THE

Τ TO MB of SHAKESPEAR.

А

V I S I O N.

By JOHN GILBERT COOPER, Efq;

THAT time the jocund rofie-bosóm'd HOURS

Led forth the train of PHOEBUS and the SPRING, And Zephyr mild profusely scatter'd flowers

On Earth's green mantle from his musky wing, .

Thr Morn unbarr'd th' ambrofial gates of light,

Westward the raven-pinion'd Darkness flew, The Landscape smild in vernal beauty bright,

And to their graves the fullen Ghosts withdrew.

The nightingale no longer swell’d her throat

With love-lorn plainings tremulous and flow,
And on the wings of Silence ceas’d to Aoat
The gurgling notes of her melodious woe:

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The

The God of sleep mysterious vifions led
• In gay procession 'fore the mental eye,
And my free'd foul awhile her manfion Aled, ,

To try her plumes for immortality.

Thro' fields of air, methought, I took my flight,

Thro' ev'ry clime, o’er ev'ry region pafs’d, No paradise or ruin 'scap'd my fight,

HESPERIAN garden, or CIMMERIAN waste.

On Avon's banks I lit, whose streams appear

To wind with eddies fond round SHAKESPEAR's tomb, The year's first feath'ry songsters warble near,

And vi'lets breathe, and earliest roses, bloom.

Here Fancy fat, (her dewy fingers cold

Decking with flow'rets fresh thi unsullied fod, And bath'd with tears the sad fepulchrál mold,

Her fav’rite offspring's long and last abode.

Ah! what avails, the cry'd, a Poet's name?

Ah! what avails th' immortalizing breath To snatch from dumb Oblivion other's fame?

My darling child here lies a prey to Death!

Let gentle OTWAY, white-rob'a Pity's priest,

From grief domestic teach the tears to flow, Or Southern captivate th' impaffion'd breast

With heart-felt fighs and fynipathy of woe.

For not to these his genius was confin'd,

Nature and I each tuneful pow'r had given,
Poetic transports of the madding mind,

And the wing'd words that waft the foul to heaven:

The fiery glance of th' intellectual eye,

Piercing all objects of creation's store,
Which on this world's extended furface lie;

And plastic thought that ftill created more.

O grant, with eager rapture I reply'd,

Grant me, great goddess of the changeful eye,
To view each Being in poetic pride,

To whom thy fon gave immortality.

Sweet Fancy fmild, and wav'd her myftic rod,

When strait these vifions felt her pow'rful arm,
And one by one succeeded at her nod,

As vassalsprites obey the wizard's charm.

First a celestial form. (of azure hue

Whose mantle, bound with brede ætherial, flow'a
To each soft breeze its balmy breath that drew)

Swift down the sun-beams of the noon-tide rode.

Obedient to the necromantic fway

Of an old fage to folitude refign'd,
With fenny vapors he obscurd the day,
Launch'd the long lightning, and let loose the wind.
• Ariel in the Tempeft.

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He

He whirl'd the tempeft thro' the howling air,

Rattled the dreadful thunderclap on high, And rais'd a roaring elemental war

Betwixt the sea-green waves and azure sky, ;

Then, like heav'n's mild embassador of love

To man repentant, bade the tumult cease, Smoothd the blue bosom of the realms above,

And hush'd the rebel elements to peace,

Unlike to this in spirit or in mien
Another form succeeded to

my
A two-legg’d brute which Nature made in spleen,

Or from the loathing womb unfinish'd drew.

view;

Scarce cou'd he fyllable the curse he thought,

Prone were his eyes to earth, his mind to evil, A carnal fiend to imperfection wrought,

The mongrel offspring of a Witch and Devil.

Next bloom'd, upon an ancient forest's bound,

The flow'ry margine of a filent stream, O'er-arch'd by oaks with ivy mantled round,

And gilt by filver CINTHIA's maiden beam,

On the green carpet of th' unbended grass,

A dapper train of female fairies play'd,
And ey'd their gambols in the watry glass,
That smoothly hole along the shad'wy glade,
b. Caliban in the Tempest.

Fairy-land from the Midsummer night's dream,

Thro' these the queen Titania pass'd ador'd,

Mounted aloft in her imperial car, Journeying to see great OBERON her lord

Wage the mock battles of a sportive war.

Arm'd cap-a-pee forth march'd the fairy king,

A stouter warrior never took the field,
His threat'ning lance a hornet's horrid sting,

The sharded beetle's scale his fable shield.

Around their chief the elfin host appear'd,

Each little helmet sparkled like a star,
And their sharp spears in pierceless phalanx rear'd,

A grove of thistles, glitter'd in the air.

The scene then chang'd, from this romantic land,

To a bleak waste by bound'ry unconfin'd, Where three smart filters of the weïrd band

Were mutt'ring curses to the troublous wind.

Pale Want had wither'd every furrow'd face,

Bow'd was each carcase with the weight of years, And each sunk eye-ball from its hollow case

Distill'd cold rheum's involuntary tears.

Hors’d on three staves they posted to the bourn

Of a drear island, where the pendant brow
Of a rough rock, shagg'd horribly with thorn,
Frown'd on the boift'rous waves which rag'd below.

The witches in Macbeth.

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Deep