'I ask no kind return in love,
No tempting charm to please;
Far from the heart such gifts remove
That sighs for peace and ease.
'Nor ease, nor peace, that heart can know
That, like the needle true,
Turns at the touch of joy and woe,
But, turning, trembles too.
'Far as distress the soul can wound,
'Tis pain in each degree;
'Tis bliss but to a certain bound—
Beyond, is agony.
'Then take this treacherous sense of mine,
Which dooms me still to smart,
Which pleasure can to pain refine,
To pain new pangs impart.
'Oh, haste to shed the sovereign balm,
My shattered nerves new string,
And for my guest, serenely calm,
The nymph Indifference bring.'
ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE.
This writer was born at Burton-on-Trent, in 1705. He was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, and studied law at Lincoln's Inn. He was a man of fortune, and sat in two parliaments for Wenlock, in Shropshire. He died in 1760. His imitations of authors are clever and amusing, and seem to have got their hint from 'The Splendid Shilling,' and to have given it to the 'Rejected Addresses.'
IMITATION OF THOMSON.
——Prorumpit ad aethera nubem
Turbine, fumantem piceo. VIRG.
O thou, matured by glad Hesperian suns,
Tobacco, fountain pure of limpid truth,
That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought
Swarms all the mind; absorpt is yellow care,
And at each puff imagination burns:
Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires
Touch the mysterious lip that chants thy praise
In strains to mortal sons of earth unknown.
Behold an engine, wrought from tawny mines
Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue formed,
And glazed magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill.
From Paetotheke with pungent powers perfumed,
Itself one tortoise all, where shines imbibed
Each parent ray; then rudely rammed, illume
With the red touch of zeal-enkindling sheet,
Marked with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds
Thought-thrilling, thirst-inciting clouds around,
And many-mining fires; I all the while,
Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm.
But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join,
In genial strife and orthodoxal ale,
Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl.
Oh, be thou still my great inspirer, thou
My Muse; oh, fan me with thy zephyrs boon,
While I, in clouded tabernacle shrined,
Burst forth all oracle and mystic song.