How vast, how copious, are thy new designs! 65 How ev'ry Music varies in thy lines! And rise in raptures by another's heat. Thus in the wood, when summer dress'd the days, 80 85 WILLIAM BROOME. BROOME was the coadjutor of Pope in the translation of Homer; and has imitated his master with tolerable success in the following lines; which appear to have been written in the latter part of the Life of Pope, when he had distinguished himself by his moral poems. TO MR. POPE. LET vulgar souls triumphal arches raise, 5 10 'Tis thine, on ev'ry heart to grave thy praise, A monument which Worth alone can raise : Sure to survive, when time shall whelm in dust The arch, the marble, and the mimic bust: Nor till the volumes of th' expanded sky Blaze in one flame, shalt thou and Homer die : Then sink together in the world's last fires, What heav'n created, and what heav'n inspires. If aught on earth, when once this breath is fled, With human transport touch the mighty dead, Shakespear, rejoice! his hand thy page refines; Now ev'ry scene with native brightness shines; Just to thy fame, he gives thy genuine thought; So Tully publish'd what Lucretius wrote; Prun'd by his care, thy laurels loftier grow, And bloom afresh on thy immortal brow. 20 Thus when thy draughts, O Raphael! time invades, And the bold figure from the canvas fades, A rival hand recalls from ev'ry part 25 30 Some latent grace, and equals art with art; 45 50 55 Proceed, great Bard! awake th' harmonious string, Be ours all Homer! still Ulysses sing. How long* that Hero, by unskilful hands, Stripp'd of his robes, a beggar trod our lands? Such as he wander'd o'er his native coast, Shrunk by the wand, and all the warrior lost : O'er his smooth skin a bark of wrinkles spread; Old age disgrac'd the honours of his head; Nor longer in his heavy eye-ball shin'd The glance divine, forth-beaming from the mind. But you, like Pallas, ev'ry limb infold 60 With royal robes, and bid him shine in gold; Touch'd by your hand his manly frame improves 65 With grace divine, and like a God he moves. Ev'n I, the meanest of the Muses' train, Tun'd by your hand, and sing as you inspire: 70 Like theirs, our Friendship! and I boast my name This labour past, of heav'nly subjects sing, While hov'ring angels listen on the wing, To hear from earth such heart-felt raptures rise, As, when they sing, suspended hold the Skies: Or nobly rising in fair Virtue's cause, 75 From thy own life transcribe th' unerring laws: 80 * Odyssey, lib. xvi. And men more fierce: when Orpheus tunes the lay Ev'n fiends relenting hear their rage away. W BROOME. THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT. THE following lines confer great honour on their young and highly accomplished author. The ideas are noble and poetical, the sentiments manly and grave, and the expression such as to give full effect to the whole. Pope never received a finer compliment than in the lines commencing-" Say, wondrous youth!"— Mr. Harcourt was only son to the Lord Chancellor Harcourt, and died in 1720. His Epitaph by Pope is one of the very few that have escaped with but little injury from the severity of Johnson. TO MR. POPE, ON THE PUBLISHING HIS WORKS. He comes, he comes! bid ev'ry Bard prepare 5 Crowns his gay brow, and shews him how to reign : 10 But hark, what shouts, what gath'ring crouds rejoice! Unstain'd their praise by any venal voice. 15 |