GREAT god of wealth! before whose sacred throne Truth, honour, genius, fame, and worth lie prone; To thy throng'd temples take one votary more: To thee a poet never kneel'd before.
Adieu, the gods that caught my early prayer! Wisdom that frown'd, and Knowledge fraught with
Friendship that every veering gale could move; And tantalizing Hope, and faithless Love!
These, these are slaves that in thy livery shine: For Wisdom, Friendship, Love himself is thine !
For thee I'll labour down the mine's dark way,
And leave the confines of enlivening day;
For thee Asturia's shining sands explore,
And bear the splendours of Potosi's ore;
Scale the high rock, and tempt the raging sea,
And think, and toil, and wish, and wake for thee.
Farewell, the scenes that thoughtless youth could
please,
The flowery scenes of indolence and ease;
Where you the way with magic power beguile,
Bassora's deep, or Lybia's deserts smile.
Foes of thy worth, that, insolent and vain,
Deride thy maxims, and reject thy reign;
The frantic tribe of virtue shall depart,
And make no more their ravage in my heart.
Away The tears that pity taught to flow!'
Away that anguish for a brother's woe!
Adieu to these, and every tiresome guest,
That drain'd my fortunes, or destroy'd my rest!
Ah, good Avaro! could I thee despise!
Thee, good Avaro; provident and wise?
Plutus, forgive the bitter things I've said:
I love Avaro; poor Avaro's dead!
Yet, yet I'm thine; for Fame's unerring tongue
In thy sooth'd ear thus pours her silver song:
'Immortal Plutus! god of golden ease!
Form'd every heart, and every eye to please!
For thee Content her downy carpet spreads,
And rosy Pleasure swells her genial beds.
'Tis thine to gild the mansions of Despair,
And beam a glory round the brows of Care;
To cheat the lazy pace of sleepless hours
With marble fountains, and ambrosial bowers.'
O grant me, Plutus, scenes like those I sung,
My youthful lyre when vernal fancy strung:
For me their shade let other Studleys rear,
Though each tree's water'd with a widow's tear.
Detested god! forgive me, I adore!
Great Plutus, grant me one petition more.
Should Delia, tender, generous, fair, and free,
Leave love and truth, and sacrifice to thee;
I charge thee, Plutus, be to Delia kind,
And make her fortunes richer than her mind.
Be her's the wealth all Heaven's broad eye can view;
Grant her, good God, Don Philip and Peru.
PARENT of Virtue! if thine ear Attend not now to Sorrow's cry;
If now the pity-streaming tear Should haply on thy cheek be dry; Indulge my votive strain, O sweet Humanity!
Come, ever welcome to my breast,
A tender, but a cheerful guest;
Nor always in the gloomy cell
Of life-consuming Sorrow dwell;
For Sorrow, long-indulg'd and slow,
Is to Humanity a foe;
And Grief, that makes the heart its prey,
Wears sensibility away:
Then come, sweet nymph, instead of thee,
The gloomy fiend Stupidity.
O may that fiend be banish'd far,
Though passions hold eternal war!
Nor ever let me cease to know
The pulse that throbs at joy or woe :
Nor let my vacant cheek be dry,
When sorrow fills a brother's eye;
Nor may the tear that frequent flows
From private or from social woes,
E'er make this pleasing sense depart ;
Ye cares, O harden not my heart!
If the fair star of fortune smile,
Let not its flattering power beguile:
Nor, borne along the favouring tide,
My full sails swell with bloating pride.
Let me from wealth but hope content,
Remembering still it was but lent:
To modest merit spread my store,
Unbar my hospitable door;
Nor feed, for pomp an idle train,
While Want unpitied pines in vain.
If Heaven, in every purpose wise,
The envied lot of wealth denies ;
If doom'd to drag life's painful load
Through Poverty's uneven road,
And, for the due bread of the day,
Destin'd to toil as well as pray;
To thee, Humanity, still true,
I'll wish the good I cannot do;
And give the wretch that passes by,
A soothing word—a tear-a sigh.
Howe'er exalted, or deprest,
Be ever mine the feeling breast.
From me remove the stagnant inind
Of languid indolence, reclin'd;
The soul that one long sabbath keeps,
And through the sun's whole circle sleeps;
Dull Peace, that dwells in Folly's eye,
And self-attending Vanity.
Alike, the foolish and the vain
Are strangers to the sense humane.
O, for that sympathetic glow
Which taught the holy tear to flow,
When the prophetic eye survey'd
Sion in future ashes laid;
Or, rais'd to Heaven, implor'd the bread
That thousands in the desert fed!
Or when the heart o'er Friendship's grave
Sigh'd, and forgot its power to save-
O, for that sympathetic glow,
Which taught the holy tear to flow!
It comes: it fills my labouring breast!
I feel my beating heart opprest.
Oh! hear that lonely widow's wail!
See her dim eye! her aspect pale!
To Heav'n she turns in deep despair,
Her infants wonder at her prayer,
And mingling tears, they know not why,
Lift up their little hands and cry.
O God! their moving sorrows see!
Support them, sweet Humanity.
Life, fill'd with grief's distressful train,
For ever asks the tear humane.
Behold in yon unconscious grove
The victims of ill-fated love!
Heard you that agonizing throe?
Sure this is not romantic woe!
The golden day of joy is o'er;
And now they part-to meet no more.
Assist them, hearts from anguish free!
Assist them, sweet Humanity.
Parent of Virtue! if thine ear Attend not now to Sorrow's cry; If now the pity-streaming tear Should haply on thy cheek be dry, Indulge my votive strain, O sweet Humanity
|