MORAL.

Beware of too sublime a sense

Of your own worth and consequence:
The man who dreams himself so great,
And his importance of such weight,
That all around, in all that's done,
Must move and act for him alone,
Will learn in school of tribulation
The folly of his expectation.

1791.

THE JUDGMENT OF THE POETS.

Two nymphs, both nearly of an age,
Of numerous charms possess'd,
A warm dispute once chanced to wage,
Whose temper was the best.

The worth of each had been complete
Had both alike been mild:

But one, although her smile was sweet,
Frown'd oftener than she smiled.

And in her humour, when she frown'd,
Would raise her voice, and roar,
And shake with fury to the ground
The garland that she wore.

The other was of gentler cast,

From all such frenzy clear,

Her frowns were seldom known to last, And never proved severe.

To poets of renown in song

The nymphs referr'd the cause,

Who, strange to tell, all judged it wrong, And gave misplaced applause.

L

They gentle call'd, and kind and soft,
The flippant and the scold,

And though she changed her mood so oft,
That failing left untold.

No judges, sure, were e'er so mad,
Or so resolved to err-

In short, the charms her sister had
They lavish'd all on her.

Then thus the God whom fondly they
Their great inspirer call,

Was heard, one genial summer's day,
To reprimand them all.

'Since thus ye have combined,' he said,
My favourite nymph to slight,
Adorning May, that peevish maid,
With June's undoubted right,

The minx shall, for your folly's sake,
Still prove herself a shrew,

Shall make your scribbling fingers ache,
And pinch your noses blue.'

May, 1791.

YARDLEY OAK.

SURVIVOR Sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren, at my birth
(Since which I number threescore winters past),
A shatter'd veteran, hollow-trunk'd perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform
helics of ages! could a mind, imbued

With truth from heaven, created thing adore,
I might with reverence kneel, and worship thee
It seems idolatry with some excuse,

When our forefather druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet

Unpurified by an authentic act

Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste

Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.

Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball

Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains
Beneath thy parent tree mellow'd the soil
Design'd thy cradle; and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepared
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.
So fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can,
Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search
Of argument, employ'd too oft amiss,
Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!

Thou fell'st mature; and, in the loamy clod
Swelling with vegetative force instinct,

Didst burn thine egg, as theirs the fabled twins,-
Now stars; two lobes, protruding, pair'd exact;
A leaf succeeded, and another leaf,

And, all the elements thy puny growth

Fostering propitious, thou becamest a twig.

Who lived when thou wast such? Oh, couldst thou

As in Dodona once thy kindred trees

Oracular, I would not curious ask

The future, best unknown, but at thy mouth
Inquisitive, the less ambiguous past.

[speak,

By thee I might correct, erroneous oft, The clock of history, facts and events Timing more punctual, unrecorded facts. Recovering, and misstated setting rightDesperate attempt, till trees shall speak again! Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods; And time hath made thee what thou art-a cave For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks

That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope
Uncrowded, yet safe shelter'd from the storm.
No flock frequents thee now. Thou hast outlived
Thy popularity, and art become

(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing
Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth.

While thus through all the stages thou hast push'd Of treeship-first a seedling, hid in grass;

Then twig; then sapling; and, as century roll'a
Slow after century, a giant bulk

Of girth enormous, with moss-cushion'd root
Upheaved above the soil, and sides emboss'd
With prominent wens globose-till at the last
The rottenness, which time is charged to inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.

What exhibitions various hath the world
Witness'd of mutability in all

That we account most durable below!

Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them. Skies uncertain now the heat
Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam
Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds
Calm and alternate storm, moisture, and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life

In all that live, plant, animal, and man,

And in conclusion mar them. Nature's threads,
Fine passing thought, e'en in their coarsest works,
Delight in agitation, yet sustain

The force that agitates not unimpair'd;
But worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.

Thought cannot spend itself, comparing still
The great and little of thy lot, thy growth
From almost nullity into a state

Of matchless grandeur, and declension thence,
Slow, into such magnificent decay.

Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly

Could shake thee to the root--and time has been,
When tempests could not. At thy firmest age
Thou hadst within thy bole solid contents

That might have ribb'd the sides and plank'd the deck