The Sweets of Contentment.

No glory I covet, no riches I want,
Ambition is nothing to me;

The one thing I beg of kind heaven to grant,
Is a mind independent and free.

With passion unruffled, untainted with pride, By reason my life let me square:

The wants of my nature are cheaply supplied; And the rest is but folly and care.

The blessings which Providence freely has lent, I'll justly and gratefully prize,

While sweet meditation and cheerful content Shall make me both heaithful and wise.

In the pleasures the great man's possessions

display,

Unenvied I'll challenge my part;

For ev'ry fair object my eyes can survey,
Contributes to gladden my heart.

How vainly, through infinite trouble and strife, The many their labours employ!

Since all that is truly delightful in life

Is what all, if they please, may enjoy!

Adversity.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain

The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan,

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and unknown.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heav'nly birth,

And bad to form her infant mind,
Stern, rugged nurse, thy rigid lore
With patience many a year, she bore,

What sorrow was, thou badst her know,

And from her own she learn'd to melt at other's

woe.

Scar'd at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing folly's idle brood;

Wild laughter, noise, and thoughtless joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.

Light

Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer friend, the flatt'ring foe,
By vain prosperity receiv'd,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believ❜d.

GRAY'S Odes.

* Bard.

On a rock whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Rob'd in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the poet stood;

(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air) And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire, Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

GRAY'S Odes.

Beauty.

In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts,
Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts:
'Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call,
But the joint force, and full result of all.

Thus, when we view some well-proportion'd
dome,

The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O
Rome!

No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to th' admiring eyes;

No monstrous height, nor breadth, nor length

appear;

The whole at once is bold and regular.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,

Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
POPE'S Essay on Criticism.

Belial.

-On th' other side up rose

Belial, in act more graceful and humane:
A fairer person lost not heaven; he seem'd
For dignity compos'd and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels, for his thoughts were low:
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Tim'rous and slothful: yet he pleas'd the ear.

MILTON'S Paradise Lost.

Buckingham.

Buckingham.

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung
The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw,
With tape-ty'd curtains, never meant to draw,
The George and Garter dangling from that bed
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies!-alas! how chang'd from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
The bow'r of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay, at council, in a ring
Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king.
No wit, to flatter, left of all his store;
No fool to laugh at, which he valu'd more.
There,-victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame-this lord of useless thousands ends.

POPE.

Belinda.

Not with more glories, in th' ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.

Fair