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.