And then, if ever, mortal ears
Had heard the music of the spheres.
And if no clust'ring swarm of bees
On thy sweet mouth distilld their golden dew,

'Twas that such vulgar miracles

Heaven had not leisure to renew : For all thy blest fraternity of love Solemnised there thy birth, and kept thy holyday

above.

O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy !
Made prostitute and profligate the muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordain'd above
For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love!
O wretched we! why were we hurried down

This lubrique and adulterate age,
(Nay, added fat pollutions of our own)

To increase the streaming ordures of the stage ? What can we say to excuse our second fall ? Let this thy vestal, Heaven, atone for all : Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, Unmix'd with foreign filth, and undefil'd ; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

Art she had none, yet wanted none;
For Nature did that want supply:
So rich in treasures of her own,

She might our boasted stores defy :
Such noble vigour did her verse adorn,
That it seemed borrow'd, where 'twas only born.
Her morals too were in her bosom bred,

By great examples daily fed,

What in the best of books, her father's life, she read.
And to be read herself she need not fear;
Each test, and every light, her muse will bear,
Though Epictetus with his lamp were there.
E'en love (for love sometimes her muse exprest),
Was but a lambent flame which played about her

breast:
Light as the vapours of a morning dream,
So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest,

'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream.

Now all those charms, that blooming grace,
The well-proportion'd shape, and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes :
In earth the much-lamented virgin lies.

Not wit, nor piety, could fate prevent ;
Nor was the cruel destiny content
To finish all the murder at a blow,

To sweep at once her life and beauty too;
But, like a harden'd felon, took a pride

To work more mischievously slow,

And plundered first, and then destroy'd.
O double sacrilege on things divine,
To rob the relic, and deface the shrine !

But thus Orinda died :
Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate;
As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,

To raise the nations under ground;

When, in the valley of Jehoshapbat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate,

And there the last assizes keep,
For those who wake, and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly

From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead ;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,

And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are cover'd with the lightest ground;
And straight, with in-born vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The
way

which thou so well hast learn'd below.
To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady,

Mrs. Anne Killigrew.

THE HUMAN MIND.
MEN are but children of a larger growth ;
Our appetites as apt to change as theirs,
And full as craving too, and full as vain :
And yet the soul shut up in her dark room,
Viewing so clear abroad, at home sees nothing;
But like a mole in earth, busy and blind,
Works all her folly up, and casts it outward
To the world's open view.

Al for Love.

MODES OF DEATH.

Adam. THE deaths thou show'st are forced and full of strife, Cast headlong from the precipice of life. Is there no smooth descent-no painless way Of kindly mixing with our native clay?

Raphael. There is—but rarely shall that path be trod, Which, without horror, leads to death's abode. Some few, by temperance taught, approaching slow, To distant fate by easy journeys go: Gently they lay them down, as evening sheep On their own woolly fleeces softly sleep.

Adam.
So noiseless would I live, such death to find,
Like timely fruit, not shaken by the wind,
But ripely dropping from the sapless bough,
And, dying, nothing to myself would owe.

Eve.
Thus daily changing, with a duller taste
Of lessening joys, I by degrees would waste:
Still quitting ground by unperceived decay,
And steal myself from life, and melt away.

State of Innocence, POPE.

1688-1744.

а

PRINCIPAL WORKS : Essay on Criticism, 1711, written at the age of twenty-one.-The Rape of the Lock, published not long afterwards, was suggested by a 'romantic'incident. Two aristocratic families had been set at variance by the secret abstraction of a lock of hair from the head of a beauty of the day, Miss Arabella Fermor, by her indiscreet lover; and Pope in this piece undertook to mediate between the offended and offending parties, and laugh them together again in the most brilliant mock-heroic poem in the world.'—Windsor Forest, 1713, a fine descriptive poem in a somewhat different style from his other productions, as it exhibits, however faintly, some sense of the attractions of nature.-Translation of the Iliad, 1713-25, which Gibbon has well characterised as having every merit but that of likeness to the originalThe Epistle from Eloisa to.Abelard, 1716, founded on the well-known story of the illicit loves of the professor of theology of the eleventh century and his too charming pupil—the prototype of the Nouvelle Héloïse or Julie of Rousseau. The delicacy of the poet, it has been observed, in veiling over the circumstances of the story, and at the same time preserving the ardour of Eloisa's passion, the beauty of his imagery and description, the exquisite melody of his versification, rising and falling like the tones of an Æolian harp, as he successively portrays the tumults of guilty love, the deepest penitence, and the highest devotional rapture, have never been surpassed.—Essay on Man, 1733, the merit of which depends rather upon its poetic than philosophic excellence. The Dunciad, in three books (a fourth being added in 1742), a bitterly satirical reply to the lampoons and libels which had greeted his recent miscellanies in prose and verse, undertaken in conjunction with Swift. In the later edition of the Dunciad, Colley Cibber, the then laureate, takes the place of Theobald, the original.monarch of dulness,' who was dethroned to make way for him. Chiefly remarkable for that unrivalled easiness of versification and satire which especially distinguishes Pope. In 'masculine' vigour, however, he is inferior to his great master, Dryden.

Perhaps his Eloisa to Abelard may be regarded as his finest poem. The Messiah, an imitation of Virgil's well-known Eclogue and of the Jewish prophets, is also greatly and deservedly admired.