Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; All their attempts to bend thee down Will but arouse thy generous flame,

But work their woe and thy renown. Rule, Britannia, etc.

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles thine. Rule, Britannia, etc.

The Muses, still with freedom found,

Shall to thy happy coast repair;

Blest isle, with matchless beauty crowned,

And manly hearts to guard the fair!

Rule, Britannia, etc.

JOHN DYER (1700?-1758)

FROM GRONGAR HILL

Silent Nymph, with curious eye,
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man,
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
Come with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister Muse;
Now while Phoebus riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,

Draw the landskip bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells
Sweetly musing Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,

At the fountain of a rill,

Sate upon a flowery bed,

With my hand beneath my head;

While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood, Over mead, and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill, 'Till Contemplation had her fill.

About his chequered sides I wind, And leave his brooks and meads behind, And groves, and grottoes where I lay, And vistas shooting beams of day: Wide and wider spreads the vale; As circles on a smooth canal:

The mountains round, unhappy fate!

Sooner or later, of all height,

Withdraw their summits from the skies, And lessen as the others rise:

Still the prospect wider spreads,

Adds a thousand woods and meads,
Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly-risen hill.

Now, I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landskip lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene,
But the gay, the open scene
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of heaven's bow!
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.

Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies;
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires;
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain-heads,
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks.

Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beach, the sable yew,
The slender fir, that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs;
And beyond the purple grove,

Haunt of Phillis, queen of love,

Gaudy as the opening dawn,

Lies a long and level lawn

On which a dark hill, steep and high, Holds and charms the wandering eye.

Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,

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Oh, guard his meek sweet innocence from all
Th' innumerous ills, that rush around his life;
Mark the quick kite, with beak and talons prone,
Circling the skies to snatch him from the plain;
Observe the lurking crows; beware the brake,
There the sly fox the careless minute waits; 412
Nor trust thy neighbor's dog, nor earth, nor sky:
Thy bosom to a thousand cares divide.
Eurus oft sings his hail; the tardy fields
Pay not their promised food; and oft the dam
O'er her weak twins with empty udder mourns,
Or fails to guard, when the bold bird of prey
Alights, and hops in many turns around,
And tires her also turning: to her aid
Be nimble, and the weakest in thine arms
Gently convey to the warm cote, and oft,
Between the lark's note and the nightingale's,
His hungry bleating still with tepid milk:
In this soft office may thy children join,
And charitable habits learn in sport:
Nor yield him to himself, ere vernal airs
Sprinkle thy little croft with daisy flowers:
Nor yet forget him: life has rising ills:
Various as ether is the pastoral care:
Through slow experience, by a patient breast,
The whole long lesson gradual is attained,
By precept after precept, oft received
With deep attention: such as Nuceus sings
To the full vale near Soare's enamour'd brook,
While all is silence: sweet Hincklean swain!
Whom rude obscurity severely clasps:
The muse, howe'er, will deck thy simple cell
With purple violets and primrose flowers,
Well-pleased thy faithful lessons to repay. 440

430

WILLIAM HAMILTON OF BANGOR (1704-1754)

A SOLILOQUY

IN IMITATION OF HAMLET

My anxious soul is tore with doubtful strife,
And hangs suspended betwixt death and life;
Life! death! dread objects of mankind's debate;
Whether superior to the shocks of fate,
To bear its fiercest ills with stedfast mind,
To Nature's order piously resign'd,
Or, with magnanimous and brave disdain,
Return her back th' injurious gift again.
O! if to die, this mortal bustle o'er,
Were but to close one's eyes, and be no more;
From pain, from sickness, sorrows, safe withdrawn,
In night eternal that shall know no dawn;
This dread, imperial, wondrous frame of man,
Lost in still nothing, whence it first began:

ΤΟ

Yes, if the grave such quiet could supply,
Devotion's self might even dare to die,
Lest hapless victors in the mortal strife;
Through death we struggle but to second life.
But, fearful here, though curious to explore,
Thought pauses, trembling on the hither shore:
What scenes may rise, awake the human fear; 21
Being again resum'd, and God more near;
If awful thunders the new guest appal,
Or the soft voice of gentle mercy call.
This teaches life with all its ills to please,
Afflicting poverty, severe disease;

To lowest infamy gives power to charm,
And strikes the dagger from the boldest arm.
Then, Hamlet, cease; thy rash resolves forego;
God, Nature, Reason, all will have it so:
Learn by this sacred horror, well supprest,
Each fatal purpose in the traitor's breast.
This damps revenge with salutary fear,
And stops ambition in its wild career,
Till virtue for itself begin to move,
And servile fear exalt to filial love.

Then in thy breast let calmer passions rise,
Pleas'd with thy lot on earth, absolve the skies.
The ills of life see Friendship can divide;
See angels warring on the good man's side.
Alone to Virtue happiness is given,

On earth self-satisfied, and crown'd in Heaven.

DAVID MALLET (1705-1765)

WILLIAM AND MARGARET "Twas at the silent solemn hour,

When night and morning meet;
In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,
And stood at William's feet.

Her face was like an April morn
Clad in a wintry cloud;
And clay-cold was her lily hand
That held her sable shroud.

So shall the fairest face appear,

When youth and years are flown: Such is the robe that kings must wear, When death has reft their crown.

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This, only this, the rigid law pursues;
This, only this, provokes the snarling muse.
The sober trader at a tatter'd cloak
Wakes from his dream, and labours for a joke;
With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze,
And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways.
Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest;
Fate never wounds more deep the gen'rous heart,
Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
Has heaven reserv'd, in pity to the poor,
No pathless waste, or undiscover'd shore?
No secret island in the boundless main?
No peaceful desert yet unclaim'd by Spain?
Quick let us rise, the happy seats explore,
And bear oppression's insolence no more.
This mournful truth is ev'ry where confess'd,
Slow rises worth, by poverty depress'd;

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I shall then show forth Thy praise, Serve Thee all my happy days: Then the world shall always see Christ, the holy Child, in me.

FOR A WOMAN NEAR HER TRAVAIL

Full of trembling expectation,
Feeling much, and fearing more,
Author, God of my salvation,

I Thy timely aid implore.
Suffering Son of Man, be near me,
All my sufferings to sustain;
By Thy sorer griefs to cheer me,

By Thy more than mortal pain.
Call to mind that unknown anguish,
In Thy days of flesh below,
When Thy troubled soul did languish
Under a whole world of woe:
When Thou didst our curse inherit,
Groan beneath our guilty load,
Burthened with a wounded spirit,
Bruised by all the wrath of God.

By Thy most severe temptation
In that dark satanic hour;
By Thy last mysterious Passion,
Screen me from the adverse power.
By Thy fainting in the garden,

By Thy bloody sweat, I pray,
Write upon my heart the pardon;
Take my sins and fears away.

By the travail of Thy spirit,

By Thine outcry on the tree,
By Thine agonizing merit,

In my pangs remember me!
By Thy Death I Thee conjure,
A weak, dying soul befriend;
Make me patient to endure,

Make me faithful to the end.

SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784)

FROM LONDON

By numbers here from shame or censure free All crimes are safe, but hated poverty.

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Let observation, with extensive view,

Survey mankind, from China to Peru;

Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,

And watch the busy scenes of crowded life:
Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate, 5
O'erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,
Where wav'ring man, betray'd by vent'rous pride
To tread the dreary paths without a guide,
As treach'rous phantoms in the mist delude,
Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good;
How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice,
Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant
voice;

ΤΟ

How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress'd, When Vengeance listens to the fool's request. Fate wings with ev'ry wish th' afflictive dart, 15