are they gifts, but
spoils."

Thus kings, by grasping more than they could hold,
First made their subjects by oppression bold;
And popular sway, by forcing kings to give
More than was fit for subjects to receive,
Ran to the same extremes; and one excess
Made both, by striving to be greater, less.
When a calm river, rais'd with sudden rains,
Or snows dissolv'd, o'erflows th' adjoining plains,
The husbandmen with high-rais'd banks secure
Their greedy hopes, and this he can endure;
But if with bays and dams they strive to force
His channel to a new or narrow course,
No longer then within his banks he dwells,
First to a torrent, then a deluge, swells;
Stronger and fiercer by restraint, he roars,
And knows no bound, but makes his power his shores.

THE PROGRESS OF LEARNING. WHEN God from earth form'd Adam in the East, He his own image on the clay imprest. As subjects then the whole creation came, And from their natures Adam them did name; Not from experience (for the world was new) He only from their cause their natures knew. Had memory been lost with innocence, We had not known the sentence nor th' offence. "Twas his chief punishment to keep in store The sad remembrance what he was before; And though th' offending part felt mortal pain, Th' immortal part its knowledge did retain. After the flood arts to Chaldea fell; The father of the faithful there did dwell,

Who both their parent and instructor was: From thence did learning into Egypt pass. Moses in all th' Egyptian arts was skill'd, When heavenly power that chosen vessel fill'd; And we to his high inspiration owe

That what was done before the Flood we know.
From Egypt arts their progress made to Greece,
Wrapp'd in the fable of the Golden Fleece.
Musæus first, then Orpheus, civilize
Mankind, and gave the world their deities:
To many gods they taught devotion,
Which were the distinct faculties of one:
Th' Eternal Cause in their immortal lines
Was taught, and poets were the first divines.
God Moses first, then David, did inspire,
To compose anthems for his heavenly quire:
To th' one the style of Friend he did impart,
On th' other stamp'd the likeness of his heart:
And Moses, in the old original,

Ev'n God the poet of the world doth call.
Next those old Greeks Pythagoras did rise,
Then Socrates, whom th' oracle call'd Wise.
The divine Plato moral virtue shews,
Then his disciple Aristotle rose,
Who nature's secrets to the world did teach,
Yet that great soul our novelists impeach:
Too much manuring fill'd that field with weeds,
While sects, like locusts, did destroy the seeds.
The tree of knowledge, blasted by disputes,
Produces sapless leaves instead of fruits.
Proud Greece all nations else barbarians held,
Boasting her learning all the world excell'd.
Flying from thence, to Italy it came,
And to the realm of Naples gave the name,
Till both their nation and their arts did come
A welcome trophy to triumphant Rome.
Then wheresoe'er her conquering eagles fled,
Arts, learning, and civility, were spread;
And as in this our microcosm, the heart
Heat, spirit, motion, gives to every part,
So Rome's victorious influence did disperse
All her own virtues through the universe.
Here some digression I must make, t' accuse
Thee, my forgetful and ungrateful Muse!
Couldst thou from Greece to Latium take thy flight,
And not to thy great ancestor do right!
I can no more believe old Homer blind,
Than those who say the sun hath never shin'd:
The age wherein he liv'd was dark, but he
Could not want sight who taught the world to see.
They who Minerva from Jove's head derive,
Might make old Homer's skull the Muses' hive,
And from his brain that Helicon distil
Whose racy liquor did his offspring fill.
Nor old Anacreon, Hesiod, Theocrite,
Must we forget, nor Pindar's lofty flight.
Old Homer's soul, at last from Greece retir'd,
In Italy the Mantuan swain inspir'd.
When great Augustus made war's tempests cease,
His halcyon days brought forth the arts of peace.
He still in his triumphant chariot shines,
By Horace drawn and Virgil's mighty lines.
'Twas certainly mysterious that the name
Of prophets and of poets is the same.
What the Tragedian wrote, the late success
Declares was inspiration and not guess:

As dark a truth that author did unfold
As oracles or prophets e'er foretold:
"At last the ocean shall unlock the bound
Of things, and a new world by Typhis found;
Then ages far remote shall understand
The isle of Thule is not the farthest land."
Sure God, by these discoveries, did design
That his clear light thro' all the world should shine;
But the obstruction from that discord springs
The Prince of Darkness made 'twixt Christian kings:
That peaceful age with happiness to crown,
From heav'n the Prince of Peace himself came down ;
Then the true Sun of knowledge first appear'd,
And the old dark mysterious clouds were clear'd;
The heavy cause of th' old accursed flood
Sunk in the sacred deluge of his blood.
His passion man from his first fall redeem'd;
Once more to Paradise restor❜d we seem'd;
Satan himself was bound, till th' iron chain
Our pride did break, and let him loose again.
Still the old sting remain'd, and man began
To tempt the serpent as he tempted man.
Then hell sends forth her furies, Av'rice, Pride,
Fraud, Discord, Force, Hypocrisy, their guide:
Though the foundation on a rock were laid,
The church was undermin'd, and then betray'd.
Though the Apostles these events foretold,
Yet ev'n the shepherd did devour the fold:
The fisher to convert the world began,
The pride convincing of vain-glorious man;
But soon his followers grew a sovereign lord,
And Peter's keys exchang'd for Peter's sword,
Which still maintains for his adopted son
Vast patrimonies, though himself had none;
Wresting the text to the old giant's sense,
That heaven once more must suffer violence.
Then subtle doctors scriptures made their prize;
Casuists, like cocks, struck out each others' eyes:
Then dark distinctions reason's light disguis'd,
And into atoms truth anatomiz'd:

Then Mah'met's crescent, by our feuds increast,
Blasted the learn'd remainders of the East.
That project, when from Greece to Rome it came,
Made mother Ignorance Devotion's dame;
Then he whom Lucifer's own pride did swell,
His faithful emissary, rose from hell

To possess Peter's chair; that Hildebrand,
Whose foot on mitres, then on crowns, did stand:
And before that exalted idol all

(Whom we call Gods on earth) did prostrate fall.
Then darkness Europe's face did overspread,
From lazy cells, where superstition bred,
Which, link'd with blind obedience, so increas'd,
That the whole world some ages they oppress'd;
Till through those clouds the sun of knowledge brake,
And Europe from her lethargy did wake;
Then first our monarchs were acknowledg'd here,
That they their churches' nursing fathers were.
When Lucifer no longer could advance
His works on the false ground of ignorance,
New arts he tries, and new designs he lays,
Then his well-studied masterpiece he plays;
Loyola, Luther, Calvin, he inspires,
And kindles with infernal flames their fires;
Sends their forerunner (conscious of th' event)
Printing, his most pernicious instrument !

Wild controversy then, which long had slept,
Into the press from ruin'd cloisters leapt.
No longer by implicit faith we err,
Whilst every man's his own interpreter ;
No more conducted now by Aaron's rod,
Lay-elders from their ends create their God.

But seven wise men the ancient world did know,
We scarce know seven who think themselves not so.
When man learn'd undefil'd religion,
We were commanded to be all as one;
Fiery disputes that union have calcin'd;
Almost as many minds as men we find;
And when that flame finds combustible earth,
Thence fatuus fires and meteors take their birth;
Legions of sects and insects come in throngs;
To name them all would tire a hundred tongues.
Such were the Centaurs, of Ixion's race,
Who a bright cloud for Juno did embrace;
And such the monsters of Chimæra's kind,
Lions before, and dragons were behind.
Then from the clashes between popes and kings
Debate, like sparks from flints' collision, springs.
As Jove's loud thunderbolts were forg'd by heat,
The like our Cyclops on their anvils beat:
All the rich mines of learning ransack'd are
To furnish ammunition for this war:
Uncharitable zeal our reason whets,
And double edges on our passions sets.
'Tis the most certain sign the world's accurst,
That the best things corrupted are the worst.
'Twas the corrupted light of knowledge hurl'd
Sin, death, and ignorance, o'er all the world.
That sun like this (from which our sight we have)
Gazed on too long, resumes the light he gave;
And when thick mists of doubts obscure his beams,
Our guide is error, and our visions dreams.
'Twas no false heraldry when Madness drew
Her pedigree from those who too much knew.
Who in deep mines for hidden knowledge toils,
Like guns o'ercharg'd, breaks, misses, or recoils.

When subtle wits have spun their thread too fine,
'Tis weak and fragile, like Arachne's line.
True piety without cessation tost

By theories, the practic part is lost;

And like a ball bandy'd 'twixt pride and wit,
Rather than yield, both sides the prize will quit;
Then whilst his foe each gladiator foils,

The Atheist looking on enjoys the spoils.
Through seas of knowledge we our course advance,
Discovering still new worlds of ignorance;
And these discov'ries make us all confess
That sublunary science is but guess.
Matters of fact to man are only known,
And what seems more is mere opinion:
The standers-by see clearly this event;
All parties say they're sure, yet all dissent.
With their new light our bold inspectors press,
Like Cham, to shew their father's nakedness,
By whose example after-ages may
Discover we more naked are than they.
All human wisdom to divine is folly:
This truth the wisest man made melancholy.
Hope, or belief, or guess, gives some relief,
But to be sure we are deceiv'd brings grief.
Who thinks his wife is virtuous, though not so,
Is pleas'd and patient till the truth he know.
Our God, when heaven and earth he did create,
Form'd man, who should of both participate.
If our lives' motions theirs must imitate,
Our knowledge, like our blood, must circulate.
When like a bridegroom from the East the sun
Sets forth, he thither whence he came doth run.
Into earth's spongy veins the ocean sinks,
Those rivers to replenish which he drinks:
So Learning, which from reason's fountain springs,
Back to the source some secret channel brings.
'Tis happy when our streams of knowledge flow
To fill their banks, but not to overthrow.

"Ut metit Autumnus fruges quas parturit æstas, Sic oram Natura, dedit Deus his quoque finem."

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