Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!
The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his acknowledgment, would now, perhaps, never have been known:
My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turn’d by thee,
Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must, at least, be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode. The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be “invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the service of their country;” a plan which humanity must lament that policy has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution. Prefixed to the original publication were an Ode to the King, Pater Patriæ, and an Essay on Lyrick Poetry. It is but justice to confess, that he preserved neither of them; and that, the ode itself, which in the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas, in the author’s own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted passages is a Wish, that concluded the poem, which few would have suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it, would confess something like their shame by suppression.
It stood originally so high in the author’s opinion, that he entitled the poem, Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish. This wish consists of thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:
O may I steal
Along the vale
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but, altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:
Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I have,
And live, not leave,
Enamour’d of the present day!
My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one beam
Of honest fame!
And scorn the labour’d monument!
Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty nature’s self shall die;
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said, in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: “For the more harmony likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome, give grace and pleasure. Nor can I account for the pleasure of rhyme in general, (of which the moderns are too fond,) but from this truth.” Yet the moderns surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by his own confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.