BOOK IV., ODE I.'

TO VENUS.

AGAIN? new tumults in my breast?

Ah spare me, Venus! let me, let me rest!!

3

2

As in the gentle reign of my Queen Anne. Ah sound no more thy soft alarms,

Nor circle sober fifty with thy charms.

Mother too fierce of dear desires!

4

Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires.

To Number Five' direct your doves,

6

There spread round Murray all your blooming loves; 10 Noble and young, who strikes' the heart

With every sprightly, every decent part;

Equal, the injured to defend,

To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend. He, with a hundred arts refined,

Shall stretch thy conquests over half the kind:

1 Mr. Croker, who saw a fair copy of this poem, with Pope's corrections, has noted the variations which are given below. The second line is corrected:

O long a stranger, Venus! let me rest. 2 In the MS.: "Spare me, ah! spare, no more the man."

He mixes two constructions: I am not now the man I was in Queen Anne's time; and "I am not now

15

To him each rival shall submit,

Make but his riches equal to his wit.' Then shall thy form the marble grace,

(Thy Grecian form,) and Chloe lend the face:" His house, embosomed in the grove,

20

Sacred to social life and social love,

Shall glitter o'er the pendant green,

Where Thames reflects the visionary scene:' Thither, the silver-sounding lyres

4

Shall call the smiling loves, and young desires;
There, every Grace and Muse shall throng,
Exalt the dance, or animate the song;
There youths and nymphs, in consort gay,
Shall hail the rising, close the parting day.
With me, alas! those joys are o'er;

For me the vernal garlands bloom no more.
Adieu! fond hope of mutual fire,

The still-believing, still-renewed desire; Adieu! the heart-expanding bowl,

And all the kind deceivers of the soul! But why? ah tell me, ah too dear! '

Steals down my cheek the involuntary tear? Why words so flowing, thoughts so free,

Stop, or turn nonsense, at one glance of thee? Thee, dressed in Fancy's airy beam,

Absent I follow through the extended dream;

1 Seward has an anecdote of Lord Mansfield, respecting the difficulties of his early life; I know not what foundation there is for it. He says that Murray, acquainting Lord Foley that he feared he must give up the law, and go into orders, on account of his slender income, Lord Foley generously requested his acceptance of two hundred pounds a year.-Bowles.

2 Compare Imitation of Horace, 2 Sat. 2, 42, where it is said that Murray's

"Chloe, blind to wit and worth,
Weds the rich dulness of some son of earth."
3 This alludes to Mr. Murray's
intention, at one time, of taking the
loan of Pope's house and grounds at
Twickenham, before he became so
distinguished.-BOWLES.

4 "Soft" had been written in the MS., but "young" substituted.

In the MS.: "But why, ah Celia ! still too dear."

Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,

And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms, And swiftly shoot along the Mall,

Or softly glide by the canal,

Now shown by Cynthia's silver ray,
And now on rolling waters snatched away.

45

VOL. III.-POETRY.

EE

PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE

FOURTH BOOK.

LEST you should think that verse shall die,
Which sounds the silver Thames along,
Taught on the wings of Truth to fly
Above the reach of vulgar song;

Though daring Milton sits sublime,
In Spenser native muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor pensive Cowley's moral lay.

Sages and chiefs long since had birth,
Ere Cæsar was, or Newton named;
These raised new empires o'er the earth,

And those, new heavens and systems framed.

Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!

They had no poet, and they died.

In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead.