I am, SIR JOHN,
With every wish for your success,
Your most obedient humble servant,
WILLIAM YORK.
* * * * *
PINDARIC ODE,
By DR. W. MARKHAM,
Lord Archbishop of York, Primate of England, and Lord High Almoner
to his Majesty, formerly Preceptor to the Princes, Head Master of
Westminster School, &c. &c. &c.
STROPHE I.
The priestly mind what virtue so approves,
And testifies the pure prelatic spirit,
As loyal gratitude?
More to my King, than to my God, I owe;
God and my father made me man,
Yet not without my mother’s added aid;
But George, without, or God, or man,
With grace endow’, and hallow’d me Archbishop.
ANTISTROPHE I.
In Trojan PRIAM’s court a laurel grew;
So VIRGIL sings. But I will sing the laurel,
Which at St. JAMES’s blooms.
O may I bend my brows from that blest tree,
Not flourishing in native green,
Refreshed with dews from AGANIPPE’s spring:
But, [1]like the precious plant of DIS,
Glitt’ring with gold, with royal sack irriguous.
EPODE I.
So shall my aukward gratitude,
With fond presumption to the Laureat’s duty
Attune my rugged numbers blank.
Little I reck the meed of such a song;
Yet will I stretch aloof,
And tell of Tory principles,
The right Divine of Kings;
And Power Supreme that brooks not bold contention:
Till all the zeal monarchial
That fired the Preacher, in the Bard shall blaze,
And what my Sermons were, my Odes once more shall be.
STROPHE II.
[2]Good PRICE, to Kings and me a foe no more,
By LANSDOWN won, shall pay with friendly censure
His past hostility.
Nor shall not He assist, my pupil once,
Of stature small, but doughty tongue,
Bold ABINGDON, whose rhetoric unrestrain’d,
Rashes, more lyrically wild,
[3]Than GREENE’s mad lays, when he out-pindar’d PINDAR.
ANTISTROPHE II.
With him too, EFFINGHAM his aid shall join,
[4] Who, erst by GORDON led, with bonfires usher’d
His Sov’reign’s natal month.
Secure in such allies, to princely themes,
To HENRY’s and to EDWARD’s young.
Dear names, I’ll meditate the faithful song;
How oft beneath my birch severe,
Like EFFINGHAM and ABINGDON, they tingled:
EPODE II.
Or to the YOUTH IMMACULATE
Ascending thence, I’ll sing the strain celestial,
By PITT, to bless our isle restor’d.
Trim plenty, not luxuriant as of old,
Peace, laurel-crown’d no more;
[5] Justice, that smites by scores, unmov’d;
And her of verdant locks,
Commerce, like Harlequin, in motley vesture,
[6]Whose magic sword with sudden sleight,
Wav’d o’er the HIBERNIAN treaty, turns to bonds,
The dreams of airy wealth, that play’d round PATRICK’s[7] eyes.