Placid emotion. Solitude. * Presume not on to-morrow. Dum vivimus vivamus. Whilst we live let us live. " Live, while you live," the epicure would say, " And seize the pleasures of the present day.”' " Live, while you live,” the sacred preacher cries ; “And give to God each moment as it flies.” Lord! in my views, let both united be; I live in pleasure, when I live to thee! DODDRIDGE. By solitude here is meant, a temporary feclufon from the world Verses in various forms. The security of virtue. To shelt'ring caverns fly, That thunders through the sky. Protected by that hand, whose law, The threat'ning storms obey, Intrepid virtue smiles secure, As in the blaze of day. Resignation. And O! by error's force subdu’d, Since oft my stubborn will Prepost'rous shuns the latent good, And grasps the specious ill. Do thou-thy gifts apply ; What ill, though ask'd, deny. Compassion. I have found where the wood-pigeons breed : But let me that plunder forbear! She will say, 'tis a barbarous deed. For he ne'er can be true, she averr'd, Who can rob a poor bird of its young ; And I lov'd her the more, when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue. Epitaph. A vouth to fortune and to fame unknown; And melancholy mark'd him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere ; Heav'n did a recompense as largely send : He gave to mis'ry all he had a tear; He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) 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. Foy and sorrow connected. The golden mean. The little and the great, Imbiti’ring all his state. Comes heaviest to the ground. And spread the ruin round. Moderate views and aims recommended. By reason my life let me square ; And the rest are but folly and care. The many their labours employ! Attachment to life. Least willing still to quit the ground ; 'Twas therefore said, by ancient sages, That love of life increas'd with years, Virtue's address to Pleasure*. A youth of follies, an old age of cares : Young yet enervate, old yet neyer wise, Vice wastes their vigour, and their mind impairs. Vain, idle, delicate, in thoughtless ease, Reserving woes for age, their prime they spend; All wretched, hopeless, in the evil days, With sorrow to the verge of life they tend. Griev'd with the present, of the past asham'd, They live and are despis’d; they die, nor more are nam'd. . SECTION V. Verses in which sound corresponds to signification. Smooth and rough verse. Sort is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows. But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. Slow motion imitated. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow. Swift and easy motion. Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o’er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main, Felling trees in a wood. Loud sounds the axe, redoubling strokes on strokes ; On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks Headlong. Deep echoing groan the thickets brown; Then rustling, crackling, crashing, thunder down. Sound of a bow-string. -The string let fly Twang'd short and sharp, like the shrill swallow's cry. : The Pheasant. Scylla and Charybdis. |