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to the ancient Greek, and his departure from the nice discrimination of character and speech which prevails in Homer, are faults now universally admitted. Cowper (though he failed himself in Homer) justly remarks, that the Iliad and Odyssey in Pope's hands have no more the air of antiquity than if he had himself invented them.' The success of the Iliad led to the translation of the Odyssey; but Pope called in his friends Broome and Fenton as assistants. These two coadjutors translated twelve books, and the notes were compiled by Broome. Fenton received £300, and Broome £500, while Pope had £2885, 5s. The Homeric labours occupied a period of twelve years-from 1713 to 1725. The improvement of his pecuniary resources enabled the poet to remove from the shades of Windsor Forest to a situation nearer the metropolis. He purchased a lease of a house and grounds at Twickenham, to

Pope's Villa, Twickenham.

which he removed with his father and mother, and where he continued to reside during the remainder of his life. This classic spot, which Pope delighted to improve, and where he was visited by ministers of state, wits, poets, and beauties, is now greatly defaced. Whilst on a visit to Oxford in 1716, Pope

* Pope's house was not large, but sufficiently commodious

for the wants of an English gentleman whose friends visited

himself rather than his dwelling, and who were superior to the the road, which it closely adjoined; on the other, to a narrow lawn sloping to the Thames. A piece of pleasure-ground, including a garden, was cut off by the public road; an awkward and unpoetical arrangement, which the proprietor did his best to improve. After the poet's death, the villa was purchased by Sir William Stanhope, and subsequently by Lord Mendip, who carefully preserved everything connected with it; but, being in 1807 sold to the Baroness Howe, it was by that lady taken down, that a larger house might be built near its site. Now (1843), the place is the property of Young, Esq.; the second house has been enlarged into two, and further alterations are contemplated. The grounds have suffered a complete change since Pope's time, and a monument which he erected to his mother on a hillock at their further extremity has been removed. The only certain remnants of the poet's mansion are the vaults upon which it was built, three in number, the central one being connected with a tunnel, which, passing under the road, gives admission to the rear grounds, while the

necessity of stately ceremonials. On one side it fronted to

commenced, and probably finished, the most highly poetical and passionate of his works, the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard. The delicacy of the poet in veiling over the circumstances of the story, and at the same time preserving the ardour of Eloisa's passion, the beauty of his imagery and descriptions, the exquisite melody of his versification, rising and falling like the tones of an Eolian harp, as he successively portrays the tumults of guilty love, the deepest penitence, and the highest devotional rapture, have never been surpassed. If less genial tastes and a love of satire withdrew Pope from those fountain-springs of the Muse, it was obviously from no want of power in the poet to display the richest hues of imagination, or the finest impulses of the human mind. The next literary undertaking of our author was an edition of Shakspeare, in which he attempted, with but indifferent success, to establish the text of the mighty poet, and explain his obscurities. In 1733, he published his Essay on Man, being part of a course of moral philosophy in verse which he projected. The Essay' is now read, not for its philosophy, but for its poetry. Its metaphysical distinctions are neglected for those splendid passages and striking incidents which irradiate the poem. In lines like the following, he speaks with a mingled sweetness and dignity superior to his great master Dryden :

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined, from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given
Behind the cloud-topped hill a humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content, whate'er thy name;
Oh Happiness! our being's end and aim,
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die,
Which, still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise!
Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair opening to some court's propitious shine,
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Or reaped in iron harvests of the field?

[graphic]

side ones are of the character of grottos, paved with square bricks, and stuck over with shells. It is curious to find over the central stone of the entrance into the left of these grottos, a large ammonite, and over the other, the piece of hardened clay in which its cast was left. Pope must have regarded these merely as curiosities, or lusus naturæ, little dreaming of the wonderful tale of the early condition of our globe which they assist in telling. A short narrow piazza in front of the grottos is probably the evening colonnade' of the lines on the absence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The taste with which Pope laid out his grounds at Twickenham (five acres in all), had a marked effect on English landscape gardening. The Prince of Wales took the design of his garden from the poet's; and Kent, the improver and embellisher of pleasure grounds, received his best lessons from Pope. He aided materially in banishing the stiff formal Dutch style.

Where grows where grows it not? If vain our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.
Fixed to no spot is Happiness sincere;
'Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere;
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,

And fled from monarchs, ST JOHN! dwells with thee.
Ask of the learned the way! The learned are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease;
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;
Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;
Some swelled to gods, confess even virtue vain ;
Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
To trust in everything, or doubt of all.

Pope's future labours were chiefly confined to satire. In 1727 he published, in conjunction with his friend Swift, three volumes of Miscellanies, in prose and verse, which drew down upon the authors a torrent of invective, lampoons, and libels, and ultimately led to the Dunciad, by Pope. This elaborate and splendid satire displays the fertile invention of the poet, the variety of his illustration, and the unrivalled force and facility of his diction; but it is now read with a feeling more allied to pity than admiration-pity that one so highly gifted should have allowed himself to descend to things so mean, and devote the end of a great literary life to the infliction of retributary pain on every humble aspirant in the world of letters. 'I have often wondered,' says Cowper, that the same poet who wrote the "Dunciad" should have written these lines

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That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.

Alas for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others was the measure of the mercy he received.' Sir Walter Scott has justly remarked, that Pope must have suffered the most from these wretched contentions. It is known that his temper was ultimately much changed for the worse. Misfortunes were also now gathering round him. Swift was fast verging on insanity, and was lost to the world; Atterbury and Gay died in 1732; and next year his venerable mother, whose declining years he had watched with affectionate solicitude, also expired. Between the years 1733 and 1740, Pope published his inimitable Epistles. Satires, and Moral Essays, addressed to his friends Bolingbroke, Bathurst, Arbuthnot, &c., and containing the most noble and generous sentiments, mixed up with withering invective and the fiercest denunciations. In 1742 he added a fourth book to the Dunciad,' displaying the final advent of the goddess to destroy order and science, and to substitute the kingdom of the dull upon earth. The point of his individual satire, and the richness and boldness of his general design, attest the undiminished powers and intense feeling of the poet. Next year Pope prepared a new edition of the four books of the Dunciad,' and elevated Colley Cibber to the situation of hero of the poem. This unenviable honour had previously been enjoyed by Theobald, a tasteless critic and commentator on Shakspeare; but in thus yielding to his personal dislike of Cibber, Pope injured the force of his satire. The laureate, as Warton justly remarks, with a great stock of levity, vanity, and affectation, had sense, and wit, and humour; and the author of the "Careless Husband" was by no means a proper king of the dunces.' Cibber was all vivacity and conceit-the very reverse of personified dulness,

Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound. Political events came in the rear of this accumulated and vehement satire to agitate the last days of Pope.

The anticipated approach of the Pretender led the government to issue a proclamation prohibiting every Roman Catholic from appearing within ten miles of London. The poet complied with the proclamation; and he was soon afterwards too ill to be in town. This additional proclamation from the Highest of all Powers,' as he terms his sickness, he submitted to without murmuring. A constant state of excitement, added to a life of ceaseless study and contemplation, operating on a frame naturally delicate and deformed from birth, had completely exhausted the powers of Pope. He complained of his inability to think; yet, a short time before his death, he said, 'I am so certain of the soul's being immortal, that' seem to feel it within me as it were by intuition.' Another of his dying remarks was, There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and, indeed, friendship itself is only a part of virtue.' He died at Twickenham on the 30th of May, 1744.

The character and genius of Pope have given rise to abundance of comment and speculation. The occasional fierceness and petulance of his satire cannot be justified, even by the coarse attacks of his opponents, and must be ascribed to his extreme sensibility, to over-indulged vanity, and to a hasty and irritable temper. His sickly constitution de barring him from active pursuits, he placed too high a value on mere literary fame, and was deficient in the manly virtues of sincerity and candour. At the same time he was a public benefactor, by stigmatising the vices of the great, and lashing the absurd pretenders to taste and literature. He was a fond and steady friend; and in all our literary biography, there is nothing finer than his constant undeviating affection and reverence for his venerable parents. Me let the tender office long engage, To rock the cradle of reposing age; With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep at least one parent from the sky.

Prologue to the Satires.

As a poet, it would be absurd to rank Pope with the greatest masters of the lyre; with the universality of Shakspeare, or the sublimity of Milton. He was undoubtedly more the poet of artificial life and manners than the poet of nature. He was a nice observer and an accurate describer of the phenomena of the mind, and of the varying shades and gradations of vice and virtue, wisdom and folly. He was too fon¿ of point and antithesis, but the polish of the weapon was equalled by its keenness. Let us look,' says Campbell, to the spirit that points his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too antithetic and sententious.' His wit, fancy, and good sense, are as remarkable as his satire. His elegance has never been surpassed, or perhaps equalled: it is a combination of intellect, imagination, and taste, under the direction of an independent spirit and refined moral feeling. If he had studied more in the school of nature and of Shakspeare, and less in the school of Horace and Boileau; if he had cherished the frame and spirit in which he composed the Elegy' and the Eloisa,' and forgot his too exclusive devotion to that which inspired the Dunciad,' the world would have hallowed his memory with a still more affectionate and permanent interest than even that which waits on him as one of our most brilliant and accomplished English poets.

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Mr Campbell in his 'Specimens' has given an eloquent estimate of the general powers of Pope, with reference to his position as a poet:-That Pope was neither so insensible to the beauties of nature, nor

so indistinct in describing them, as to forget the Rapt into future times, the bard begun : character of a genuine poet, is what I mean to urge, A Virgin shall conceive, a Virgin bear a Son! without exaggerating his picturesqueness. But be- From Jesse's root behold a branch arise, fore speaking of that quality in his writings, I would Whose sacred flower with fragrance fills the skies: beg leave to observe, in the first place, that the fa- The ethereal spirit o'er its leaves shall move, culty by which a poet luminously describes objects of And on its top descends the mystic Dove. art, is essentially the same faculty which enables him Ye heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour, to be a faithful describer of simple nature; in the se- And in soft silence shed the kindly shower. cond place, that nature and art are to a greater degree The sick and weak the healing plant shall aid, relative terms in poetical description than is generally From storms a shelter, and from heat a shade. recollected; and thirdly, that artificial objects and All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds snall fail; manners are of so much importance in fiction, as to Returning Justice lift aloft her scale; make the exquisite description of them no less cha- Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, racteristic of genius than the description of simple And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend. physical appearances. The poet is "creation's heir." Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn! He deepens our social interest in existence. It is Oh, spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born! surely by the liveliness of the interest which he ex- See, nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, cites in existence, and not by the class of subjects With all the incense of the breathing spring! which he chooses, that we most fairly appreciate the See lofty Lebanon his head advance! genius or the life of life which is in him. It is no See nodding forests on the mountains dance! irreverence to the external charms of nature to say, See spicy clouds from lowly Sharon rise, that they are not more important to a poet's study And Carmel's flowery top perfume the skies! than the manners and affections of his species. Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers; Nature is the poet's goddess; but by nature, no one Prepare the way! a God, a God appears! rightly understands her mere inanimate face, how- A God, a God! the vocal hills reply; ever charming it may be, or the simple landscape-The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity. painting of trees, clouds, precipices, and flowers. Why, then, try Pope, or any other poet, exclusively by his powers of describing inanimate phenomena? Nature, in the wide and proper sense of the word, means life in all its circumstances-nature, moral as well as external. As the subject of inspired fiction, nature includes artificial forms and manners. Richardson is no less a painter of nature than Homer. Homer himself is a minute describer of works of art; and Milton is full of imagery derived from it. Satan's spear is compared to the pine, that makes "the mast of some great ammiral;" and his shield is like the moon, but like the moon artificially seen through the glass of the Tuscan artist. The "spiritstirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and all the quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," are all artificial images. When Shakspeare groups into one view the most sublime objects of the universe, he fixes on "the cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples." Those who have ever witnessed the spectacle of the launching of a ship of the line, will perhaps forgive me for adding this to the examples of the sublime objects of artificial life. Of that spectacle I can never forget the impression, and of having witnessed it reflected from the faces of ten thousand spectators. They seem yet before me. I sympathise with their deep and silent expectation, and with their final burst of enthusiasm. It was not a vulgar joy, but an affecting national solemnity. When the vast bulwark sprang from her cradle, the calm water on which she swung majestically round, gave the imagination a contrast of the stormy element in which she was soon to ride. All the days of battle and nights of danger which she had to encounter, all the ends of the earth which she had to visit, and all that she had to do and to suffer for her country, rose in awful presentiment before the mind; and when the heart gave her a benediction, it was like one pronounced on a living being.'

The Messiah.

Ye nymphs of Solyma! begin the song:
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong.
The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids,
Delight no more-0 thou my voice inspire,
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire!

Lo! earth receives him from the bending skies;
Sink down, ye mountains; and ye valleys rise;
Be smooth, ye rocks: ye rapid floods, give way!
With heads declined, ye cedars homage pay;
The Saviour comes! by ancient bards foretold:
Hear him, ye deaf: and all ye blind, behold!
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day:
And bid new music charm the unfolding ear:
'Tis he the obstructed paths of sound shall clear,
The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
No sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear ;
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
In adamantine chains shall death be bound,
From every face he wipes off every tear.
And hell's grim tyrant feel the eternal wound.
As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,
Seeks freshest pasture, and the purest air;
Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,
By day o'ersees them, and by night protects ;
The tender lambs he raises in his arms,
Feeds from his hand and in his bosom warms;
Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage,
The promised father of the future age.
No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes;
Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more:
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a ploughshare end.
Then palaces shall rise; the joyful son
Shall finish what his short-lived sire begun;
Their vines a shadow to their race shall yield,
And the same hand that sowed, shall reap the field
The swain in barren deserts with surprise
Sees lilies spring, and sudden verdure rise;
And starts, amidst the thirsty wilds to hear
New falls of water murmuring in his ear.
On rifted rocks, the dragon's late abodes,
The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods.
Waste sandy valleys, once perplexed with thorn,
The spiry fir and shapely box adorn :

To leafless shrubs the flowery palms succeed,
And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed.
The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,
And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead:
The steer and lion at one crib shall meet,
And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's feet.
The smiling infant in his hand shall take
The crested basilisk and speckled snake;

Pleased the green lustre of the scales survey,
And with their forky tongue shall innocently play.
Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise!
Exalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes!
See a long race thy spacious courts adorn!
See future sons and daughters yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend!
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabean springs.
For thee Idume's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts: the Light himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed his word, his saving power remains;
Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns!

[The Toilet.]

[From The Rape of the Lock."]

And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid;
First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores,
With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers.
A heavenly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eye she rears;
The inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride.
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
The various offerings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box:
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,

And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
The busy sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and those divide the hair;
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown,
And Betty's praised for labours not her own.

[Description of Belinda and the Sylphs.]
[From the same.]

Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs and well-drest youths around her shone,
But every eye was fixed on her alone.

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those.
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.

Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide;
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget them all.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck,
With shining ringlets, the smooth ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
With hairy springes we the birds betray,
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey;
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.

The advent'rous baron the bright locks admired;
He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired.
Resolved to win, he meditates the way,
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;
For when success a lover's toil attends,
Few ask if fraud or force attained his ends.

For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored Propitious heaven, and every power adored; But chiefly Love to Love an altar built, Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, And all the trophies of his former loves; With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre, And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire. Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize; The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer, The rest the winds dispersed in empty air.

But now secure the painted vessel glides, The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides: While melting music steals upon the sky, And softened sounds along the waters die; Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. All but the Sylph, with careful thoughts opprest, The impending wo sat heavy on his breast." He summons straight his denizens of air; The lucid squadrons round the sails repair. Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath. Some to the sun their insect wings unfold, Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold; Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light, Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes; While every beam new transient colours flings, Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings Amid the circle on the gilded mast, Superior by the head was Ariel placed; His purple pinions opening to the sun, He raised his azure wand and thus begun :

Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear;
Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and dæmons, hear!
Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned
By laws eternal to the aërial kind.
Some in the fields of purest ether play,
And bask and whiten in the blaze of day;
Some guide the course of wandering orbs on high,
Or roll the planets through the boundless sky;
Some, less refined, beneath the moon's pale light
Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night,
Or suck the mists in grosser air below,
Or dip their pinions in the painted bow,
Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main,
Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain.
Others on earth o'er human race preside,

Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide:
Of these the chief the care of nations own,
And guard with arms divine the British throne.

Our humbler province is to tend the fair,
Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care;
To save the powder from too rude a gale,
Nor let the imprisoned essences exhale;
To draw fresh colours from the vernal flowers;
To steal from rainbows ere they drop in showers
A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs,
Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs;
Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow,
To change a flounce, or add a furbelow.

This day, black omens threat the brightest fair
That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care;
Some dire disaster, or by force or flight;

But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night.
Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law,
Or some frail China-jar receive a flaw,

Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,

Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade;

Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball;

Shrines, where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep!
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not heaven's while Abelard has part,
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor prayers nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears for ages taught to flow in vain.

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes
Oh, name for ever sad, for ever dear;

Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear!
I tremble, too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of wo:

Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

There stern religion quenched the unwilling flame,

Or whether heaven has doomed that Shock must fall. There died the best of passions, love and fame.

Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair:

The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care;
The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign;
And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine;
Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favourite Lock;
Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.
To fifty chosen sylphs, of special note,

We trust the important charge, the petticoat:
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale.
Form a strong line about the silver bound,
And guard the wide circumference around.

Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins ;
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye:
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain ;
Or alum styptics with contracting power
Shrink his thin essence like a shrivelled flower:
Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling mill;
In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
And tremble at the sea that froths below!

He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend:
Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend;
Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair,
Some hang upon the pendants of her ear:
With beating hearts the dire event they wait,
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of fate.

[From the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard.]

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heavenly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns,
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love!-From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.

Dear, fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed:
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where, mixed with God's, his loved idea lies:
O, write it not, my hand-the name appears
Already written-wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.
Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn!
Ye grots and caverns shagged with horrid thorn!

Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine!
Nor foes nor fortune take this power away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare ;
Love but demands what else were shed in prayer
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.

*

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.
Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banished lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires.
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.
Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy prayer;
From the false world in early youth they filed,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.
You raised these hallowed walls; the desert smiled,
And paradise was opened in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors;
No silver saints, by dying misers given,
Here bribed the rage of ill-requited heaven:
But such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.

In these lone walls (their day's eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned,
Where awful arches make a noon-day night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light;
Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray,
And gleams of glory brightened all the day.
But now no face divine contentment wears,
"Tis all blank sadness or continual tears.
See how the force of others' prayers I try,
O pious fraud of amorous charity!
But why should I on others' prayers depend?
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!
Ah, let thy handmaid, sister, daughter, move,
And all those tender names in one, thy love!
The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclined,
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind;
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long sounding isles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:

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