Page images
PDF
EPUB

144

Gratitude.-True Virtue.

GRATITUDE.

WHAT is grandeur? what is power?
Heavier toil, superior pain.

What the bright reward we gain?
The grateful memory of the good.
Sweet is the breath of vernal show'r,

The bee's collected treasure sweet,

Sweet music's melting fall;-but sweeter yet The still small voice of gratitude.

GRAY.

TRUE VIRTUE.

GREAT minds, like Heav'n are pleas'd with doing good,

Tho' the ungrateful subjects of their favours
Are barren in return. Virtue does still
With scorn the mercenary world regard,
Where abject souls do good, and hope reward.
Above the worthless trophies men can raise,
She seeks nor honours, wealth, norairy praise,
But with herself, herself the goddess pays.

ROWE.

Candour.-Fortitude.

145

CANDOUR.

LET universal candour still,

Clear as yon heav'n reflecting rill,
Preserve my open mind;

Nor this nor that man's crooked ways
One sordid doubt within me raise

To injure human-kind.

AKENSIDE.

FORTITUDE.

THE gen'rous mind is by its suff'rings known,
Which no affliction tramples down;

But when oppress'd will upward move,
Spurn its own clog of cares, and soar above.
Though ills assault thy breast on ev'ry side,
Yet bravely stem th' impetuous tide;
No tributary tears to fortune pay,
Nor add to any loss a nobler day;
But with kind hopes support thy mind,
And think thy better lot behind:
Amidst afflictions let thy soul be great,
And show thou dar'st deserve a better fate.

YALDEN.

[blocks in formation]

"WITH blue cold nose and wrinkled brow, Traveller, whence comest thou?”

From Lapland woods and hills of frost

By the rapid rein-deer crost;

Where tap'ring grows the gloomy fir

And the stunted juniper ;

Where the wild hare and the crow

Whiten in surrounding snow;

Where the shiv'ring huntsmen tear

His fur coat from the grim white bear;
Where the wolf and arctic fox

Prowl among the lonely rocks;

And tardy suns to deserts drear
Give days and nights of half a year:
-From icy oceans, where the whale
Tosses in foam his lashing tail;
Where the snorting sea-horse shows
His ivory teeth in grinning rows;
Where, tumbling in their seal-skin boat,
Fearless the hungry fishers float,

And from teeming seas supply

The food their niggard plains deny.'

ORIGINAL.

Snow.-Midnight.

147

SNOW.

A SHOWER Of Soft and fleecy rain
Falls to new-clothe the earth again :
Behold the mountain-tops around,
As if with fur of ermine crown'd:
And lo! how, by degrees,

The universal mantle hides the trees,
In hoary flakes, which downward fly
As if it were the autumn of the sky,
Whose fall of leaf would theirs supply.
Trembling the groves sustain the weight, and bow
Like aged limbs, which feebly go
Beneath a venerable head of snow.

CONGREVE.

MIDNIGHT.

Now all is hush'd, as Nature were retir'd,
And the perpetual motion standing still;
So much she from her work appears to cease,
And ev'ry jarring element's at peace:
All the wild herds are in their coverts couch'd;
The fishes to their banks of ooze repair'd,

[blocks in formation]

And to the murmurs of the waters sleep:
The circling air's at rest, and feels no noise,
Except of some short breaths upon the trees,
Rocking the harmless birds that rest upon them.

OTWAY

TREES.

No tree in all the grove but has its charms,
Though each its hue peculiar; paler some,
And of a wannish grey the willow such,
And poplar, that with silver lines his leaf;
And ash, far stretching his umbrageous arm.
Of deeper green the elm : and deeper still,
Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak.
Some glossy-leav'd, and shining in the sun;
The maple, and the beech of oily nuts
Prolific; and the lime at dewy eve
Diffusing odours: nor unnoted pass
The sycamore, capricious in attire,

Now green, now tawny, and, ere autumn yet
Have chang'd the woods, in scarlet honours

bright.

COWPER.

« PreviousContinue »