LINES,

ON READING THE POEMS OF WARTON.

Age fourteen.

OH, Warton! to thy soothing shell,

Stretched remote in hermit cell,
Where the brook runs babbling by,
For ever I could listening lie:
And catching all the muses' fire,
Hold converse with the tuneful quire.

What pleasing themes thy page adorn,
The ruddy streaks of cheerful morn!
The pastoral pipe, the ode sublime,
And melancholy's mournful chime,
Each with unwonted graces shines
In thy ever lovely lines.

Thy muse deserves the lasting meed;
Attuning sweet the Dorian reed,
Now the love-lorn swain complains,
And sings his sorrows to the plains;
Now the sylvan scenes appear,
Through all the changes of the year;
Or the elegiac strain

Softly sings of mental pain,
And mournful diapasons sail
On the faintly-dying gale.

But, ah! the soothing scene is o'er!

On middle flight we cease to soar,

For now the muse assumes a bolder, sweep,
Strikes on the lyric string her sorrows deep,
In strains unheard before.

Now, now the rising fire thrills high,

Now, now to heav'n's high realms we fly,
And every throne explore,

The soul entranced, on mighty wings,
With all the poet's heat, up springs,

And loses earthly woes;

Till all alarmed at the giddy height,

The muse descends on gentler flight,

And lulls the wearied soul to soft repose.

TO THE MUSE.

Written at the age of fourteen.

I.

ILL-FATED maid, in' whose unhappy train Chill poverty and misery are seen,

Anguish and discontent, the unhappy bane Of life, and blackener of each brighter scene. Why to thy votaries dost thou give to feel So keenly all the scorns-the jeers of life? Why not endow them to endure the strife With apathy's invulnerable steel,

Or self-content and ease, each torturing wound to heal ?

II.

Ah! who would taste your self-deluding joys, That lure the unwary to a wretched doom?

That bid fair views and flattering hopes arise, Then hurl them headlong to a lasting tomb.

What is the charm which leads thy victims on To persevere in paths that lead to woe?

What can induce them in that rout to go,

In which in-numerous before have gone,
And died in misery, poor and woe-begone.

III.

Yet can I ask what charms in thee are found?

I who have drank from thine etherial rill,

And tasted all the pleasures that abound Upon Parnassus', lov'd Aonian hill?

I, thro' whose soul the muses' strains aye thrill! Oh! I do feel the spell with which I'm tied;

And tho' our annals fearful stories tell,
How Savage languish'd, and how Otway died,
Yet must I persevere let whate'er will betide.

SONG.

Written at the age of fourteen.

I.

SOFTLY, softly, blow ye breezes,
Gently o'er my Edwy fly!

Lo! he slumbers, slumbers sweetly,
Softly zephyrs pass him by!
My love is asleep,

He lies by the deep,

All along where the salt waves sigh,

II.

I have cover'd him with rushes,

Water-flags and branches dry;

Edwy long have been thy slumbers,
Edwy, Edwy, ope thine eye!
My love is asleep,

He lies by the deep,

All along where the salt waves sigh.

III.

Still he sleeps; he will not waken,

Fastly closed is his eye;

Paler is his cheek, and chiller

Than the icy moon on high.

Alas! he is dead,

He has chose his death-bed,

All along where the salt waves sigh.

IV.

Is it, is it so my Edwy?

Will thy slumbers never fly?

Could'st thou think I would survive thee?

No, my love, thou bid'st me die.

Thou bid'st me seek,

Thy death-bed bleak,

All along where the salt waves sigh.

V.

I will gently kiss thy cold lips,

On thy breast I'll lay my head,

And the winds, shall sing our death-dirge, And our shroud the waters spread;

The moon will smile sweet,

And the wild wave will beat,

Oh! so softly o'er our lonely bed.