Poetical Works of Akenside by Mark Akenside (suggested reading TXT) 📕

awful forms present,
For chiefs and heroes only meant:
The figured brass, the choral song,
The rescued people's glad applause,
The listening senate, and the laws
Fix'd by the counsels of Timoleon's [1] tongue,
Are scenes too grand for fortune's private ways;
And though they shine in youth's ingenuous view,
The sober gainful arts of modern days
To such romantic thoughts have bid a long adieu.

5 I ask not, god of dreams, thy care
To banish Love's presentments fair:
Nor rosy cheek nor radiant eye
Can arm him with such strong command
That the young sorcerer's fatal hand
Should round my soul his pleasing fetters tie.
Nor yet the courtier's hope, the giving smile
(A lighter phantom, and a baser chain)
Did e'er in slumber my proud lyre beguile
To lend the pomp of thrones her ill-according strain.

6 But, Morpheus, on thy balmy wing
Such honourable visions bring,
As soothed great Milton's injured age,
When in prophetic dreams he saw
The race unborn with pious awe
Imbibe each virtue from his heavenly page:
Or such as Mead's benignant fancy knows
When health's deep treasures, by his art explored,
Have saved the infant from an orphan's woes,
Or to the trembling sire his age's hope restored.

[Footnote: 1: After Timoleon had delivered Syracuse from the tyranny of Dionysius, the people on every important deliberation sent for him into the public assembly, asked his advice, and voted according to it.
-- Plutarch .]


ODE III.


TO THE CUCKOO.


1 O rustic herald of the spring,
At length in yonder woody vale
Fast by the brook I hear thee sing;
And, studious of thy homely tale,
Amid the vespers of the grove,
Amid the chanting choir of love,
Thy sage responses hail.

2 The time has been when I have frown'd
To hear thy voice the woods invade;
And while thy solemn accent drown'd
Some sweeter poet of the shade,
Thus, thought I, thus the sons of care
Some constant youth or generous fair
With dull advice upbraid.

3 I said, 'While Philomela's song
Proclaims the passion of the grove,
It ill beseems a cuckoo's tongue
Her charming language to reprove'--
Alas, how much a lover's ear
Hates all the sober truth to hear,
The sober truth of love!

4 When hearts are in each other bless'd,
When nought but lofty faith can rule
The nymph's and swain's consenting breast,
How cuckoo-like in Cupid's school,
With store of grave prudential saws
On fortune's power and custom's laws,
Appears each friendly fool!

5 Yet think betimes, ye gentle train
Whom love, and hope, and fancy sway,
Who every harsher care disdain,
Who by the morning judge the day,
Think that, in April's fairest hours,
To warbling shades and painted flowers
The cuckoo joins his lay.


ODE IV.

TO THE HONOURABLE CHARLES TOWNSHEND;
IN THE COUNTRY. 1750.


I.--1.

How oft shall I survey
This humble roof, the lawn, the greenwood shade,
The vale with sheaves o'erspread,
The glassy brook, the flocks which round thee stray?
When will thy cheerful mind
Of these have utter'd all her dear esteem?
Or, tell me, dost thou deem
No more to join in glory's toilsome race,
But here content embrace
That happy leisure which thou hadst resign'd?


I.--2.

Alas, ye happy hours,
When books and youthful sport the soul could share,
Ere one ambitious care
Of civil life had awed her simpler powers;
Oft as your winged, train
Revisit here my friend in white array,
Oh, fail not to display
Each fairer scene where I perchance had part,
That so his generous heart
The abode of even friendship may remain.


I.--3.

For not imprudent of my loss to come,
I saw from Contemplation's quiet cell
His feet ascending to another home,
Where public praise and envied greatness dwell.
But shall we therefore, O my lyre,
Reprove ambition's best desire,--
Extinguish glory's flame?
Far other was the task enjoin'd
When to my hand thy strings were first assign'd:
Far other faith belongs to friendship's honour'd name.


II.--1.

Thee, Townshend, not the arms
Of slumbering Ease, nor Pleasure's rosy chain,
Were destined to detain;
No, nor bright Science, nor the Muse's charms.
For them high heaven prepares
Their proper votaries, an humbler band:
And ne'er would Spenser's hand
Have deign'd to strike the warbling Tuscan shell,
Nor Harrington to tell
What habit an immortal city wears;


II.--2.

Had this been born to shield
The cause which Cromwell's impious hand betray'd,
Or that, like Vere, display'd
His redcross banner o'er the Belgian field;
Yet where the will divine
Hath shut those loftiest paths, it next remains,
With reason clad in strains
Of harmony, selected minds to inspire,
And virtue's living fire
To feed and eternise in hearts like thine.


II.--3.

For never shall the herd, whom envy sways,
So quell my purpose or my tongue control,
That I should fear illustrious worth to praise,
Because its master's friendship moved my soul.
Yet, if this undissembling strain
Should now perhaps thine ear detain
With any pleasing sound,
Remember thou that righteous Fame
From hoary age a strict account will claim
Of each auspicious palm with which thy youth was crown'd.


III.--1.

Nor obvious is the way
Where heaven expects thee nor the traveller leads;
Through flowers or fragrant meads,
Or groves that hark to Philomela's lay.
The impartial laws of fate
To nobler virtues wed severer cares.
Is there a man who shares
The summit next where heavenly natures dwell?
Ask him (for he can tell)
What storms beat round that rough laborious height.


III.--2.

Ye heroes, who of old
Did generous England Freedom's throne ordain;
From Alfred's parent reign
To Nassau, great deliverer, wise and bold;
I know your perils hard,
Your wounds, your painful marches, wintry seas,
The night estranged from ease,
The day by cowardice and falsehood vex'd,
The head with doubt perplex'd,
The indignant heart disdaining the reward,


III.--3.

Which envy hardly grants. But, O renown,
O praise from judging heaven and virtuous men,
If thus they purchased thy divinest crown,
Say, who shall hesitate, or who complain?
And now they sit on thrones above:
And when among the gods they move
Before the Sovereign Mind,
'Lo, these,' he saith, 'lo, these are they
Who to the laws of mine eternal sway
From violence and fear asserted human kind.'


IV.--1.

Thus honour'd while the train
Of legislators in his presence dwell;
If I may aught foretell,
The statesman shall the second palm obtain.
For dreadful deeds of arms
Let vulgar bards, with undiscerning praise,