A

BOOK I V.

ODE I.

TO VENUS.

GAIN? new tumults in my breast!

Ah spare me, Venus! let me, let me reft! I am not now, alas! the man

As in the gentle reign of my queen Anne.. Ah found no more thy foft alarms,

Nor circle fober fifty with thy charms.

Mother too fierce of dear defires!

Turn, turn to willing hearts your wanton fires.

To number five direct your doves,

There spread round Murray all your blooming

Noble and young, who ftrikes the heart

With ev'ry fprightly, ev'ry decent part:

Equal, the injur'd to defend,

To charm the mistress, or to fix the friend.

He, with a hundred arts refin❜d,

(loves;

Shall ftretch thy conquefts over half the kind:

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, embosom'd in the grove,

Sacred to focial life and focial love, Shall glitter o'er the pendent green,

Where Thames reflects the vifionary scene: Thither, the filver founding lyres

Shall call the smiling loves, and young defires; There, ev'ry Grace and Mufe shall throng, Exalt the dance, or animate the fong; There Youths and Nymphs in confort gay, Shall hail the rifing, close the parting day. alas! those joys are o'er;

With me,

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

The ftill-believing, ftiil-renew'd defire; Adieu! the heart-expanding bowl,

And all the kind deceivers of the foul!

But why? ah tell me,

ah too dear!

Steals down my cheek th' involuntary tear? Why words fo flowing, thoughts fo free,

Stop, or turn nonfenfe, at one glance of thee?

Thee, dreft in fancy's airy beam,

Abfent I follow thro' th' extended dream;

Now, now I feize, I clasp thy charms,

And now you burst (ah cruel!) from my arms;

And swiftly shoot along the Mall,

Or foftly glide by the canal,

Now shown by Cynthia's filver ray,

And now

on rolling waters snatch'd away.

PART OF THE NINTH ODE

OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

LEST you should think that verse shall die,

Which founds the filver Thames along, Taught, on the wings of truth, to fly Above the reach of vulgar fong;

Tho' daring Milton fits fublime,
In Spenser native Muses play;
Nor yet shall Waller yield to time,
Nor penfive Cowley's moral lay-

Sages and chiefs long fince had birth

Ere Cæfar was, or Newton nam'd;

These rais'd new empires o'er the earth,

And those, new heav'ns and systems fram'd.

Vain was the chief's, the fage's pride!
They had no poet, and they dy'd.
In vain they schem'd, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead,

、

IMITATIONS

OF

OVID.