CHORUS OF YOUTHS AND VIRGINS. SEMICHORUS. O tyrant Love! hast thou possest The prudent, learn'd, and virtuous breast? Wisdom and wit in vain reclaim, And arts but soften us to feel thy flame. Love, soft intruder, enters here, But entering learns to be sincere. Marcus with blushes owns he loves, And Brutus tenderly reproves. Why, virtue, dost thou blame desire Which nature hath imprest? Why, nature, dost thou soonest fire The mild and generous breast? CHORUS. Love's purer flames the gods approve; And sterner Cassius melts at Junia's eyes. Spent in a sudden storm of lust, Chaste as cold Cynthia's virgin light, SEMICHORUS. O source of every social tie, What tender passions take their turns His heart now melts, now leaps, now burns, CHORUS. Hence guilty joys, distastes, surmises, Fires that scorch, yet dare not shine! Sacred Hymen! these are thine. EPISTLE TO ROBERT EARL OF OXFORD AND MORTIMER, PREFIXED TO PARNELL'S POEMS. SUCH were the notes thy once lov'd poet sung, Till death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue. Oh, just beheld and lost! admir'd and mourn'd! With softest manners, gentlest arts, adorn'd! Bless'd in each science! bless'd in every strain! Dear to the Muse! to Harley dear—in vain! For him thou oft hast bid the world attend, Fond to forget the statesman in the friend; For Swift and him despis'd the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great, Dexterous the craving, fawning crowd to quit, And pleas'd to 'scape from flattery to wit. Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear (A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear); Recall those nights that clos'd thy toilsome days, Still hear thy Parnell in his living lays; Who, careless now of interest, fame, or fate, Perhaps forgets that Oxford e'er was great; Or deeming meanest what we greatest call, Beholds thee glorious only in thy fall. And sure if aught below the seats divine Can touch immortals, 'tis a soul like thine; A soul supreme, in each hard instance tried, EPISTLE TO JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ. SECRETARY OF STATE. A SOUL as full of worth as void of pride, And strikes a blush through frontless flattery- Know, kings and fortune cannot make thee more. EPISTLE TO MR. JERVAS, WITH DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION OF FRESNOY'S ART OF PAINTING.1 THIS verse be thine, my friend, nor thou refuse Whether thy hand strike out some free design, 1 See Memoir prefixed to these volumes, p. xxxvii. |