WILLIAM COLLINS. While some, on earnest business bent, Some bold adventurers disdain Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed, The sunshine of the breast. The thoughtless day, the easy night, The spirits pure, the slumbers light, That fly the approach of morn. Lo! in the vale of years beneath 63 More hideous than their queen : This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every laboring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage: Lo! Poverty, to fill the band, To each his sufferings: all are men, Yet, ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, WILLIAM COLLINS. [1720-1756.] DIRGE IN CYMBELINE. To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring Each opening sweet of earliest bloom, And rifle all the breathing spring. No wailing ghost shall dare appear To vex with shrieks this quiet grove; But shepherd lads assemble here, And melting virgins own their love. No withered witch shall here be seen, No goblins lead their nightly crew; But female fays shall haunt the green, And dress thy grave with pearly dew. The redbreast oft at evening hours Shall kindly lend his little aid, When howling winds and beating rain Each lonely scene shall thee restore, For thee the tear be duly shed; Beloved till life can charm no more, And mourned till Pity's self be dead. ODE TO EVENING. IF aught of oaten stop or pastoral song May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, O nymph reserved, while now the brighthaired Sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With braid ethereal wove, Now air is hushed, save where the weakeyed bat, With short, shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing; Or where the beetle winds As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Now teach me, maid composed, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit; As, musing slow, I hail Thy genial, loved return! For when thy folding-star arising shows And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still, The pensive Pleasures sweet, Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene; Or find some ruin midst its dreary dells, Or, if chill, blustering winds, or driving rain, Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut That from the mountain's side Views wilds, and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires; And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest While Summer loves to sport While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves; Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, So long, regardful of thy quiet rule, Thy gentlest influence own, JAMES MERRICK. [1720 - 1769.] THE CHAMELEON. OFT has it been my lot to mark |