IRREGULAR ODE,
By MR. MASON.
I.
O! green-rob’d Goddess of the hallow’d shade,
Daughter of Jove, to whom of yore
Thee, lovely maid, Latona bore,
Chaste virgin, Empress of the silent glade!
Where shall I woo thee?—Ere the dawn,
While still the dewy tissue of the lawn
Quivering spangles to the eye,
And fills the soul with Nature’s harmony!
Or ’mid that murky grove’s monastic night,
The tangling net-work of the woodbine’s gloom,
Each zephyr pregnant with perfume——
Or near that delving dale, or mossy mountain’s height,
When Neptune struck the scientific ground.
II.
From Attica’s deep-heaving side,
Why did the prancing horse rebound,
Snorting, neighing all around,
With thund’ring feet and flashing eyes—
Unless to shew how near allied
Bright science is to exercise!
III.
If then the horse to wisdom is a friend,
Why not the hound? why not the horn?
While low beneath the furrow sleeps the corn,
Nor yet in tawny vests delight to bend!
For Jove himself decreed,
That DIAN, with her sandal’d feet,
White ankled Goddess pure and fleet,
Should with every Dryad lead,
By jovial cry o’er distant plain,
To England’s Athens, Brunswick’s sylvan train!
IV.
Diana, Goddess all discerning!
Hunting is a friend to learning!
If the stag, with hairy nose,
In Autumn ne’er had thought of love!
No buck with swollen throat the does
With dappled sides had tryed to move——
Ne’er had England’s King, I ween,
The Muse’s seat, fair Oxford, seen.
V.
Hunting, thus, is learning’s friend!
No longer, Virgin Goddess, bend
O’er Endymion’s roseate breast;——
No longer, vine-like, chastly twine
Round his milk-white limbs divine!——
Your brother’s car rolls down the east—
The laughing hours bespeak the day!
With flowery wreaths they strew the way!
Kings of sleep! ye mortal race!
For George with Dian ’gins the Royal chace!
VI.
Visions of bliss, you tear my aching sight,
Spare, O spare your poet’s eyes!
See every gate-way trembles with delight,
Streams of glory streak the skies:
How each College sounds,
With the cry of the hounds!
How Peckwater merrily rings;
Founders, Prelates, Queens, and Kings—
All have had your hunting-day!—
From the dark tomb then break away!
Ah! see they rush to Friar Bacon’s tower,
Great George to greet, and hail his natal hour!
VII.
Radcliffe and Wolsey, hand in hand,
Sweet gentle shades, there take their stand
With Pomfret’s learned dame;
And Bodely join’d by Clarendon,
With loyal zeal together run,
Just arbiters of fame!
VIII.
That fringed cloud sure this way bends—
From it a form divine descends—
Minerva’s self;—and in her rear
A thousand saddled steads appear!
On each she mounts a learned son,
Professor, Chancellor, or Dean;
All by hunting madness won,
All in Dian’s livery seen.
How they despise the tim’rous Hare!
Give us, they cry, the furious Bear!
To chase the Lion, how they long,
Th’ Rhinoceros tall, and Tyger strong.
Hunting thus is learning’s prop,
Then may hunting never drop;
And thus an hundred Birth-Days more,
Shall Heav’n to George afford from its capacious shore.
NUMBER VIII.
ODE,
By THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL.
I.
Indite, my Muse!—indite! subpœna’d is thy lyre!
The praises to record, which rules of Court require!
’Tis thou, O Clio! Muse divine,
And best of all the Council Nine,
Must plead my cause!—Great HATFIELD’S CECIL bids me sing———
The tallest, fittest man, to walk before the King!
II.
Of Sal’sbury’s Earls the First (so tells th’ historic page)
’Twas Nature’s will to make most wonderfully sage;
But then, as if too liberal to his mind,
She made him crook’d before, and crook’d behind[1].
’Tis not, thank Heav’n! my Cecil, so with thee;
Thou last of Cecils, but unlike the first;—
Thy body bears no mark’d deformity;——
The Gods decreed, and judgment was revers’d!
For veins of Science are like veins of gold!
Pure, for a time, they run;
They end as they begun—
Alas! in nothing but a heap of mould!
III.
Shall I by eloquence controul,
Or challenge send to mighty ROLLE,
Whene’er on Peers he vents his gall?
Uplift my hands to pull his nose,
And twist and pinch it till it grows,
Like mine, aside, and small?
Say, by what process may I once obtain
A verdict, Lord, not let me sue in vain!
In Commons, and in Courts below,
My actions have been try’d;—
There Clients who pay most, you know,
Retain the strongest side!
True to these terms, I preach’d in politics for Pitt,
And Kenyon’s law maintain’d against his Sovereign’s writ.
What though my father be a porpus,
He may be mov’d by Habeas Corpus—
Or by a call, whene’er the State
Or Pitt requires his vote and weight—
I tender bail for Bottle’s warm support,
Of all the plans of Ministers and Court!
IV.
And Oh! should Mrs. Arden bless me with a child,
A lovely boy, as beauteous as myself and mild;
The little Pepper would some caudle lack:
Then think of Arden’s wife,
My pretty Plaintiff’s life,
The best of caudle’s made of best of sack!
Let thy decree
But favour me,
My bills and briefs, rebutters and detainers,
To Archy I’ll resign
Without a fee or fine,
Attachments, replications, and retainers!
To Juries, Bench, Exchequer, Seals,
To Chanc’ry Court, and Lords, I’ll bid adieu;
No more demurrers nor appeals;——
My writs of error shall be judg’d by you.
V.
And if perchance great Doctor Arnold should retire,
Fatigu’d with all the troubles of St. James’s Choir;
My Odes two merits shall unite;
[2]BEARCROFT, my friend,
His aid will lend,
And set to music all I write;
Let me then, Chamberlain without a flaw,
For June the fourth prepare,
The praises of the King
In legal lays to sing,
Until they rend the air,
And prove my equal fame in poesy and law!
[1] Rapin observes, that Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury, was of a great genius; and though crooked before and behind, Nature supplied that defect with noble endowments of mind.
[2] This Gentleman is a great performer upon the Piano Forte, as well as the Speaking Trumpet and Jews’ Harp.
NUMBER IX.
ODE,
By NATHANIEL WILLIAM WRAXHALL, ESQ. M.P.
I.
MURRAIN seize the House of Commons!
Hoarse catarrh their windpipes shake!
Who, deaf to travell’d Learning’s summons,
Rudely cough’d whene’er I spake!
North, nor Fox’s thund’ring course,
Nor e’en the Speaker, tyrant, shall have force
To save thy walls from nightly breaches,
From Wraxhall’s votes, from Wraxhall’s speeches,
Geography, terraqueous maid,
Descend from globes to statesmen’s aid!
Again to heedless crouds unfold
Truths unheard, tho’ not untold:
Come, and once more unlock this vasty world—
Nations attend! the map of Earth’s unfurl’d!
II.
Begin the song, from where the Rhine,
The Elbe, the Danube, Weser rolls——
Joseph, nine circles, forty seas are thine——
Thine, twenty millions souls——
Upon a marish flat and dank
States, Six and One,
Dam the dykes, the seas embank,
Maugre the Don!
A gridiron’s form the proud Escurial rears,
While South of Vincent’s Cape anchovies glide:
But, ah! o’er Tagus, once auriferous tide,
A priest-rid Queen, Braganza’s sceptre bears——
Hard fate! that Lisbon’s Diet-drink is known
To cure each crazy constitution but her own!
III.
I burn! I burn! I glow! I glow!
With antique and with modern lore!
I rush from Bosphorus to Po—
To Nilus from the Nore.
Why were thy Pyramids, O Egypt! rais’d,
But to be measur’d, and be prais’d?
Avaunt, ye Crocodiles! your threats are vain!
On Norway’s seas, my soul, unshaken,
Brav’d the Sea-Snake and the Craken!
And shall I heed the River’s scaly train?
Afric, I scorn thy Alligator band!
Quadrant in hand
I take my stand,
And eye thy moss-clad needle, Cleopatra grand!
O, that great Pompey’s pillar were my own!
Eighty-eight feet the shaft, and all one stone!
But hail, ye lost Athenians!
Hail also, ye Armenians!
Hail once, ye Greeks, ye Romans, Carthagenians!
Twice hail, ye Turks, and thrice, ye Abyssinians!
Hail too, O Lapland, with thy squirrels airy!
Hail, Commerce-catching Tipperary!
Hail, wonder-working Magi!
Hail, Ouran-Outangs! Hail, Anthropophagi!
Hail, all ye cabinets of every state,
From poor Marino’s Hill, to Catherine’s Empire great!
All have their chiefs, who-speak, who write, who seem to think,
Caermarthens, Sydneys, Rutlands, paper, pens, and ink;
IV.
Thus, through all climes, to earth’s remotest goal,
From burning Indus to the freezing Pole,
In chaises and on floats,
In dillies, and in boats;
Now on a camel’s native stool;
Now on an ass, now on a mule.
Nabobs and Rajahs have I seen;
Old Bramins mild, young Arabs keen:
Tall Polygars,
Dwarf Zemindars,
Mahommed’s tomb, Killarney’s lake, the fane of Ammon,
With all thy Kings and Queens, ingenious Mrs. Salmon[1]:
Yet vain the majesties of wax!
Vain the cut velvet on their backs——
GEORGE, mighty GEORGE, is flesh and blood——
No head he wants of wax or wood!
His heart is good!
(As a King’s should)
And every thing he says is understood!
[1] Exhibits the Wax-work, in Fleet-Street.
NUMBER X.
ODE FOR NEW-YEAR’S-DAY,
By SIR GREGORY PAGE TURNER, BART. M.P.
Lord Warden of Blackheath, and Ranger of Greenwich Hill, during the Christmas and Easter Holidays.