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THE MUSE.

GO, the rich chariot instantly prepare ;
The Queen, my Muse, will take the air :
Unruly Fancy with strong Judgment trace;
Put in nimble-footed Wit,

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Smooth-pac'd Eloquence join with it;
Sound Memory with young Invention place;
Harness all the winged race.

Let the postillion Nature mount, and let
The coachman Art be set;

And let the airy footmen, running all beside,
Make a long row of goodly pride,

Figures, Conceits, Raptures, and Sentences,
In a well-worded dress;

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;

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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!
Nay, ev'n beyond his works thy voyages are known,
Thou 'hast thousand worlds too of thine own.
Thou speak'st, great Queen! in the same style as

He;

And a new world leaps forth when thou say'st, "Let it be."

Thou fathom'st the deep gulf of ages past,
And canst pluck up with ease

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,
Where Fates among the stars do grow;
There into the close nests of Time dost peep,
And there, with piercing eye,

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,
If past and future times do thee obey.
Thou stopp'st this current, and dost make
This funning river settle like a lake;

Thy certain hand holds fast this slippery snake!
The fruit which does so quickly waste,

Men scarce can see it, much less taste,

Thou comfitest in sweets to make it last.
This shining piece of ice,

Which melts so soon away
With the sun's ray,

Thy verse does solidate and crystallize,
Till it a lasting mirror be!

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;
But all are bodies dead,

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.
Just, as in Nature, thy proportions be,
As full of concord their variety,

As firm the parts upon their centre rest,
And all so solid are, that they, at least
As much as Nature, emptiness detest.

Long did the mighty Stagyrite retain
The universal intellectual reign,

Saw his own country's short-liv'd leopard slain;
The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly,
Oftener renew'd his age, and saw that die.
Mecca itself, in spite of Mahomet, possest,
And, chas'd by a wild deluge from the East,
His monarchy new planted in the West.
But, as in time each great imperial race
Degenerates, and gives some new one place:

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,
And those all barbarous too:

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,
Spent and out-worn, return no harvest now;
In barren age wild and unglorious lie,
And boast of past fertility,

The poor relief of present poverty.
Food and fruit we now must want,
Unless new lands we plant.

We break-up tombs with sacrilegious hands;
Old rubbish we remove;

To walk in ruins, like vain ghosts, we love,
And with fond divining wands

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,
And slender-limb'd Mediterranean,
Seem narrow creeks to thee, and only fit
For the poor wretched fisher-boats of wit:

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