Written by
Jonathan Swift |
As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones;
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scattered rhymes
Should be approved in aftertimes;
If it both pleases and endures,
The merit and the praise are yours.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young,
When first for thee my harp was strung,
Without one word of Cupid's darts,
Of killing eyes, or bleeding hearts;
With friendship and esteem possest,
I ne'er admitted Love a guest.
In all the habitudes of life,
The friend, the mistress, and the wife,
Variety we still pursue,
In pleasure seek for something new;
Or else, comparing with the rest,
Take comfort that our own is best;
The best we value by the worst,
As tradesmen show their trash at first;
But his pursuits are at an end,
Whom Stella chooses for a friend.
A poet starving in a garret,
Invokes his mistress and his Muse,
And stays at home for want of shoes:
Should but his Muse descending drop
A slice of bread and mutton-chop;
Or kindly, when his credit's out,
Surprise him with a pint of stout;
Or patch his broken stocking soles;
Or send him in a peck of coals;
Exalted in his mighty mind,
He flies and leaves the stars behind;
Counts all his labours amply paid,
Adores her for the timely aid.
Or, should a porter make inquiries
For Chloe, Sylvia, Phillis, Iris;
Be told the lodging, lane, and sign,
The bowers that hold those nymphs divine;
Fair Chloe would perhaps be found
With footmen tippling under ground;
The charming Sylvia beating flax,
Her shoulders marked with bloody tracks;
Bright Phyllis mending ragged smocks:
And radiant Iris in the pox.
These are the goddesses enrolled
In Curll's collection, new and old,
Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em,
If they should meet them in a poem.
True poets can depress and raise,
Are lords of infamy and praise;
They are not scurrilous in satire,
Nor will in panegyric flatter.
Unjustly poets we asperse;
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse,
And all the fictions they pursue
Do but insinuate what is true.
Now, should my praises owe their truth
To beauty, dress, or paint, or youth,
What stoics call without our power,
They could not be ensured an hour;
'Twere grafting on an annual stock,
That must our expectation mock,
And, making one luxuriant shoot,
Die the next year for want of root:
Before I could my verses bring,
Perhaps you're quite another thing.
So Maevius, when he drained his skull
To celebrate some suburb trull,
His similes in order set,
And every crambo he could get;
Had gone through all the common-places
Worn out by wits, who rhyme on faces;
Before he could his poem close,
The lovely nymph had lost her nose.
Your virtues safely I commend;
They on no accidents depend:
Let malice look with all her eyes,
She dare not say the poet lies.
Stella, when you these lines transcribe,
Lest you should take them for a bribe,
Resolved to mortify your pride,
I'll here expose your weaker side.
Your spirits kindle to a flame,
Moved by the lightest touch of blame;
And when a friend in kindness tries
To show you where your error lies,
Conviction does but more incense;
Perverseness is your whole defence;
Truth, judgment, wit, give place to spite,
Regardless both of wrong and right;
Your virtues all suspended wait,
Till time has opened reason's gate;
And, what is worse, your passion bends
Its force against your nearest friends,
Which manners, decency, and pride,
Have taught from you the world to hide;
In vain; for see, your friend has brought
To public light your only fault;
And yet a fault we often find
Mixed in a noble, generous mind:
And may compare to Etna's fire,
Which, though with trembling, all admire;
The heat that makes the summit glow,
Enriching all the vales below.
Those who, in warmer climes, complain
From Phoebus' rays they suffer pain,
Must own that pain is largely paid
By generous wines beneath a shade.
Yet, when I find your passions rise,
And anger sparkling in your eyes,
I grieve those spirits should be spent,
For nobler ends by nature meant.
One passion, with a different turn,
Makes wit inflame, or anger burn:
So the sun's heat, with different powers,
Ripens the grape, the liquor sours:
Thus Ajax, when with rage possest,
By Pallas breathed into his breast,
His valour would no more employ,
Which might alone have conquered Troy;
But, blinded be resentment, seeks
For vengeance on his friends the Greeks.
You think this turbulence of blood
From stagnating preserves the flood,
Which, thus fermenting by degrees,
Exalts the spirits, sinks the lees.
Stella, for once your reason wrong;
For, should this ferment last too long,
By time subsiding, you may find
Nothing but acid left behind;
From passion you may then be freed,
When peevishness and spleen succeed.
Say, Stella, when you copy next,
Will you keep strictly to the text?
Dare you let these reproaches stand,
And to your failing set your hand?
Or, if these lines your anger fire,
Shall they in baser flames expire?
Whene'er they burn, if burn they must,
They'll prove my accusation just.
|
Written by
Amy Lowell |
Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours,
How often in some distant gallery,
Gained by a little painful spiral stair,
Far from the halls and corridors where throng
The crowd of casual readers, have I passed
Long, peaceful hours seated on the floor
Of some retired nook, all lined with books,
Where reverie and quiet reign supreme!
Above, below, on every side, high shelved
From careless grasp of transient interest,
Stand books we can but dimly see, their charm
Much greater that their titles are unread;
While on a level with the dusty floor
Others are ranged in orderly confusion,
And we must stoop in painful posture while
We read their names and learn their histories.
The little gallery winds round about
The middle of a most secluded room,
Midway between the ceiling and the floor.
A type of those high thoughts, which while we read
Hover between the earth and furthest heaven
As fancy wills, leaving the printed page;
For books but give the theme, our hearts the rest,
Enriching simple words with unguessed harmony
And overtones of thought we only know.
And as we sit long hours quietly,
Reading at times, and at times simply dreaming,
The very room itself becomes a friend,
The confidant of intimate hopes and fears;
A place where are engendered pleasant thoughts,
And possibilities before unguessed
Come to fruition born of sympathy.
And as in some gay garden stretched upon
A genial southern slope, warmed by the sun,
The flowers give their fragrance joyously
To the caressing touch of the hot noon;
So books give up the all of what they mean
Only in a congenial atmosphere,
Only when touched by reverent hands, and read
By those who love and feel as well as think.
For books are more than books, they are the life,
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived, and worked, and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.
And we may know them better, and divine
The inner motives whence their actions sprang,
Far better than the men who only knew
Their bodily presence, the soul forever hid
From those with no ability to see.
They wait here quietly for us to come
And find them out, and know them for our friends;
These men who toiled and wrote only for this,
To leave behind such modicum of truth
As each perceived and each alone could tell.
Silently waiting that from time to time
It may be given them to illuminate
Dull daily facts with pristine radiance
For some long-waited-for affinity
Who lingers yet in the deep womb of time.
The shifting sun pierces the young green leaves
Of elm trees, newly coming into bud,
And splashes on the floor and on the books
Through old, high, rounded windows, dim with age.
The noisy city-sounds of modern life
Float softened to us across the old graveyard.
The room is filled with a warm, mellow light,
No garish colours jar on our content,
The books upon the shelves are old and worn.
'T was no belated effort nor attempt
To keep abreast with old as well as new
That placed them here, tricked in a modern guise,
Easily got, and held in light esteem.
Our fathers' fathers, slowly and carefully
Gathered them, one by one, when they were new
And a delighted world received their thoughts
Hungrily; while we but love the more,
Because they are so old and grown so dear!
The backs of tarnished gold, the faded boards,
The slightly yellowing page, the strange old type,
All speak the fashion of another age;
The thoughts peculiar to the man who wrote
Arrayed in garb peculiar to the time;
As though the idiom of a man were caught
Imprisoned in the idiom of a race.
A nothing truly, yet a link that binds
All ages to their own inheritance,
And stretching backward, dim and dimmer still,
Is lost in a remote antiquity.
Grapes do not come of thorns nor figs of thistles,
And even a great poet's divinest thought
Is coloured by the world he knows and sees.
The little intimate things of every day,
The trivial nothings that we think not of,
These go to make a part of each man's life;
As much a part as do the larger thoughts
He takes account of.
Nay, the little things
Of daily life it is which mold, and shape,
And make him apt for noble deeds and true.
And as we read some much-loved masterpiece,
Read it as long ago the author read,
With eyes that brimmed with tears as he saw
The message he believed in stamped in type
Inviolable for the slow-coming years;
We know a certain subtle sympathy,
We seem to clasp his hand across the past,
His words become related to the time,
He is at one with his own glorious creed
And all that in his world was dared and done.
The long, still, fruitful hours slip away
Shedding their influences as they pass;
We know ourselves the richer to have sat
Upon this dusty floor and dreamed our dreams.
No other place to us were quite the same,
No other dreams so potent in their charm,
For this is ours! Every twist and turn
Of every narrow stair is known and loved;
Each nook and cranny is our very own;
The dear, old, sleepy place is full of spells
For us, by right of long inheritance.
The building simply bodies forth a thought
Peculiarly inherent to the race.
And we, descendants of that elder time,
Have learnt to love the very form in which
The thought has been embodied to our years.
And here we feel that we are not alone,
We too are one with our own richest past;
And here that veiled, but ever smouldering fire
Of race, which rarely seen yet never dies,
Springs up afresh and warms us with its heat.
And must they take away this treasure house,
To us so full of thoughts and memories;
To all the world beside a dismal place
Lacking in all this modern age requires
To tempt along the unfamiliar paths
And leafy lanes of old time literatures?
It takes some time for moss and vines to grow
And warmly cover gaunt and chill stone walls
Of stately buildings from the cold North Wind.
The lichen of affection takes as long,
Or longer, ere it lovingly enfolds
A place which since without it were bereft,
All stript and bare, shorn of its chiefest grace.
For what to us were halls and corridors
However large and fitting, if we part
With this which is our birthright; if we lose
A sentiment profound, unsoundable,
Which Time's slow ripening alone can make,
And man's blind foolishness so quickly mar.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
The glory of God in creation and providence.
My soul, thy great Creator praise:
When clothed in his celestial rays,
He in full majesty appears,
And, like a robe, his glory wears.
The heav'ns are for his curtains spread,
The unfathomed deep he makes his bed.
Clouds are his chariot when he flies
On winged storms across the skies.
Angels, whom his own breath inspires,
His ministers, are flaming fires;
And swift as thought their armies move
To bear his vengeance or his love.
The world's foundations by his hand
Are poised, and shall for ever stand;
He binds the ocean in his chain,
Lest it should drown the earth again.
When earth was covered with the flood,
Which high above the mountains stood,
He thundered, and the ocean fled,
Confined to its appointed bed.
The swelling billows know their bound,
And in their channels walk their round;
Yet thence conveyed by secret veins,
They spring on hills and drench the plains.
He bids the crystal fountains flow,
And cheer the valleys as they go;
Tame heifers there their thirst allay,
And for the stream wild asses bray.
From pleasant trees which shade the brink,
The lark and linnet light to drink
Their songs the lark and linnet raise,
And chide our silence in his praise.
PAUSE I.
God from his cloudy cistern pours
On the parched earth enriching showers;
The grove, the garden, and the field,
A thousand joyful blessings yield.
He makes the grassy food arise,
And gives the cattle large supplies
With herbs for man of various power,
To nourish nature or to dire.
What noble fruit the vines produce!
The olive yields a shining juice;
Our hearts are cheered with gen'rous wine,
With inward joy our faces shine.
O bless his name, ye Britons, fed
With nature's chief supporter, bread;
While bread your vital strength imparts,
Serve him with vigor in your hearts.
PAUSE II.
Behold, the stately cedar stands,
Raised in the forest by his hands;
Birds to the boughs for shelter fly,
And build their nests secure on high.
To craggy hills ascends the goat,
And at the airy mountain's foot
The feebler creatures make their cell;
He gives them wisdom where to dwell.
He sets the sun his circling race,
Appoints the moon to change her face;
And when thick darkness veils the day,
Calls out wild beasts to hunt their prey.
Fierce lions lead their young abroad,
And, roaring, ask their meat from God;
But when the morning beams arise,
The savage beast to covert flies.
Then man to daily labor goes;
The night was made for his repose;
Sleep is thy gift, that sweet relief
From tiresome toil and wasting grief.
How strange thy works! how great thy skill!
And every land thy riches fill:
Thy wisdom round the world we see;
This spacious earth is full of thee.
Nor less thy glories in the deep,
Where fish in millions swim and creep
With wondrous motions, swift or slow,
Still wand'ring in the paths below.
There ships divide their wat'ry way,
And flocks of scaly monsters play;
There dwells the huge leviathan,
And foams and sports in spite of man.
PAUSE III.
Vast are thy works, Almighty Lord;
All nature rests upon thy word,
And the whole race of creatures stands
Waiting their portion from thy hands.
While each receives his diff'rent food,
Their cheerful looks pronounce it good:
Eagles and bears, and whales and worms,
Rejoice and praise in diff'rent forms.
But when thy face is hid, they mourn,
And, dying, to their dust return;
Both man and beast their souls resign;
Life, breath, and spirit, all is thine.
Yet thou canst breathe on dust again,
And fill the world with beasts and men;
A word of thy creating breath
Repairs the wastes of time and death.
His works, the wonders of his might,
Are honored with his own delight;
How aweful are his glorious ways!
The Lord is dreadful in his praise.
The earth stands trembling at thy stroke,
And at thy touch the mountains smoke;
Yet humble souls may see thy face,
And tell their wants to sovereign grace.
In thee my hopes and wishes meet,
And make my meditations sweet;
Thy praises shall my breath employ,
Till it expire in endless joy.
While haughty sinners die accursed,
Their glory buried with their dust,
I to my God, my heav'nly King,
Immortal hallelujahs sing.
|
Written by
Isaac Watts |
v.
5-13
L.
M.
Divine providence in air, earth, and sea.
The God of our salvation hears
The groans of Zion mixed with tears;
Yet when he comes with kind designs,
Through all the way his terror shines.
On him the race of man depends,
Far as the earth's remotest ends,
Where the Creator's name is known
By nature's feeble light alone.
Sailors, that travel o'er the flood,
Address their frighted souls to God,
When tempests rage and billows roar
At dreadful distance from the shore.
He bids the noisy tempests cease;
He calms the raging crowd to peace,
When a tumultuous nation raves
Wild as the winds, and loud as waves.
Whole kingdoms, shaken by the storm,
He settles in a peaceful form;
Mountains, established by his hand,
Firm on their old foundations stand.
Behold his ensigns sweep the sky,
New comets blaze, and lightnings fly;
The heathen lands, with swift surprise,
From the bright horrors turn their eyes.
At his command the morning ray
Smiles in the east, and leads the day;
He guides the sun's declining wheels
Over the tops of western hills.
Seasons and times obey his voice;
The ev'ning and the morn rejoice
To see the earth made soft with showers,
Laden with fruit, and dressed in flowers.
'Tis from his wat'ry stores on high
He gives the thirsty ground supply;
He walks upon the clouds, and thence
Doth his enriching drops dispense.
The desert grows a fruitful field,
Abundant food the valleys yield;
The valleys shout with cheerful voice,
And neighb'ring hills repeat their joys.
The pastures smile in green array;
There lambs and larger cattle play;
The larger cattle and the lamb
Each in his language speaks thy name.
Thy works pronounce thy power divine;
O'er every field thy glories shine;
Through every month thy gifts appear;
Great God, thy goodness crowns the year!
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