When knaves o'er-reach, and friends betray,

Whilst men of sense run mad,

Fools, careless, whistle on-and say, 'Tis silly to be sad.

Since free from sorrow, fear, and shame,

A Fool thus fate defies,

The greatest folly I can name
Is to be overwise.

VOL. II.

WILLIAM BROOME.

Cheshire, 1745.

Pope's assistant in the translation of the Odyssey, for his share in which work he received five hundred pounds, and one hundred copies. A personal quarrel with him induced Pope to insert his name in the Dunciad, in this, as in other instances, prostituting the noble instrument of Virtue, Satire, to the gratification of private pique. In 1728, Broome took the degree of Doctor of Laws, at Cambridge; and when he died was Rector of Sturston, and Vicar of Oakley Magna and Rye, in Suffolk.

MELANCHOLY.

AN ODE,

Occasioned by the Death of a beloved Daughter, 17.

ADIEU vain mirth, and noisy joys!

Ye gay desires, deluding toys!
Thou, thoughtful melancholy, deign
To hide me in thy pensive train !

3

If by the fall of murmuring floods, Where awful shades embrown the woods, Or if where winds in caverns groan, Thou wanderest silent and alone;

Come, blissful mourner, wisely sad,
In sorrow's garb, in sable, clad,
Henceforth thou Care my hours employ,
Sorrow, be thou henceforth my joy!

By tombs where sullen spirits stalk,
Familiar with the dead I walk ;
While to my sighs and groans by turns,
From graves the midnight echo mourns.

Open thy marble jaws, O tomb,

Though earth conceal me in thy womb! And you, ye worms, this frame confound, Ye brother reptiles of the ground!

O life, frail offspring of a day!
'Tis puff'd with one short gasp away !
Swift as the short-lived flower it flies,
It springs, it blooms, it fades, it dies.

With cries we usher in our birth,

With groans resign our transient breath:
While round, stern ministers of fate,
Pain, and disease, and sorrow wait.

While childhood reigns, the sportive boy

Learns only prettily to toy;

And while he roves from play to play,

The wanton trifles life away.

When to the noon of life we rise,
The man grows elegant in vice;
To glorious guilt in courts he climbs,
Vilely judicious in his crimes.

When youth and strength in age are lost,
Man seems already half a ghost;

Withered and wan to earth he bows,

A walking hospital of woes.

O happiness, thou empty name!
Say, art thou bought by gold or fame?
What art thou, gold, but shining earth?
Thou, common fame, but common breath?

If virtue contradict the voice

Of publick fame, applause is noise,
Even victors are by conquest curst,
The bravest warrior is the worst.

Look round on all that man below
Idly calls great, and all is show!
All, to the coffin from our birth,
In this vast toy-shop of the earth.

Come then, thou friend of virtuous woe, With solemn pace, demure, and slow : Lo sad and serious, I pursue

Thy steps-adieu, vain world, adieu!