Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade thro' slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonoured dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate,-
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

'One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he:

'The next, with dirges due in sad array

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne :Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

The Epitaph.

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown:
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to misery (all he had) a tear,

He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

SONNET ON THE DEATH OF MR. RICHARD WEST.

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join;
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire :
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;

A different object do these eyes require :
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men:
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear:

To warm their little loves the birds complain:
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more, because I weep in vain.

SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER.

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune;
He had not the method of making a fortune :

Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd;
No very great wit, he believed in a God:

A post or a pension he did not desire,

But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

IMPROMPTU, ON LORD HOLLAND'S SEAT AT KINGSGATE.

Old, and abandoned by each venal friend,
Here Holland formed the pious resolution
To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.

On this congenial spot he fixed his choice;
Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand;
Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice,

And mariners, though shipwrecked, dread to land.

Here reign the blustering North and blighting East,
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing;

Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast,
Art he invokes new horrors still to bring.

Here mouldering fanes and battlements arise,
Turrets and arches nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled monast'ries delude our eyes,
And mimic desolation covers all.

'Ah!' said the sighing peer, 'had Bute been true,
Nor Mungo's, Rigby's, Bradshaw's friendship vain,
Far better scenes than these had blest our view,
And realized the beauties which we feign:

'Purged by the sword, and purified by fire,

Then had we seen proud London's hated walls;
Owls would have hooted in St. Peter's choir,
And foxes stunk and littered in St. Paul's.'

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.

[BORN at Cambridge in 1715; educated at Winchester and at Clare Hall, Cambridge. His poems were collected in 1754, and again in 1774. He became Poet Laureate in 1758, and died in 1785, in London.]

William Whitehead, who must not be confused with his clever and disreputable namesake, Paul Whitehead, the poet of the orgies of Medmenham, succeeded Cibber in the laureateship when Gray declined that doubtful honour. He was the perpetual butt of the satire of Churchill, who, as Campbell says, 'completely killed his poetical character!' Indeed his poetry is for the most part tame and conventional enough; yet here and there he emerges from the ruck of Georgian poetasters and becomes noticeable. Variety, a Tale for Married People, which is too long for quotation, is an excellent story in verse— -with a moral, of course, as a conte should have—told in a light and flowing style not unworthy of Gay. The Enthusiast, an Ode, is here given, because of the admirable way in which it epitomises the debate -it is a perennial debate, but the eighteenth century took one side and we take the other-between Nature and Society.

'O bards, that call to bank and glen,
Ye bid me go to Nature to be healed;
And lo a purer fount is here revealed,
My lady-nature dwells in hearts of men :'

-when the modern poet writes in this way, we note him as breaking the poetical concert of our age. But the doctrine is one which the poets of Pope's century were for ever enforcing; even Cowper, antithesis to Pope as he was, enforced it; and this little ode of Whitehead's is so happy a rendering of their argument that it is worthy of being rescued from the oblivion which has almost overwhelmed its author.