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While pregnant, they a mother's load sustain?
They bend in anguish, and cast forth their pain.
Hale are their young, from human frailties freed,
Walk unsustained, and unassisted feed:
They live at once, forsake the dam's warm side,
Take the wide world, with Nature for their guide;
Bound o'er the lawn, or seek the distant glade,
And find a home in each delightful shade.

Will the tall reem, which knows no lord but me,
Low at the crib, and ask an alms of thee?
Submit his unworn shoulder to the yoke,
Break the stiff clod, and o'er thy furrow smoke?
Since great his strength, go trust him, void of care,
Lay on his neck the toil of all the year;

Bid him bring home the seasons to thy doors,
And cast his load among the gathered stores.

Didst thou from service the wild ass discharge,
And break his bonds, and bid him live at large;
Through the wide waste, his ample mansion, roam,
And lose himself in his unbounded home?
By Nature's hand magnificently fed,

His meal is on the range of mountains spread;
As in pure air aloft he bounds along,
He sees in distant smoke the city throng;
Conscious of freedom, scorns the smothered train,
The threatening driver, and the servile rein.

Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest
With thunder his robust distended chest?
No sense of fear his dauntless soul allays,
'Tis dreadful to behold his nostrils blaze:
To paw the vale he proudly takes delight,
And triumphs in the fulness of his might:
High raised, he snuffs the battle from afar,
And burns to plunge amid the raging war;
And mocks at death, and throws his foam around,
And in a storm of fury shakes the ground.
How does his firm, his rising heart, advance
Full on the brandished sword and shaken lance
While his fixed eye-balls meet the dazzling shield,
Gaze, and return the lightning of the field!
He sinks the sense of pain in generous pride,
Nor feels the shaft that trembles in his side;
But neighs to the shrill trumpet's dreadful blast,
Till death, and when he groans, he groans his last.
But fiercer still, the lordly lion stalks,
Grimly majestic in his lonely walks:
When round he glares, all living creatures fly;
He clears the desart with his rolling eye.
Say, mortal, does he rouse at thy command,
And roar to thee, and live upon thy hand?
Dost thou for him in forests bend thy bow,
And to his gloomy den the morsel throw,
Where, bent on death, lie hid his tawny brood,
And, crouched in dreadful ambush, pant for blood;
Or stretched on broken limbs, consume the day,
In darkness wrapt, and slumber o'er their prey?

Providence) has the same effect, Ps. xxix. In so early an age to observe these things may style our author a naturalist.

By the pale moon they take their destined round,*
And lash their sides and furious tear the ground.
Now shrieks and dying groans the desart fill;
They rage, they rend; their ravenous jaws distil
With crimson foam; and when the banquet's o'er
They stride away, and paint their steps with gore:
In flight alone the shepherd puts his trust,
And shudders at the talon in the dust.

Mild is my Behemoth, though large his frame;
Smooth is his temper, and repressed his flame;
While unprovoked. This native of the flood
Lifts his broad foot, and puts ashore for food:
Earth sinks beneath him as he moves along
To seek the herbs, and mingle with the throng.
See, with what strength his hardened loins are
bound,

All over proof, and shut against a wound!
How like a mountain cedar moves his tail!
Nor can his complicated sinews fail.
Built high and wide, his solid bones surpass
The bars of steel; his ribs are ribs of brass;
His port majestic, and his armed jaw,
Give the wide forest and the mountain law.
The mountains feed him; there the beasts admire
The mighty stranger, and in dread retire;
At length his greatness nearer they survey,
Graze in his shadow, and his eye obey.
The fens and marshes are his cool retreat,
His noontide shelter from the burning heat;
Their sedgy bosoms his wide couch are made,
And groves of willows give him all their shade.

His eye drinks Jordan up, when, fired with

drought,

He trusts to turn its current down his throat;
In lessened waves it creeps along the plain;
He sinks a river, and he thirsts again.

Go to the Nile, and, from its frui.ful side,
Cast forth thy line into the swelling tide;
With slender hair Leviathant command,
And stretch his vastness on the loaded strand.
Will he become thy servant? will he own
Thy lordly nod, and tremble at thy frown?
Or with his sport amuse thy leisure day,
And, bound in silk with thy soft maidens play?
Shall pompous banquets swell with such a prize?
And the bowl journey round his ample size?
Or the debating merchant share the prey,
And various limbs to various marts convey?
Through his firm skull what steel its way can win?
What forceful engine can subdue his skin?

Pursuing their prey by night is true of most wild beasts, particularly the lion, Psal. civ. 20. The Arabians have one among their five hundred names for the lion, which signifies the hunter by moonshine.

↑ The taking the crocodile is most difficult. Diodorus says, they are not to be taken but by iron nets. When Augustus conquered Egypt, he struck a medal, the impress of which was a crocodile chained to a palm-tree, with this inscription, Nemo antea religavit.

Fly far, and live; tempt not his matchless might;
The bravest shrink to cowards in his sight;
The rashest dare not rouse him up:* who then
Shall turn on me, among the sons of men?

Am I a debtor? hast thou ever heard
Whence come the gifts which are on me conferred?
My lavish fruit a thousand vallies fills,

And mine the herds that graze a thousand hills:
Earth, sea, and air, all Nature is my own,
And stars and sun are dust beneath my throne;
And dar'st thou with the world's great Father vie,
Thou, who dost tremble at my creature's eye?

At full my huge Leviathan shall rise, Boast all his strength, and spread his wondrous size:

Who, great in arms, e'er stript his shining mail, Or crowned his triumph with a single scale? Whose heart sustains him to draw near? Behold Destruction yawns;† his spacious jaws unfold, And, marshalled round the wide expanse, disclose Teeth edged with death, and crowding rows on

rows:

What hideous fangs on either side arise!

And what a deep abyss between them lies!
Mete with thy lance, and with thy plumbet sound,
The one how long, the other how profound!

His bulk is charged with such a furious soul,
That clouds of smoke from his spread nostrils roll
As from a furnace; and, when roused his ire,
Fate issues from his jaws in streams of fire.
The rage of tempests, and the roar of seas,
Thy terror, this thy great superior please;
Strength on his ample shoulder sits in state;
His well joined limbs are dreadfully complete;
His flakes of solid flesh are slow to part;
As steel his nerves, as adamant his heart.
When, late awaked, he rears him from the floods,
And stretching forth his stature to the clouds,
Writhes in the sun aloft his scaly height,
And strikes the distant hills with transient light,

• This alludes to a custom of this creature, which is when sated with fish, to come ashore and sleep among the reeds.

The crocodile's mouth is exceeding wide. When he gapes, says Pliny, sit totum os. Martial says to his old woman, Cum comparata rictibus tuis ora Niliacus habet crocodilus augusta. So that the expression there is barely just.

+ This too is nearer truth than at first view may be imagined. The crocodile, say the naturalists, lying long under water, and being there forced to hold its breath, when it emerges, the breath long repressed is hot, and bursts out so violently, that it resembles fire and smoke. The horse suppresses not his breath by any means so long, neither is he so fierce and animated; yet the most correct of poets ventures to use the same metaphor concerning him.

Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem. By this and the foregoing note, I would caution against a false opinion of the Eastern boldness, from passages in them ill understood.

[Far round are fatal damps of terror spread,
The mighty fear, nor blush to own their dread.
Large is his front; and when his burnished eyes
Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise.*

In vain may death in various shapes invade,
The swift-winged arrow, the descending blade;
His naked breast their impotence defies;
The dart rebounds, the brittle faulchion flies.
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears;
The cumbered strand their wasted vollies strow
His sport the rage and labour of the foe.

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His pastimes like a caldron boil the flood, And blacken ocean with a rising mud; The billows feel him as he works his way, His hoary footsteps shine along the sea; The foam high-wrought, with white divides the green,

And distant sailors point where death has been.

His like earth bears not on her spacious face; Alone in nature stands his dauntless race, For utter ignorance of fear renowned: In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around; Makes every swoln disdainful heart subside, And holds dominion o'er the sons of Pride.

Then the Chaldean eased his labouring breast, With full conviction of his crime oppressed. "Thou can'st accomplish all things, Lord of might!

And every thought is naked to thy sight:
But, oh thy ways are wonderful, and lie
Beyond the deepest reach of mortal eye.
Oft have I heard of thine Almighty power,
But never saw thee till this dreadful hour.
O'erwhelmed with shame, the Lord of life I see,
Abhor myself, and give my soul to thee;
Nor shall my weakness tempt thine anger more:
Marr is not made to question, but adore."

gives us as great an image of the thing it would express as can enter the thought of man. It is not improbable that the Egyptians stole their hieroglyphic for the morning, which is the crocodile's eye, from this passage, though no commentator I have seen mentions it. It is easy to conceive how the Egyp tians should be both readers and admirers of the writings of Moses, whom I suppose the author of this poem.

• His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. I think this

I have observed already that three or four of the creatures here described are Egyptian; the two last are notoriously so; habitants of the Nile; and on these two it is that our author they are the river-horse and the crocodile, those celebrated in. chiefly dwells. It would have been expected from an author more remote from that river than Moses, in a catalogue of creatures produced to magnify their Creator, to have dwelt on whale. This is so natural an expectation, that some com the two largest works of his hand, viz. the elephant and the mentators have rendered behemoth and leviathan the elephant and whale, though the descriptions in our author will not ad mit of it; but Moses being, as we may well suppose, under an immediate terror of the hippopotamus and crocodile, from their daily mischiefs and ravages around him, it is very accountable why he should permit them to take place.

Resignation.

IN TWO PARTS.

AND A POSTSCRIPT.

TO MRS. B✶

My soul shall be satisfied, even as it were with marrow and fatness; when my mouth praiseth thee with joyful lips. Psalm lxiii. 6

PART I.

THE days how few, how short the years,

Of man's too rapid race!

Each leaving as it swiftly flies,
A shorter in its place.

They who the longest lease enjoy,
Have told us with a sigh,
That to be born seems little more
Than to begin to die.

Numbers there are who feel this truth
With fears alarmed; and yet,
In life's delusion lulled asleep,
This weighty truth forget.

And am I not to these akin?
Age slumbers o'er the quill;

Its honour blots whate'er it writes,
And am I writing still?

Conscious of Nature in decline,
And languor in my thoughts,
To soften censure and abate
Its rigour on my faults,

Permit me, Madam! ere to you
The promised verse I pay,

To touch on felt Infirmity,

Sad sister of Decay.

One world deceased, another born,

Like Noah they behold,

O'er whose white hairs and furrowed brows Too many suns have rolled.

Happy the patriarch! he rejoiced

His second world to see;

My second world, though gay the scene,
Can boast no charms for me.

To me this brilliant age appears
With desolation spread!

Near all with whom I lived and smiled,
Whilst life was life, are dead;

And with them died my joys: the grave
Has broken Nature's laws,

And closed against this feeble frame
Its partial cruel jaws:

Cruel to spare! condemned to life!
A cloud impairs my sight!
My weak hand disobeys my will,
And trembles as I write.

What shall I write? Thalia tell;
Say, long abandoned muse!
What field of fancy shall I range?
What subject shall I choose?

A choice of moment high inspire,
And rescue me from shame,
For doting on thy charms so late,
By grandeur in my theme.

Beyond the themes which most admire,
Which dazzle or amaze;
Beyond renowned exploits of war,
Bright charms, or empire's blaze,

Are themes, which, in a world of wo,
Can best appease our pain,
And in an age of gaudy guilt,
Gay Folly's flood restrain;

Amidst the storms of life support

A calm unshaken mind,

And with unfading laurels crown
The brow of the resigned.

O Resignation! yet unsung,
Untouched by former strains,

Though claiming every muse's smile,
And every poet's pains:

Beneath life's evening solemn shade

I dedicate my page

To thee, thou safest guard of youth!
Thou sole support of age!

All other duties crescents are
Of virtue faintly bright;
The glorious consummation thou!
Which fills her orb with light:

How rarely filled! the love divine
In evils to discern:

This the first lesson which we want,
The latest which we learn:
A melancholy truth! for know,
Could our proud hearts resign,

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When nightingales, when sweetest bards,
Confine their charming song

To summer's animating heats,
Content to warble young.

Yet write I must; a lady* sues;
How shameful her request!

My brain in labour for dull rhyme!
Hers teeming with the best!

But you a stranger will excuse,
Nor scorn his feeble strain;
To you a stranger, but, through fate,
No stranger to your pain.

The ghost of Grief deceased ascends,
His old wound bleeds anew;
His sorrows are recalled to life
By those he sees in you:

Too well he knows the twisted strings
Of ardent hearts combined,
When rent asunder, how they bleed,
How hard to be resigned.

Those tears you pour his eyes have shed;

The pang you feel he felt;

Thus Nature, loud as Virtue, bids
His heart at yours to melt.

But what can heart or head suggest?
What sad Experience say?

Through truths austere to peace we work
Our rugged gloomy way.

What are we? whence? for what? and whither?
Who know not needs must mourn;

But Thought, bright daughter of the Skies!
Can tears to triumph turn.

Mrs. M

Thought is our armour; 'Tis the mind's Impenetrable shield,

When, sent by Fate, we meet our foes In sore Affliction's field:

If plucks the frightful mask from ills,
Forbids pale fear to hide,
Beneath that dark disguise a friend,
Which turns Affection's tide.

Affection frail! trained up by Sense,
From Reason's channel strays,
And whilst it blindly, points at peace,
Our peace to pain betrays.

Thought winds its fond erroneous stream
From daily-dying flowers,

To nourish rich immortal blooms,
In amaranthine bowers:

Whence throngs, in ecstacy, look down
On what once shocked their sight,
And thank the terrors of the past

For ages of delight.

All withers here; who most possess

Are losers by their gain;

Stung by full proof, that, bad at best,

Life's idle, all is vain :

Vain, in its course, life's murm'ring stream;

Did not its course offend,

But murmur cease, life, then, would seem
Still vainer from its end.

How wretched! who, through cruel fate,
Have nothing to lament,

With the poor alms this world affords,
Deplorably content?

Had not the Greek his world mistook,
His wish had been most wise;
To be content with but one world,
Like him, we should despise.

Of earth's revenue would you state

A full account and fair?

We hope, and hope, and hope, then cast
The total up-despair.

Since vain all here, all future, vast,

Embrace the lot assigned;

Heaven wounds to heal; its frowns are friends;

Its strokes severe most kind.

But in lapsed nature rooted deep,
Blind Error domineers,

And on fools' errands in the dark,
Sends out our hopes and fears;

Bids us for ever pains deplore,
Our pleasures over-prize;
These oft persuade us to be weak,
Those urge us to be wise.

From Virtue's rugged path to right,
By pleasure are we brought

To flowery fields of wrong, and there
Pain chides us for our fault:

Yet whilst it chides it speaks of peace,
If folly is withstood,

And says, Time pays an easy price,
For our eternal good.

In earth's dark cot, and in an hour,
And in delusion great,

What an economist is man!

To spend his whole estate,

And beggar an eternity!
For which, as he was born,

More worlds than one against it weighed,
As feathers he should scorn.

Say not your loss in triumph leads,
Religion's feeble strife;
Joys future amply reimburse
Joys bankrupts of this life.

But not deferred your joy so long,
It bears an early date;
Affliction's ready pay in hand
Befriends our present state.

What are the tears which trickle down
Her melancholy face,

Like liquid pearl? like pearls of price,
They purchase lasting peace.

Grief softens hearts, and curbs the will,
Impetuous passion tames,

And keeps insatiate keen desire

From launching in extremes.

'Twill sound severe-yet rest assured I'm studious of your peace;

Though I should dare to give you joy—
Yes, joy of his decease.

An hour shall come, (you question this)
An hour, when you shall bless,
Beyond the brightest beams of life,
Dark days of your distress.

Hear then, without surprise, a truth,

A daughter truth to this,
Swift turns of fortune often tie
A bleeding heart to bliss.

Esteem you this a paradox?
My sacred motto read;
A glorious truth, divinely sung
By one whose heart had bled.

To resignation swift he flew;
In her a friend he found;

A friend which blessed him with a smile,
When gasping with his wound.

On earth nought precious is obtained
But what is painful too;

By travel, and to travel born,
Our sabbaths are but few.

To real joy we work our way,
Encountering many a shock,

Ere found what truly charms, as found
A Venus in the block.

In some disaster, some severe
Appointment for our sins,

That mother-blessing, (not so called
True happiness, begins.

No martyr e'er defied the flames

Through Time's dark womb, our judgment right, By stings of life unvexed;

If our dim eye was thrown,

Clear should we see the will divine
Has but forestalled our own.

At variance with our future wish,
Self-severed, we complain:
If so, the wounded, not the wound,
Must answer for the pain.

The day shall come, and swift of wing,
Though you may think it slow,
When, in the list of Fortune's smiles,
You'll enter frowns of wo.

For mark the path of Providence;
This course it has pursued,
"Pain is the parent, wo the womb,
Of sound important good:"

Our hearts are fastened to this world
By strong and endless ties;
And every sorrow cuts a string,
And urges us to rise.

First rose some quarrel with this world,
Then passion for the next.

You see then pangs are parent pangs,
The pangs of happy birth;
Pangs, by which only can be born
True happiness on earth.

The peopled earth look all around,
Or through times records run,
And say, what is a man unstruck?
It is a man undone.

This moment am I deeply stung—
My bold pretence is tried.

When vain man boasts, heaven puts to proof
The vauntings of his pride.

Now need I, Madam! your support.-
How exquisite the smart!
How critically timed the news*
Which strikes me to the heart!

The death of Mr. Richardson.

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