This wheel-footed studying chair,
Contrived both for toil and repose,
Wide-elbowed, and wadded with hair,
In which I both scribble and doze,
Bright-studded to dazzle the eyes,
And rival in lustre of that
In which, or astronomy lies,
Fair Cassiopeia sat:
These carpets, so soft to the foot,
Caledonia's traffic and pride!
Oh spare them, ye knights of the boot,
Escaped from a cross-country ride!
This table and mirror within,
Secure from collision and dust,
At which I oft shave cheek and chin,
And periwig nicely adjust:
This movable structure of shelves,
For its beauty admired and its use,
And charged with octavos and twelves,
The gayest I had to produce;
Where, flaming in scarlet and gold
My poems enchanted I view,
And hope, in due time, to behold
My Iliad and Odyssey too:
This china, that decks the alcove,
Which here people call a buffet,
But what the gods call it above
Has ne'er been revealed to us yet:
These curtains, that keep the room warm
Or cool, as the season demands:
These stoves, that for pattern and form
Seem the labour of Mulciber's hands:
All these are not half that I owe
To one, from our earliest youth
To me ever ready to show
Benignity, friendship, and truth;
For time, the destroyer declared
And foe of our perishing kind,
If even her face he has spared,
Much less could he alter her mind.
Thus compassed about with the goods
And chattels of leisure and ease,
I indulge my poetical moods
In many such fancies as these ;
And fancies I fear they will seem-
Poets' goods are not often so fine;
The poets will swear that I dream
When I sing of the splendour of mine.
INSCRIPTION FOR A MOSS HOUSE IN THE SHRUBBERY AT WESTON
HERE, free from riot's hated noise,
Be mine the calmer purer joys
A friend or book bestows:
Far from the storms that shake the great
Contentment's gale shall fan my seat
And sweeten my repose.
SONNET TO A YOUNG LADY ON HER BIRTHDAY
DEEM not, sweet rose, that bloomest midst many a thorn,
Thy friend, though to a cloister's shade consigned,
Can e'er forget the charms he left behind,
Or pass unheeded this auspicious morn!
In happier days to brighter prospects born,
O tell thy thoughtless sex, the virtuous mind,
Like thee, content in every state may find,
And look on folly's pageantry with scorn.
To steer with nicest art betwixt the extreme
Of idle mirth and affectation coy:
To blend good sense with elegance and ease:
To bid affliction's eye no longer stream:
Is thine best gift the unfailing source of joy,
The guide to pleasures which can never cease!
SUBJOINED TO THE YEARLY BILL OF MORTALITY OF THE PARISH OF ALL SAINTS, NORTHAMPTON
Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres.-HORACE.
Pale Death with equal foot strikes wide the door
Of royal halls and hovels of the poor.
WHILE thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen's barge-laden wave,
All these, life's rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave.
Was man (frail always) made more frail
Than in foregoing years?
Did famine or did plague prevail,
That so much death appears?
No: these were vigorous as their sires,
Nor plague nor famine came;
This annual tribute Death requires,
And never waives his claim.
Like crowded forest-trees we stand,
And some are marked to fall;
The axe will smite at God's command,
And soon shall smite us all.
Green as the bay-tree, ever green,
With its new foliage on,
The gay, the thoughtless, I have seen;
I passed and they were gone.
Read, ye that run, the solemn truth
With which I charge my page;
A worm is in the bud of youth
And at the root of age.
No present health can health ensure
For yet an hour to come;
Nor medicine, though it oft can cure,
Can always balk the tomb.
And oh! that humble as my
And scorned as is my strain,
These truths, though known, too much forgot,
I may not teach in vain.
So prays your Clerk with all his heart,
And, ere he quits the pen,
Begs you for once to take his part
And answer all-" Amen!"
Quod adest, memento
Componere æquus. Cætera fluminis
Ritu feruntur.-HORACE
Improve the present hour, for all beside
Is a mere feather on a torrent's tide.
COULD I, from heaven inspired, as sure presage
To whom the rising year shall prove his last,
As I can number in my punctual page
And item down the victims of the past;
How each would trembling wait the mournful sheet,
On which the press might stamp him next to die;
And reading here his sentence, how replete
With anxious meaning, heavenward turn his eye!
Time then would seem more precious than the joys
In which he sports away the treasure now;
And prayer more seasonable than the noise
Of drunkards, or the music-drawing bow.
Then doubtless many a trifler, on the brink
Of this world's hazardous and headlong shore,
Forced to a pause, would feel it good to think,
Told that his setting sun must rise no more.
Ah, self-deceived! Could I, prophetic, say
Who next is fated and who next to fall,
The rest might then seem privileged to play;
But, naming none, the Voice now speaks to ALL.
Observe the dappled foresters, how light
They bound, and airy, o'er the sunny glade-
One falls-the rest, wide-scattered with affright,
Vanish at once into the darkest shade.
Had we their wisdom, should we, often warned,
Still need repeated warnings, and at last,
A thousand awful admonitions scorned,
Die self-accused of life run all to waste?
Sad waste! for which no after-thrift atones:
The grave admits no cure for guilt or sin;
Dewdrops may deck the turf that hides the bones,
But tears of godly grief ne'er flow within.
Learn then, ye living! by the mouths be taught
Of all these sepulchres, instructors true,
That, soon or late, death also is your lot,
And the next opening grave may yawn for you.
Placidaque ibi demum morte quievit.—VIRGIL.
There calm at length he breathed his soul away.
"OH! most delightful hour by man
Experienced here below,
The hour that terminates his span,
His folly, and his woe!
"Worlds should not bribe me back to tread
Again life's dreary waste,
To see again my day o'erspread
With all the gloomy past.
"My home henceforth is in the skies—
Earth, seas, and sun adieu !
All heaven unfolded to my eyes,
I have no sight for you."
So spake Aspasio, firm possessed
Of faith's supporting rod,
Then breathed his soul into its rest,
The bosom of his God.
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