M. H.
Garrick’s Plays.
No. XXII.
[From “Querer Por Solo Querer:” concluded from [last Number].]
Address to Solitude.
Sweet Solitude! still Mirth! that fear’st no wrong,
Because thou dost none: Morning all day long!
Truth’s sanctuary! Innocency’s spring!
Inventions Limbeck! Contemplation’s wing!
Peace of my soul, which I too late pursued;
That know’st not the world’s vain inquietude:
Where friends, the thieves of time, let us alone
Whole days, and a man’s hours are all his own.
Song in praise of the Same.
Solitude, of friends the best,
And the best companion;
Mother of truths, and brought at least
Every day to bed of one:
In this flowery mansion
I contemplate how the rose
Stands upon thorns, how quickly goes
The dismaying jessamine:
Only the soul, which is divine,
No decay of beauty knows.
The World is Beauty’s Mirror. Flowers,
In their first virgin purity,
Flatt’rers both of the nose and eye.—
To be cropt by paramours
Is their best of destiny:
And those nice darlings of the land,
Which seem’d heav’n’s painted bow to scorn.
And bloom’d the envy of the morn,
Are the gay trophy of a hand.
Unwilling to love again.
—sadly I do live in fear,
For, though I would not fair appear,
And though in truth I am not fair,
Haunted I am like those that are
And here, among these rustling leaves,
With which the wanton wind must play,
Inspired by it, my sense perceives
This snowy Jasmin whispering say,
How much more frolic, white, and fair
In her green lattice she doth stand,
To enjoy the free and cooler air,
Than in the prison of a hand.[229]