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| BLACKMORE, thou wondrous bard! whose name inspires | |
| My glowing breast to imitate thy fires, | |
| O that my muse could give a lasting fame! | |
| Then should my verse immortalize thy name. | |
| Thy matchless lines thy inborn worth displays, | 5 |
| Inspires our souls, and fills our mouths with praise. | |
| Thou for mankind’s preceptor Heaven design’d, | |
| To form their manners, and instruct their mind. | |
| In virtue’s cause undaunted you engage, | |
| To stem the tide of vice, reform the stage, | 10 |
| And place the present with the golden age. | |
| What eyes can view thy heroes, and not find | |
| In them the lively copy of thy mind? | |
| None but a soul profusely great and good, | |
| A soul with every princely gift endow’d, | 15 |
| Could draw such virtues in their native light; | |
| Virtues in which heroic souls delight. | |
| With what sweet majesty Eliza stands, | |
| While valiant Vere attends her high commands? | |
| The vanquish’d Gauls before her cohorts fly, | 20 |
| And with their blood the Danube’s current dye. | |
| Here pious Arthur ploughs the watery main, | |
| Heaven’s righteous cause and worship to maintain; | |
| His pious deeds and his victorious arms | |
| Are crown’d with peace, and Ethelina’s charms. | 25 |
| The virtuous Alfred next imbark’d we find, | |
| In quest of wisdom for a princely mind, | |
| To empire born and for a throne design’d. | |
| Sages and kings alike the prince admire, | |
| The schools and courts yield him his whole desire: | 30 |
| His virtue, faithful Guithun, was thy care; | |
| Nobly he fled the lewd Sicilian fair! | |
| Chaste he return’d, and as an angel wise, | |
| And more than crowns he found in fair Elsitha’s eyes. | |
| Thus Arthur, Alfred, and Eliza stand, | 35 |
| Drawn for examples by your matchless hand. | |
| Had but the Mantuan felt that heavenly fire, | |
| That warms thy breast, whene’er you tune the lyre, | |
| Rome ne’er had known a rival in her praise, | |
| Nor to Augusta e’er resign’d the bays. | 40 |
| To sacred numbers next your lyre is strung, | |
| And mysteries divine flow from your tongue. | |
| What heart’s not sad, what eye flows not with tears, | |
| When Job in all the pomp of grief appears? | |
| His learned friends in vain attempt and try | 45 |
| God’s secret springs of acting to descry; | |
| And Job condemn, till God does justify. | |
| With Israel’s Psalmist next in cheerful lays, | |
| Raptur’d in sacred love and heavenly praise, | |
| To Israel’s God your purer offerings rise, | 50 |
| For a sweet smell and grateful sacrifice. | |
| No more shall Epicurean doctrine find | |
| Belief in any but a sickly mind; | |
| Nor will the Stagyrite again persuade, | |
| ’Twas not in time these mighty orbs were made, | 55 |
| Who read creation by your wit display’d. | |
| Nor the bold Arian, whose blasphemous breath | |
| The impure steam of sulphurous hell and death, | |
| Shall scan the Almighty’s ways, his truths deny, | |
| And from the Saviour tear the Deity: | 60 |
| No more shall he the gazing world delude, | |
| Nor on mankind his hellish schemes obtrude: | |
| While you Redemption sing our faith does cry, | |
| “My God, my God, I see thy deity!” | |
| O happy land! and of unrivall’d fame, | 65 |
| That claims thy birth, and boasts so great a name! | |
| Albion alone is blest with such a son, | |
| A birth to ages past, and thee, O Greece, unknown. | |
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