Thou art my God, sole object of my love; Not for the hope of endless joys above; Nor for the fear of endless pains below, Which they who love thee not must undergo. ...
Grown old in rhyme, 'twere barbarous to discard Your persevering, unexhausted bard; Damnation follows death in other men, But your damn'd poet lives and writes again....
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:...
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:...
Authors are judged by strange capricious rules; The great ones are thought mad, the small ones fools: Yet sure the best are most severely fated; For fools are only laugh'd at, wits are hated....
When Learning, after the long Gothic night, Fair, o'er the western world, renew'd its light, With arts arising, Sophonisba rose; The tragic Muse, returning, wept her woes....
Say, lovely youth, that dost my heart command, Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand? Must then her name the wretched writer prove, To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?...
Say, lovely youth, that dost my heart command, Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand? Must then her name the wretched writer prove, To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?...
First in these fields I try the sylvan strains, Nor blush to sport on Windsor's blissful plains: Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring, While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing;...
A Shepherd's Boy (he seeks no better name) Led forth his flocks along the silver Thame, Where dancing sun-beams n the waters play'd, And verdant alders form'd a quiv'ring shade....
Soon as Glumdalclitch miss'd her pleasing care, She wept, she blubber'd, and she tore her hair: No British miss sincerer grief has known, Her squirrel missing, or her sparrow flown....
With scornful mien, and various toss of air, Fantastic vain, and insolently fair, Grandeur intoxicates her giddy brain, She looks ambition, and she moves disdain. Far other carriage grac'd her virgin life,...
What dire Offence from am'rous Causes springs, What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things, I sing, This Verse to C---, Muse! is due; This, ev'n Belinda may vouchfafe to view:...
Well, if it be my time to quit the stage, Adieu to all the follies of the age! I die in charity with fool and knave, Secure of peace at least beyond the grave. I've had my purgatory here betimes,...