Began to feel, as well he might,
The keen demands of appetite;
When, looking eagerly around,
He spied far off, upon the ground,
A something shining in the dark,
And knew the glow-worm by his spark; 10
So, stooping down from hawthorn top,
He thought to put him in his crop.
The worm, aware of his intent,
Harangu’d him thus, right eloquent —
Did you admire my lamp, quoth he,
As much as I your minstrelsy,
You would abhor to do me wrong,
As much as I to spoil your song;
For ’twas the self-same pow’r divine
Taught you to sing, and me to shine; 20
That you with music, I with light,
Might beautify and cheer the night.
The songster heard his short oration,
And, warbling out his approbation,
Releas’d him, as my story tells,
And found a supper somewhere else.
Hence jarring sectaries may learn
Their real int’rest to discern;
That brother should not war with brother,
And worry and devour each other; 30
But sing and shine by sweet consent,
Till life’s poor transient night is spent,
Respecting in each other’s case
The gifts of nature and of grace.
Those Christians best deserve the name
Who studiously make peace their aim
Peace, both the duty and the prize
Of him that creeps and him that flies.
A FABLE
[Written May 9, 1780. Published 1782. There is a copy among the Ash MSS.]
A RAVEN, while with glossy breast
Her new-laid eggs she fondly press’d,
And on her wicker-work high mounted
Her chickens prematurely counted,
(A fault philosophers might blame
If quite exempted from the same)
Enjoy’d at ease the genial day;
’Twas April as the bumpkins say,
The legislature call’d it May.
But suddenly a wind as high 10
As ever swept a winter sky
Shook the young leaves about her ears,
And fill’d her with a thousand fears,
Lest the rude blast should snap the bough,
And spread her golden hopes below.
But just at eve the blowing weather
And all her fears were hush’d together:
And now, quoth poor unthinking Ralph,
’Tis over, and the brood is safe;
(For Ravens, though, as birds of omen, 20
They teach both conj’rers and old women
To tell us what is to befall,
Can’t prophesy themselves at all.)
The morning came, when neighbour Hodge,
Who long had mark’d her airy lodge,
And destin’d all the treasure there
A gift to his expecting fair,
Climb’d like a squirrel to his dray,
And bore the worthless prize away.
MORAL
’Tis Providence alone secures, 30
In every change, but mine and your’s:
Safety consists not in escape
From dangers of a frightful shape;
An earthquake may be bid to spare
The man that’s strangled by a hair.
Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oft’nest in what least we dread,
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
THE DOVES
[Written May, 1780. Published 1782. There is a copy among the Ash MSS. entitled Anti-thelyphthora.]
REAS’NING at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way,
While meaner things, whom instinct leads,
Are rarely known to stray.
One silent eve I wander’d late,
And heard the voice of love;
The turtle thus address’d her mate,
And sooth’d the list’ning dove — 8
Our mutual bond of faith and truth,
No time shall disengage;
Those blessings of our early youth
Shall cheer our latest age:
While innocence without disguise,
And constancy sincere,
Shall fill the circles of those eyes,
And mine can read them there; 16
Those ills that wait on all below
Shall ne’er be felt by me,
Or gently felt, and only so,
As being shar’d with thee.
When lightnings flash among the trees,
Or kites are hov’ring near,
I fear lest thee alone they seize,
And know no other fear. 24
’Tis then I feel myself a wife,
And press thy wedded side,
Resolv’d an union form’d for life
Death never shall divide.
But oh! if, fickle and unchaste,
(Forgive a transient thought)
Thou couldst become unkind at last,
And scorn thy present lot, 32
No need of lightnings from on high,
Or kites with cruel beak;
Denied th’ endearments of thine eye,
This widow’d heart would break.
Thus sang the sweet sequester’d bird
Soft as the passing wind,
And I recorded what I heard —
A lesson for mankind. 40
A COMPARISON
[Written (?). Published 1782. MS. copies of this and the next poem are in the British Museum.]
THE lapse of time and rivers is the same;
Both speed their journey with a restless stream;
The silent pace with which they steal away
No wealth can bribe, no pray’rs persuade to stay;
Alike irrevocable both when past,
And a wide ocean swallows both at last.
Though each resemble each in ev’ry part,
A difference strikes at length the musing heart;
Streams never flow in vain; where streams abound,
How laughs the land with various plenty crown’d!
But time that should enrich the nobler mind, 11
Neglected, leaves a dreary waste behind.
ANOTHER ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY
[Written June, 1780. Published 1782.]
SWEET stream that winds thro’ yonder glade,
Apt emblem of a virtuous maid —
Silent and chaste she steals along,
Far from the world’s gay busy throng,
With gentle, yet prevailing, force
Intent upon her destin’d course;
Graceful and useful all she does,
Blessing and blest where’er she goes,
Pure-bosom’d as that wat’ry glass,
And heav’n reflected in her face. 10
ON A GOLDFINCH STARVED TO DEATH IN HIS CAGE
[Written in the summer of 1780. Published 1782. There is a MS. copy in the British Museum.]
TIME was when I was free as air,
The thistle’s downy seed my fare,
My drink the morning dew;
I perch’d at will on ev’ry spray,
My form genteel, my plumage gay,
My strains for ever new. 6
But gaudy plumage, sprightly strain,
And form genteel, were all in vain,
And of a transient date;
For, caught and cag’d, and starv’d to death,
In dying sighs my little breath
Soon pass’d the wiry grate. 12
Thanks, gentle swain, for all my woes,
And thanks for this effectual close
And cure of ev’ry ill!
More cruelty could none express;
And I, if
you had shown me less,
Had been your pris’ner still. 18
IN SEDITIONEM HORRENDAM CORRUPT ELIS GALLICIS (UT FERTUR) LONDINI NUPER EXORTAM
[Written in letter to Unwin, June 18, 1780 (MS. in British Museum). Published by Hayley, 1803.]
PERFIDA, crudelis, victa et lymphata furore,
Non armis laurum Gallia, fraude petit.
Venalem pretio plebem conducit, et urit
Undique privatas patriciasque domos.
Nequicquam conata sua, fœdissima sperat
Posse tamen nostra nos superare manu.
Gallia, vana struis — Precibus nunc utere! Vinces,
Nam mites timidis supplicibusque sumus. 8
TRANSLATION
[Written in letter to Unwin, July 11, 1780 (MS. in British Museum). Published by Hayley, 1803.]
FALSE, cruel, disappointed, stung to th’ heart,
France quits the warrior’s for th’ assassin’s part;
To dirty hands a dirty bribe conveys,
Bids the low street and lofty palace blaze.
Her sons too weak to vanquish us alone,
She hires the worst and basest of our own. —
Kneel, France! — a suppliant conquers us with ease,
We always spare a coward on his knees. 8
ON THE BURNING OF LORD MANSFIELD’S LIBRARY TOGETHER WITH HIS MSS. BY THE MOB, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE 1780
[Written in letter to Unwin, June 22, 1780 (MS. copy in British Museum). Published 1782.]
So then — the Vandals of our isle,
Sworn foes to sense and law,
Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
Than ever Roman saw!
And MURRAY sighs o’er Pope and Swift,
And many a treasure more,
The well-judg’d purchase and the gift
That grac’d his letter’d store. 8
Their pages mangled, burnt, and torn,
The loss was his alone;
But ages yet to come shall mourn
The burning of his own.
ON THE SAME
[Written June, 1780. Published 1782.]
WHEN wit and genius meet their doom
In all devouring flame,
They tell us of the fate of Rome,
And bid us fear the same.
O’er MURRAY’S loss the muses wept,
They felt the rude alarm,
Yet bless’d the guardian care that kept
His sacred head from harm. 8
There mem’ry, like the bee that’s fed
From Flora’s balmy store,
The quintessence of all he read
Had treasur’d up before.
The lawless herd, with fury blind,
Have done him cruel wrong;
The flow’rs are gone — but still we find
The honey on his tongue. 15
LOVE ABUSED
[Written in letter to Unwin, July 27, 1780 (MS. in British Museum). Published by Hayley, 1803.]
WHAT is there in the vale of life
Half so delightful as a wife,
When friendship, love, and peace combine
To stamp the marriage bond divine?
The stream of pure and genuine love
Derives its current from above;
And earth a second Eden shows
Where’er the healing water flows.
But ah! if from the dykes and drains
Of sensual nature’s fev’rish veins, 10
Lust like a lawless headstrong flood
Impregnated with ooze and mud,
Descending fast on ev’ry side,
Once mingles with the sacred tide,
Farewell the soul-enliv’ning scene!
The banks, that wore a smiling green,
With rank defilement overspread
Bewail their flow’ry beauties dead;
The stream polluted, dark, and dull,
Diffus’d into a Stygian pool, 20
Thro’ life’s last melancholy years
Is fed with ever flowing tears:
Complaints supply the zephyr’s part,
And sighs that heave a breaking heart.
ON OBSERVING SOME NAMES OF LITTLE NOTE RECORDED IN THE BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA
[Written in letter to Unwin, Sept. 3, 1780 (MS. in British Museum). Published 1782.]
OH, fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot!
In vain, recorded in historic page,
They court the notice of a future age:
Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land
Drop one by one from Fame’s neglecting hand:
Lethæan gulphs receive them as they fall,
And dark oblivion soon absorbs them all.
So when a child, as playful children use,
Has burnt to tinder a stale last year’s news, 10
The flame extinct, he views the roving fire —
There goes my lady, and there goes the squire.
There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark,
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk!
TO THE REVEREND MR. NEWTON ON HIS RETURN FROM RAMSGATE
[Written Oct., 1780. Published by Hayley, 1803, and by Johnson, 1815.]
THAT ocean you of late survey’d,
Those rocks I too have seen,
But I, afflicted and dismay’d,
You, tranquil and serene.
You from the flood-controlling steep
Saw stretch’d before your view,
With conscious joy, the threat’ning deep,
No longer such to you. 8
To me, the waves that ceaseless broke
Upon the dang’rous coast,
Hoarsely and ominously spoke
Of all my treasure lost.
Your sea of troubles you have past,
And found the peaceful shore;
I, tempest-toss’d, and wreck’d at last,
Come home to port no more. 16
REPORT OF AN ADJUDGED CASE NOT TO BE FOUND IN ANY OF THE BOOKS
[Written Dec., 1780. Published 1782. There is a MS. copy in the British Museum in a letter to Unwin, another in the possession of Canon Cowper Johnson.]
BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose, —
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.
So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning;
While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws,
So fam’d for his talent in nicely discerning. 8
In behalf of the Nose, it will quickly appear,
And your lordship, he said, will undoubtedly find,
That the Nose has had spectacles always in wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind.
Then holding the spectacles up to the court, —
Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle,
As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short,
Design’d to sit close to it, just like a saddle. 16
Again, would your lordship a moment suppose,
(’Tis a case that has happen’d, and may be again)
That the visage or countenance had not a Nose!
Pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?
On the whole, it appears — and my argument shows
With a reasoning the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them.
Then, shifting his side, (as a lawyer knows how)
He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes: 26
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think they were equally wise.
So his lordship decreed, with a grave solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, with
out one if or but —
That whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,
By day-light or candle-light — Eyes should be shut!
THE LOVE OF THE WORLD REPROVED; OR, HYPOCRISY DETECTED
[Written 1780 (?). Published in The Gentleman’s Magazine Sept., 1780; afterwards in 1782. There is a copy among the Ash MSS. ]
Thus says the prophet of the Turk —
Good mussulman, abstain from pork;
There is a part in ev’ry swine
No friend or follower of mine
May taste, whate’er his inclination,
On pain of excommunication.
Such Mahomet’s mysterious charge,
And thus he left the point at large.
[Had he the sinful part express’d,
They might with safety eat the rest; 10
But for one piece they thought it hard
From the whole hog to be debarr’d,
And set their wit at work to find
What joint the prophet had in mind.]
Much controversy straight arose —
These choose the hack, the belly those;
By some ’tis confidently said
He meant not to forbid the head;
While others at that doctrine rail,
And piously prefer the tail. 20
Thus, conscience freed from ev’ry clog,
Mahometans eat up the hog.
You laugh— ’tis well. — The tale applied
May make you laugh on t’other side.
Renounce the world — the preacher cries.
We do — a multitude replies.
While one as innocent regards
A snug and friendly game at cards;
And one, whatever you may say,
Can see no evil in a play; 30
Some love a concert, or a race;
And others — shooting, and the chase.
Revil’d and lov’d, renounc’d and follow’d,
William Cowper- Collected Poetical Works Page 43