N that soft season, when defcending showers
Call forth the greens, and wake the rising flowers; When opening buds falute the welcome day,
And earth relenting feels the genial ray;
As balmy sleep had charm'd my cares to rest,
And love itself was banish'd from my breast,
(What time the morn mysterious vifions brings,
While purer flumbers spread their golden wings)
A train of phantoms in wild order rose,
And, join'd, this intellectual scene compose.
I ftood, methought, betwixt earth, feas, and skies; The whole creation open to my eyes:
Ver. 11, &c. Thefe verfes are hinted from the fol
lowing of Chaucer, Book ii.
Though beheld I fields and plains,
Now hills, and now mountains,
Now valeis, and now foreftes,
And now unneth great beftes,
Now rivers, now citees,
Now towns, now great trees,
Now shippes fayling in the fee.
In air felf-balanc'd hung the globe below,
Where mountains rife, and circling oceans flow;
Here naked rocks, and empty waftes were seen
There towery cities, and the forests green:
Here failing fhips delight the wandering eyes;
There trees and intermingled temples rise;
Now a clear fun the shining scene displays,
The tranfient landscape now in clouds decays.
O'er the wide profpect as I gaz'd around,
Sudden I heard a wild promiscuous found,
Like broken thunders that at distance roar,
Or billows murmuring on the hollow shore :
Then gazing up, a glorious pile beheld,
Whose towering fummit ambient clouds conceal'd.
High on a rock of Ice the structure lay,
Steep its afcent, and flippery was the way;
The wonderous rock like Parian marble fhone,
And feem'd, to distant fight, of solid stone.
Ver. 27. High on a rock of ice, &c.] Chaucer's third book of Fame.
It ftood upon fo high a rock,
Higher ftandeth none in Spayne-
What manner ftone this rock was,
For it was like a lymed glass,
But that it fhone full more clere;
But of what congeled matere
It was, I nifte redily;
But at the last efpied I,
And found that it was every dele,
A rock of ice, and not of stele.
Inscriptions here of various Names I view'd,
The greater part by hoftile time fubdued;
Yet wide was fpread their fame in ages past,
And Poets once had promis'd they should last.
Some fresh engray'd appear'd of Wits renown'd;
I look'd again, nor could their trace be found,
Critics I faw, that other names deface,
And fix their own, with labour, in their place:
Their own, like others, foon their place refign'd,
Or disappear'd, and left the first behind.
Nor was the work impair'd by storms alone,
But felt th' approaches of too warm a fun;
For Fame, impatient of extremes, decays
Not more by Envy, than excess of Praise.
Ver. 31. Infcriptions here, &c.]
Tho' faw I all the hill y-grave
With famous folkes names fele,
That had been in much wele
And her fames wide y-blow;
But well unneth might I know,
Any letters for to rede
Their names by, for out of drede
They weren almoft off-thawen fo,
That of the letters one or two
Were molte away of every name,
So unfamous was woxe her fame;
But men faid, what may ever last ?
Ver. 41. Nor was the work impair'd, &c.]
Tho' gan I in myne harte caft,
That they were molte away for heate,
And not away with stormes beate.
Yet part no injuries of heaven could feel,
Like crystal faithful to the graving steel :
The rock's high summit, in the temple's shade,
Nor heat could melt, nor beating storm invade.
"Their names infcrib'd unnumber'd ages paft
From time's first birth, with time itself shall last;
These ever new, nor fubject to decays,
Spread, and grow brighter with the length of days.
So Zembla's rocks (the beauteous work of froft)
Rife white in air, and glitter o'er the coaft;
Pale funs, unfelt, at distance roll away,
And on th' impaffive ice the lightnings play;
Eternal fnows the growing mafs fupply,
Till the bright mountains prop th' incumbent sky;
As Atlas fix'd, each hoary pile appears,
The gather'd winter of a thousand years,
Ver. 45. Yet part no injuries, &c.]
For on that other fide I fey
Of that hill which northward ley,
How it was written full of names
Of folke, that had afore great fames,
Of old time, and yet they were
As fresh as men had written hem there
That felf day, or that houre
That I on hem gan to poure:
But well I wifte what it made;
It was conferved with the fhade
(All the writing that I fye)
Of the castle that toode on high,
And food eke in fo cold a place,
That heat might it not deface.
On this foundation Fame's high temple stands $;
Stupendous pile! not rear'd by mortal hands.
Whate'er proud Rome or artful Greece beheld,
Or elder Babylon, its frame excell'd.
Four faces had the dome, and every face
Of various structure, but of equal grace!
Four brazen gates, on columns lifted high,
Salute the different quarters of the sky.
Here fabled Chiefs in darker ages born,
Or Worthies old, whom arms or arts adorn,
Who cities rais'd, or tam'd a monstrous race;
The walls in venerable order grace:
Heroes in animated marble frown,
And Legiflators feem to think in stone.
Weftward, a fumptuous frontispiece appear'd,
On Doric pillars of white marble rear'd,
Crown'd with an architrave of antique mold,
And sculpture rifing on the roughen'd gold.
In fhaggy spoils here Thefeus was beheld,
And Perfeus dreadful with Minerva's fhield:
There great Alcides, ftooping with his toil,
Refts on his club, and holds th' Hefperian spoil:
Here Orpheus fings; trees moving to the found
Start from their roots, and form a fhade around:
Amphion there the loud creating lyre
Strikes, and behold a fudden Thebes aspire!
Cytheron's echoes anfwer to his call,
And half the mountain rolls into a wall:
There might you see the lengthening spires afcend,
The domes fwell up, the widening arches bend,
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