RECOMMENDATORY VERSES.

ON READING

ON READING HIS HORÆ LYRICE.

EUSEBIA.

ON HIS POEMS.

TO MR. WATTS,
MR. WATTS'S POEMS
SACRED TO PIETY AND DEVOTION.

Hall, heaven-born Muse! that, with celestial faine,

And high sera;yhic numbers, durst attempt RECARD the man, who, in seraphic lays,

To gain ihy narise skies. No common theme And flowing numbers, sings his Maker's praise :

Merits thy thougit, self-conscious of a sont He needs invoke no fabled Muse's art,

Superior, though on Earth de aiu'd awbile;
The heavenly song comes genuine from his heart,

Like some propitions angel, that 's design'd
From that pure heart which God has deign’d t'inspire A resident in this inferier orb,
With holy raptures, and a sacred fire.

To guide the wardering souls to heavenly bliss, Thrice happy man! whose soul and guiltless breast

Thou seein':t; while thou their everlasting songs Are well prepar'd to lodge th’ Almighty guest !

Hast sung to murtal ears, and down to Earth Tis he that lends thy towering thoughts their wing, Transferr'd the work of Heaven; with thought sublime, And tunes thy lyre, when thon attempt'st to sing :

And high sonorous words, thou sweetly sing'st He to thy soul lets-in celestial day,

To thy immortal lyre. Ainaz'd, we view Er'n whilst imprison'd in this mortal clay.

The towering height stupendous, while thou sour'st By Death's griin aspect thou art not aların'd,

Above the reach of vulgar eyes or thought, He, for thy sake, has death itself disarm'd;

Hymning th' Eternal Father; as of oid Not shall the Grave o'er thee a victory boast;

When fint th' Almighty from the dark abyss Her triumph in thy rising shall be lost,

Of everlasting night and silence call'd When thou shalt join th' angelic choirs above,

The shining worlds with one creating word,
In Rever-ending songs of praise and love.

And rais'd from nothing all the heavenly husts,
And with external glories fill'd the void,

Harmonious seraphs tand their golden harps,
TO MR. WATTS,

And with their checrful hallelujahs bless'd
The bounteous author of their happiness;

From orb to orb th' alternate music rang,
To mnrmuring streams, in tender strains,

And fron the crystal arches of the sky My pensive Muse no more

Reach'd our then glorious worki, the native seat Of love's enchanting force complains,

Of the first happy pair, who join’d their songs Along the flowery shore.

To the loud echoes of th' angelic choirs, No more Mirtillo's fatal face

And fill'd with blissful hymns terrestrial Heaney My quiet breast alarms;

The Paradise of God, where all delights His eyes, his air, and youthful grace,

Abounded, and the pure anbrosial air, Hare lost their usual charms.

Fann'd by inild zephyrs, breath'd eleraal sweets, Ngay Alexis in the grove

Forbidding death and sorrow, and bestou'd Shall be my future theme:

Fresh heavenly bloom and gay inmortal youth I barn with an immortal love,

Not so, alas! the vile apstate race, And sing a purer flame.

Who in mad joys their brutal hours employ'd,

Assaulting with their impious blasphemies Seraphic heights I seem to gain,

The Power supreine that gave them life and breath; And sacred transports feel,

Incarnate tiends ! outrageous tbey defied While, Watts, to thy celestial strain,

Th’ Eternal's thunder, and almighty wrath Surpris'd, I listen still.

Fearless provok'd, which all the other devils The gliding streams their course furbear,

Would dread to meet; remembering well the day When I thy lays repeat;

When, driven from pure iminortal seats abuve, The bending forest lends an ear,

A fiery tempest hurl'd them down the skies, The birds their notes forget.

And hung upon the rear, urging their fall With such a graceful harmony

To the dark, deep, unfathomable gulf, Thy numbers suill prolong;

Where, bound on sulphurons lakes to glowing rocks And let remotest lands reply,

With adamantine chains, they wail their wues, And echo to thy song,

And know Jehovah great as well as good;

And fix'd for ever by etornal Fate,
Far as the distant regions, where
The beauteous Morning Springs,

With hurrour find his arın omnipotent.
And scatters odours through the air,

Prodigious madness! that the sacred Muse, From her resplendent wings;

First taught in Heaven to mount imınortal heights, Unto the new-found realms, which see

And trace the boundless gluries of the sky, The latter Sun arise,

Should now to every idol basely bow, When, with an easy progress, he

And curse the deity she once ador'd, Rolls down the nether skies.

Erecting trophies to each sordid vice, july, 1706.

And celebrating the infernal praise
PHILOMELA!

Of hanghty Lucifer, the desperate foe
• A name assumed by my rival.

Of God and man, and winning every hour

HENRY CROVE.

ON THE FIFTH EDITION OF HIS HORÆ LYRICÆ.

New votaries to Hell, while all the fiends

Mingle the images of things about him, Hear these accursed lays, and, thus outdone, But hear the least exalted of thy strains, Raging they try to match the human race,

How greedily he'd drink the music in, Redoubling all their hellish blasphemies,

Thinking his heavenly convoy waited near! And with loud curses rend the gloomy vault. So great a stress of powerful harmony, Ungrateful mortals! ah! too late you'll find

Nature, unable longer to sustain, What 'tis to banter Heaven, and laugh at Hell; Would sink oppress'd with joy to endless rest. To dress-up Vice in false delusive charms,

Let none henceforth of Providence complain, And with gay colours paint her hideous face, As if the world of spirits lay unknown, Leading besotted souls through flowery paths, Fenc'd round with black impenetrable night. In gaudy dreams, and vain fantastic joys,

What though no shining angel darts from thence, To dismal scenes of everlasting woe;

With leave to publish things conceal'd from sense, When the great Judge shall rear his awful throne, In language bright as theirs, we are here told, And raging flames surround the trembling globe, When life its narrow round of years hath roll'd, While the loud thunders roar from pole to pole, What 'tis employs the bless'd, what makes their And the last trump awakes the sleeping dead; Songs such as Watts’s are, and love like his. [bliss; And guilty souls to ghastly bodies driven,

But then, dear sir, be cautious how you use Within those dire eternal prisons shut,

To transports so intensely rais'd your Muse, Expect their sad inexorable doom.

Lest, whilst th' ecstatic impulse you obey,
Say now, ye men of wit! what turn of thought

The soul leap out, and drop the duller clay.
Will please you then! Alas, how dull and poor,
Ev'n to yourselves, will your lewd flights appear !

Sept. 4, 1706.
How will you envy then the happy fate
Of idiots! and perhaps in vain you'll wish
You'd been as very fools, as once you thought

TO DR. WATTS,
Others, for the sublimest wisdom scorn'd;
When pointed lightnings from the wrathful Judge
Shall singe your blighted laurels, and the men

Sovereign of sacred verse, accept the lays
Who thought they flew so high shall fall so low. Of a young bard, that dares attempt thy praise.

No more, my Muse, of that tremendous thought: A Muse, the meanest of the vocal throng, Resume thy more delightful theme, and sing

New to the bays, nor eqrial to the song, Th’immortal man, that with immortal verse

Fir'd with the growing glories of thy fame, Rivals the hymns of angels, and like them

Joins all her powers to celebrate thy name. Despises mortal critics' idle rules :

No vulgar themes thy pious Muse engage, While the celestial name that warms thy soul

No scenes of lust pollute thy sacred page. Inspires us, and with holy transports moves

You in majestic numbers mount the skies, Our labouring minds, and nobler scenes presents

And meet descending angels as you rise, Than all the Pagan poets ever sung,

Whose just applauses charm the crowded groves, Homer, or Virgil, and far sweeter notes

And Addison thy tuneful song approves. Than Horace ever taught his sounding lyre,

Soft harmony and manly vigour join And purer far, though Martial's self might seem

To form the beauties of each sprightly line, A modest poet in our Christian days.

For every grace of every Muse is thine. May those forgotten and neglected lie !

Milton, immortal bard, divinely bright, No more let men be fond of fabulous gods,

Conducts his favourite to the realms of light, Nor heathen wit debauch one Christian line,

Where Raphael's lyre charms the celestial throng, While with the coarse and daubing paint we hide

Delighted cherubs listening to the song : The shining beanties of eternal Truth,

From bliss to bliss the happy beings rove, That in her native dress appears most bright,

And taste the sweets of music and of love. And charms the eyes of angels.--Oh! like thee

But when the softer scenes of life you paint, Let every nobler genius tune bis voice

And join the beauteous virgin to the saint; To subjects worthy of their towering thoughts.

When you describe how few the happy pairs Let Heaven and Anna then your tuneful art

Whose hearts united soften all their cares, Improve, and consecrate your deathless lays

We see to whom the sweetest joys belong, To Him who reigns above, and her who rules below. And Myra's beauties consecrate your song.

Pain the unnumber'd graces I would tell, April 17, 1706.

And on the pleasing theme for ever dwell ;

But the Muse faints, unequal to the flight,
TO MR. WATTS,

And hears thy strains with wonder and delight,
When tombs of princes shall in ruins lie,

And all but heaven-born Piety shall die;
Say, human seraph, whence that charming force, When the last trumpet wakes the silent dead,
That fame, that soul, which animates each line; And each lascivious poet hides his head;
And how it runs with such a graceful ease,

With thee shall thy divine Urania rise,
Loaded with ponderous sense! Say, did not he, Crown'd with fresh laurels, to thy native skies :
The lovely Jesus, who commands thy breast, Great How and Gouge shall hail thee on thy way,
Inspire thee with himself? With Jesus dwells, And welcome thee to the bright realms of day,
Knit in mysterious bands, the Paraclete,

Adapt thy tuneful notes to heavenly strings, The breath of God, the everlasting source

And join the Lyric Ode while some fair seraph sings, Of love: And what is love, in souls like thine,

Sic spirat, sic optat, But air and incense to the poet's fire ?

Tui amantissimus Should an expiring saint, whose swimming eyes,

JOSEPH STANDEN.

ON HIS DIVINE POEMS,

BRITANNICUS.

PREFACE.

It has been a long complaint of the virtuous and refined world, that Poesy, whose original is divine, should be enslaved to vice and profaneness; that an art, inspired from Heaven, should have so far lost the memory of its birth-place, as to be engaged in the interests of Hell. How unhappily is it perverted from its most glorious design! How basely has it been driven away from its proper station in the temple of God, and abused to much dishonour! The iniquity of men has constrained it to serve their vilest purposes, while the sons of piety mourn the sacrilege and the shame.

The eldest song which history has brought down to our ears was a noble act of worship paid to the God of Israel, when his " right hand became glorious in power; when thy right hand, O Lord, dashed in pieces the enemy: the chariots of Pharaoh and his hosts were cast into the Red Sea. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the deep covered them, and they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” Exod. xv. This art was maintained sacred through the following ages of the church, and employed by kings and prophets, by David, Solomon, and Isaiah, in describing the nature and the glories of God, and in conveying grace or vengeance to the hearts of men. By this method they brought so much of Heaven down to this lower world, as the darkness of that dispensation would admit: and now and then a divine and puetic rapture lifted their souls far above the level of that economy of shadows, bore them away far into a brighter region, and gave them a glimpse of evangelic day. The life of angels was harmoniously breathed into the children of Adam, and their minds raised near to Heaven in melody and devotion at once.

. In the younger days of heathenism the Muses were devoted to the same service : the language in which old Hesiod addresses them is this:

Μάσαι Πιερύηθεν αοιδήσι κλείουσαι, ,
Δεύτε, Δί ένέπετο σφέτερον σατίρ' υμνείουσαι.
Pierian Muses, fam'd for heavenly lays,

Descend, and sing the God your Father's praise. And he pursues the subject in ten pious lines, which I could not forbear to transcribe, if the aspect and sound of so much Greek were not terrifying to a nice reader.

But some of the latter poets of the Pagan world have debased this divine gift; and many of the writers of the first rank, in this our age of rational Christians, have, to their eternal shame, surpassed the vilest of the Gentiles. They have not only disrobed Religion of all the ornaments of verse, but have employed their pens in impious mischief, to deform her native beauty and defile her honours. They have exposed her most sacred character to drollery, and dressed her up in a most vile and ridiculous disguise, for the scorn of the ruder herd of mankind. The vices have been painted like so many goddesses, the charms of wit have been added to debauchery, and the temptation heightened where nature needs the strongest restraints. With sweetness of sound, and delicacy of expression, they have given a relish to blasphemies of the harshest kind; and when they rant at their Maker in sonorous numbers, they fancy themselves to have acted the hero well.

Thus almost in vain have the throne and the pulpit cried Reformation; while the stage and licentious poems have waged open war with the pious design of church and state. The press has spread the poison far, and scattered wide the mortal infection : unthinking youth have been enticed to sin beyond the vicious propensities of nature, plunged early into diseases and death, and sunk down to damnation in mula titudes. Was it for this that Poesy was endued with all those allurements that lead the mind away in a