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This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here and elephant unite,

Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
The busy Sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and those divide the hair,
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown;
And Betty's praised for labours not her own.

Fair nymphs and well-dressed youths around her shone,
But every eye was fixed on her alone.

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those;
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide :
If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you'll forget them all.
This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind

In equal curls, and well conspired to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth, ivory neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,

And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.

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Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,

And beauty draws us with a single hair.

Th' adventurous baron the bright locks admired;
He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired.

The poetry of Pope has been compared to mosaic work,-full of thoughts familiar to most minds, but draped in elegant metaphor. There is an absence of passion and emotion in his writings; he seldom excites a smile, and as seldom touches the sympathies by pathos. His "mellifluence," as Johnson expresses it, has the defect of monotony; but he possessed the faculty of making "sound an echo to the sense" in an eminent degree. Witness these lines :

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rocks' vast weight to throw,
The words, too, labor, and the lines move slow:
Not So, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.

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A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

PARNELL'S Hermit, familiar to most readers, and which Pope. pronounced "very good," commences thus:

Far in a wild, unknown to public view,

From youth to age a reverend hermit grew;

The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well;
Remote from men, with God he passed his days,
Prayer all his business, all his pleasure, praise.
A life so sacred, such serene repose,
Seemed heaven itself, till one suggestion rose-

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That vice should triumph, virtue vice obey;
This sprung some doubt of Providence's sway;
His hopes no more a certain prospect boast,
And all the tenor of his soul is lost.

So, when a smooth expanse receives imprest
Calm nature's image on its watery breast,
Down bend the banks, the trees depending grow,
And skies beneath with answering colours glow;

But, if a stone the gentle sea divide,

Swift ruffling circles curl on every side,
And glimmering fragments of a broken sun,
Banks, trees, and skies, in thick disorder run.
To clear this doubt, to know the world by sight,
To find if books, or swains, report it right-
For yet by swains alone the world he knew,
Whose feet came wandering o'er the nightly dew-
He quits his cell; the pilgrim staff he bore,
And fixed the scallop in his hat before;
Then, with the rising sun, a journey went,
Sedate to think, and watching each event.

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THOMSON'S Castle of Indolence, the latest of his productions, seems to have been a labour of love with the poet. The sketch of himself is interesting, although he tells us, that all except the first line was written by a friend :

A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems,
Who, void of envy, guile, and lust of gain,
On virtue still, and nature's pleasing themes,
Poured forth his unpremeditated strain;
The world forsaking with a calm disdain,
Here laughed he careless in his easy seat,-

Here quaff'd, encircled with the joyous train,
Oft moralizing sage, his ditty sweet,—
He loathed much to write, he cared to repeat.

There is a great charm about this poem; its numbers seem to lull one into a dreamy sense of pleasure; note this stanza :—

A pleasing land of drowsy herd it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;

And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flashing round a summer sky:
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,

And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;
But whate'er smacked of noyance or unrest,
Was far, far off expelled from that delicious nest.

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I care not, Fortune, what you me deny ;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,

Through which Aurora shows her bright'ning face:
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave;
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.

We should scarcely have expected that this lover of luxurious ease, who used to linger a-bed, sometimes, till two of the afternoon, could have given us such a burst of inspiration on early rising as

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Falsely luxurious! will not man, awake,
And springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour
To meditation due, and sacred song?

For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?

To lie in dead oblivion, losing half

The fleeting moments of too short a life?
Total extinction of the enlightened soul;

Or else to feverish vanity alive,

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