THE MUSE. GO, the rich chariot instantly prepare ; Smooth-pac'd Eloquence join with it; Let the postillion Nature mount, and let And let the airy footmen, running all beside, Figures, Conceits, Raptures, and Sentences, And innocent Loves, and pleasant Truths, and useful Lyes, In all their gaudy liveries. Mount, glorious Queen! thy travelling throne, And bid it to put on; For long, though cheerful, is the way, And life, alas! allows but one ill winter's day. Where never foot of man, or hoof of beast, The passage press'd; Where never fish did fly, And with short silver wings cut the low liquid sky; Where bird with painted oars did ne'er Row through the trackless ocean of the air; The wheels of thy bold coach pass quick and free, And all's an open road to thee! Whatever God did Say, Is all thy plain and smooth uninterrupted way! He; And a new world leaps forth when thou say'st, "Let it be." Thou fathom'st the deep gulf of ages past, The years which thou dost please; Like shipwreck'd treasures, by rude tempests cast Long since into the sea, Brought up again to light and publick use by thee. Nor dost thou only dive so low, But fy With an unwearied wing the other way on high, Through the firm shell and the thick white, dost spy Years to come a-forming lie, Close in their sacred secundine asleep, Till, hatch'd by the sun's vital heat, Which o'er them yet does brooding set, They life and motion get, And, ripe at last, with vigorous might Break through the shell, and take their everlasting flight! And sure we may The same too of the present say, Thy certain hand holds fast this slippery snake! Men scarce can see it, much less taste, Thou comfitest in sweets to make it last. Which melts so soon away Thy verse does solidate and crystallize, Nay, thy immortal rhyme Makes this one short point of time To fill up half the orb of round eternity. I TO MR. HOBBES. VAST bodies of philosophy I oft have seen and read; Or bodies by art fashioned; never yet the living soul could see, But in thy books and thee! 'Tis only God can know Whether the fair idea thou dost show Agree entirely with his own or no. This I dare boldly tell, *T is so like truth, 't will serve our turn as well. As firm the parts upon their centre rest, Long did the mighty Stagyrite retain Saw his own country's short-liv'd leopard slain; VOL. II. So did this noble empire waste, Sunk by degrees from glories past, And in the school-men's hands it perish'd quite at last: Then nought but words it grew, It perish'd, and it vanish'd there, The life and soul, breath'd out, became but empty air! The fields, which answer'd well the ancients' plough, The poor relief of present poverty. We break-up tombs with sacrilegious hands; To walk in ruins, like vain ghosts, we love, We search among the dead For treasures buried; Whilst still the liberal earth does hold So many virgin-mines of undiscover'd gold. The Baltick, Euxine, and the Caspian, |