Slide off the slippery sphere; Moons, with their months, make hasty rounds, The sun has pass'd his vernal bounds, And whirls about the year. Let folly dress in green and red, Hartopp, mark the withering rose, Bright and lasting bliss below Is all romance and dream; Airy chance, and iron fate, The harness'd hours and minutes strive, Not half so fast the galley flies O'er the Venetian sea, When sails, and oars, and labouring skies, Contend to make her way. Swift wings for all the flying hours The God of time prepares; The rest lie still yet in their nest, And grow for future years. TO THE SAME. THE DISDAIN. 1700. HARTOPP, I love the soul that dares Young Hartopp knows this noble theme, The noise, the' amusements, and the strife, Flesh is the vilest and the least We're born to live above the beast, Pleasures of sense we leave for boys: TO THOMAS GUNSTON, ESQ. 1703. HAPPY SOLITUDE. CASIMIR, BOOK IV. ODE 12. IMITATED. Quid me latentem, &c. THE noisy world complains of me, Yet they will urge, This private life And twenty doors are still at strife To' engage you for a guest.' Friend, should the towers of Windsor or Whitehall But short should be my stay: Since a diviner service waits [day. To' employ my hours at home, and better fill the When I within myself retreat, And view the various scenes of my retiring soul; While hope and fear are in a doubtful strife, Be acted well to gain the plaudit of my God. There's a day hastening, ('tis an awful day!) The several parts we act on this wide stage of clay: And crowns perhaps a porter, and a prince he O! if the Judge from his tremendous seat [damns. Shall not condemn what I have done, I shall be happy though unknown; Nor heed the gazing rabble, nor the shouting street. I hate the glory, friend, that springs Till Envy shoots, and Fame receives the wound; Down glory falls, and strikes the ground, Rather let me be quite conceal'd from fame; In sweet obscurity, Nor the loud world pronounce my little name! Here I could live and die alone! To keep our taste of pleasure new, Here we could sit and pass the hour, At beauty in a veil ; But if she once advance to light, Her charms are lost in envy's sight, TO MITIO, MY FRIEND, AN EPISTLE. FORGIVE me, Mitio, that there should be any mortifying lines in the following poems inscribed to you, so soon after your entrance into that state which was designed for the completest happiness on earth: but you will quickly discover that the Muse in the first poem only represents the shades and dark colours that melancholy throws upon |