On some fond breast the parting soul relies, For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonoured dead, Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate, Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 'Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. 'One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he: 'The next, with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne :Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.' The Epitaph. Here rests his head upon the lap of earth Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to misery (all he had) a tear, He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God. SONNET ON THE DEATH OF MR. RICHARD WEST. In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire: A different object do these eyes require : To warm their little loves the birds complain: SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER. Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune ; He had not the method of making a fortune: Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd; No very great wit, he believed in a God: A post or a pension he did not desire, But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire IMPROMPTU, ON LORD HOLLAND'S SEAT At Kingsgate Old, and abandoned by each venal friend, On this congenial spot he fixed his choice; And mariners, though shipwrecked, dread to land. Here reign the blustering North and blighting East, Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast, Here mouldering fanes and battlements arise, 'Ah!' said the sighing peer, 'had Bute been true, 'Purged by the sword, and purified by fire, Then had we seen proud London's hated walls; WILLIAM WHITEHEAD. [BORN at Cambridge in 1715; educated at Winchester and at Clare Hall, Cambridge. His poems were collected in 1754, and again in 1774. H: became Poet Laureate in 1758, and died in 1785, in London.] William Whitehead, who must not be confused with his clever and disreputable namesake, Paul Whitehead, the poet of the orgies of Medmenham, succeeded Cibber in the laureateship when Gray declined that doubtful honour. He was the perpetual butt of the satire of Churchill, who, as Campbell says, 'completely killed his poetical character!' Indeed his poetry is for the most part tame and conventional enough; yet here and there he emerges from the ruck of Georgian poetasters and becomes noticeable. Variety, a Tale for Married People, which is too long for quotation, is an excellent story in verse-with a moral, of course, as a conte should have-told in a light and flowing style not unworthy of Gay. The Enthusiast, an Ode, is here given, because of the admirable way in which it epitomises the debate it is a perennial debate, but the eighteenth century took one side and we take the other-between Nature and Society. 'O bards, that call to bank and glen, --when the modern poet writes in this way, we note him as breaking the poetical concert of our age. But the doctrine is one which the poets of Pope's century were for ever enforcing; even Cowper, antithesis to Pope as he was, enforced it; and this little ode of Whitehead's is so happy a rendering of their argument that it is worthy of being rescued from the oblivion which has almost overwhelmed its author. VOL. III. EDITOR. THE ENTHUSIAST. AN ODE Once-I remember well the day, In short, 'twas that sweet season's prime And doubting mortals hardly know Twas then, beside a green-wood shade With loitering steps regardless where, So wondrous bright the day. And now my eyes with transport rove Unbroken by a cloud! And now beneath delighted pass, Where winding through the deep-green grase A full-brimmed river flowed. I stop, I gaze, in accents rude, Burst forth th' unbidden lay; 'Begone vile world! the learned the wise, The great, the busy, I despise, And pity even the gay. |