BY GEORGE ROMNEY

Thus touched, the tongue receives a sacred cure
Of all that was absurb, profane, impure;
Held within modest bounds, the tide of speech
Pursues the course that truth and nature teach,
No longer labours merely to produce
The pomp of sound, or tinkle without use:
Where'er it winds, the salutary stream,
Sprightly and fresh, enriches every theme,
While all the happy man possessed before,
The gift of nature, or the classic store,
Is made subservient to the grand design
For which Heaven formed the faculty divine.
So, should an idiot, while at large he strays,
Find the sweet lyre on which an artist plays,

890

900

With rash and awkward force the chords he shakes,

And grins with wonder at the jar he makes;

But let the wise and well-instructed hand
Once take the shell beneath his just command,
In gentle sounds it seems as it complained
Of the rude injuries it late sustained,

Till, tuned at length to some immortal song,

It sounds Jehovah's name, and pours his praise along.

RETIREMENT.

studiis florens ignobilis oti.

VIRG. Georg. lib. iv.

HACKNEYED in business, wearied at that oar

Which thousands, once fast chained to, quit no more,
But which, when life at ebb runs weak and low,

All wish, or seem to wish, they could forgo;
The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade,
Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,
Where, all his long anxieties forgot
Amid the charms of a sequestered spot,
Or recollected only to gild o'er

And add a smile to what was sweet before,
He may possess the joys he thinks he sees,
Lay his old age upon the lap of Ease.
Improve the remnant of his wasted span,
And having lived a trifler, die a man.

Thus conscience pleads her cause within the breast,
Though long rebelled against, not yet suppressed,
And calls a creature formed for God alone,

For heaven's high purposes, and not his own,
Calls him away from selfish ends and aims,
From what debilitates and what inflames,
From cities humming with a restless crowd,
Sordid as active, ignorant as loud,

Whose highest praise is that they live in vain,
The dupes of pleasure, or the slaves of gain,
Where works of man are clustered close around,
And works of God are hardly to be found,
To regions where, in spite of sin and woe,
Traces of Eden are still seen below,
Where mountain, river, forest, field and grove,
Remind him of his Maker's power and love.
'Tis well if, looked for at so late a day,

In the last scene of such a senseless play,

True wisdom will attend his feeble call,

And grace his action ere the curtain fall.

Souls that have long despised their heavenly birth,
Their wishes all impregnated with earth,

For threescore years employed with ceaseless care
In catching smoke and feeding upon air,
Conversant only with the ways of men,
Rarely redeem the short remaining ten.
Inveterate habits choke the unfruitful heart,
Their fibres penetrate its tenderest part,
And, draining its nutritious powers to feed
Their noxious growth, starve every better seed.
Happy, if full of days-but happier far,

If, ere we yet discern life's evening star,
Sick of the service of a world that feeds
Its patient drudges with dry chaff and weeds,
We can escape from custom's idiot sway,

To serve the Sovereign we were born to obey.
Then sweet to muse upon his skill displayed
(Infinite skill) in all that He has made!
To trace in nature's most minute design
The signature and stamp of power divine,
Contrivance intricate, expressed with ease,
Where unassisted sight no beauty sees,
The shapely limb and lubricated joint,
Within the small dimensions of a point,
Muscle and nerve miraculously spun,

20

30

40

50

His mighty work who speaks and it is done,
The Invisible in things scarce seen revealed,
To whom an atom is an ample field;
To wonder at a thousand insect forms,

60

These hatched, and those resuscitated worms,