His vermeil sides in dreadful pride display, THE ARCTIC REGIONS. SNOW.HAIL.-SPLENDORS of ice. Thence guide the Muse where earth's last confine lies, [rise, Where winter dwells, and where the north-winds And pour incessant from their stormy seat The fleecy snow-fall and the cutting sleet, Or balls congealed that drive with rattling sound, THE TEMPERATE ZONE PICTURED. From these dread prospects let the Muse again Fly to that dearer spot, her native plain, Where winters mild and gentler suns arise, And temperate breezes blow along the skies; There let her sing our meadows, shrubs, and wood, The tuneful thicket and the murmuring flood; Our blushing fruits, that softer colors grace, Our humbler flocks, and Flora's modest race; And, poor of plumage, but of richest voice, Again let Philomel our woods rejoice. MAN AND HIS ART GIVE INTEREST TO PICTURES OF NATURE. Suffice it not to paint the scenes you view; As well as paint them, you must interest too. Let dancing swains the flowery valley tread, ANIMALS SHOULD ENLIVEN LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS. FLOCKS; CATTLE; DEER; THE HORSE. Should man be wanting to thy rustic strain, Supply his absence with the bestial train; Whether through woods, in savage pride, they roam, Or, with mankind, prefer the peaceful home; Those that as generous friends or slaves attend, That rise rebellious, or submissive bend; That cowards live, or shine in hardy deed; Whose wool arrays us or whose milk may feed. If those which Berghem's laughing scenes disclose, Or from the tints of Wouverman arose, Can interest give; shall not the poet's lyre To equal warmth and equal skill aspire? Paint thou as well; since ready at thy voice, The sylvan natives, in exhaustless choice, But wait the touch of thy prolific hand, To spring to life, and animate the land. If chance the leaves should quiver in the breeze, Trembling like them, the starting roebuck flees, As lightning prompt, and quicker than the eye; In peaceful state the cattle grazing nigh, Swell the rich udder, pendent to the ground, While close beside their sportive offspring bound. But further on, if chance the echoing horn, Or female neigh, along the gale be borne, The impatient courser leaps the lofty mound, Whose thorny barrier skirts his pasture round; In all the pride of beauty and of blood, He seeks the coolness of the well-known flood; Or, gay and wanton, leaves the plain behind, And snuffs the females in the passing wind; Scarce do his feet the tender herbage graze ; His mane, uplifted, undulating plays; Love, youth, and pride, each graceful movement fill; His beating steps resound to Fancy still! HOW ΤΟ MAKE ANIMALS MOST INTERESTING. BUFFON's ANECDOTES. THE WAR-HORSE. THE DOG OF ULYSSES. Still greater interest would thy efforts show? Let every beast with human passions glow; Give them our hopes, our pleasure, and our pain, And one link nearer draw the social chain. In vain would Buffon, jealous of their fame, Still inconsistent, bear the aspiring claim; Would vainly see them, as a fair machine, Whose grosser life is moved by springs unseen; For in his page, that Nature's sons inspire, Each gains a portion of Promethean fire. What fond attachment in the dog he shows! What docile patience on the ox bestows! While roused to glory, proud of what he bears, The steed with man the pride of conquest shares, INTEREST GIVEN TO ANIMALS BY LUCRETIUS AND VIRGIL.- Too eloquent Lucretius, how thy song, And loose the steer, that weeps his comrade dead : THE COW IN SEARCH OF HER BUTCHERED CALF. Turn from this view of warfare and affright, Where softer scenes to softer thoughts invite. Yon mournful heifer scarce has learned to boast A mother's fondness, ere her offspring's lost. Through all the mazes of the darksome grove Her voice demands this early pledge of love; Her plaintive cries from hill and rock rebound; He only utters no responsive sound. No more the cooling shade or waters sped, In soothing murmurs, o'er their pebbled bed; No more the shrub, embathed in morning rain, Or freshened grass, where dewdrops still remain, Can tempt her now; her footsteps still explore The well-known fold, or trace the forest o'er ; Again o'er each she strays with plaintive moan, Again returns, despairing and alone. Where beats the heart so hardened as to view Her tender sorrow, and not feel it too? HINTS TO THE POET OF NATURE; LET HIM GIVE LIFE AND SENTIMENT TO INANIMATE THINGS. Even to the tree, the water, and the flower, The poet's art, in self-created power, A feigned existence, fancied soul, may give, Where all concurs to make th' illusion live. See round the sod those waters fondly twine, Those boughs embrace, and yonder circling vine Its amorous folds around the elm-tree coil, And shun the contact of a hostile soil. Its good or ill my feeling bosom tries; E'en for a plant my sorrows learn to rise! INTEREST GIVEN TO SCENES BY THE ASSOCIATIONS OF CHILD HOOD, ETC. Sometimes these scenes, in native beauty bright, From fond remembrance gather new delight. Rich through your strains each happy spot appears: Yet shouldst thou add, 'There rose my infant years; There broke the light upon my early view; There first my beating heart to pleasure flew ;' How does my soul the recollection prize! Back to the distant time my fancy flies, When, twenty years in tedious absence passed, Again saw my native fields at last. THE AUTHOR'S FEELINGS ON REVISITING HIS NATIVE LIMAGNA. Scarce o'er Limagna's plain had Mont-d'or's height In the dim back-ground gleamed upon my sight, CONTRAST AS A HEIGHTENER OF INTEREST. Let not the pleasing theme engross my strain! Come, then, ye painters of the varied plain, Present those scenes that claim your fondest love, And through them all let gay existence move. Or black Self-murder, maddening through the soul, From these sad scenes, that shuddering Nature THE AUTHOR LONGS FOR RURAL RETIREMENT. Ah, when, alas! shall he whose rural strains Teach how t' inhabit and adorn the plains, Enjoy those scenes where most he would delight? O! fields beloved, when will ye bless my sight? SOUND SHOULD ECHO THE SENSE. AN IMITATION OF POPE AND HORACE. Let countless figures shine throughout your song; If smooth the stream, smooth let thy numbers flow; THE STYLE OF THE RURAL POET SHOULD SUPPLY THE DEFECTS OF HIS SUBJECT. Too blessed thy Muse, if verdant wood or mead, Or sunny day, shall animate her reed; For, when her lay some sylvan rule imparts, Then should she practise her poetic arts; If bare the precept, she must grace supply; If sad, enliven; vulgar, dignify. USE OF EPISODES RECOMMENDED.— HOMER'S OX. The harsher tone of precept to unbend, Take space for breathing, and thy course suspend; To cheer thy reader on his weary road, Join to thy rules some well-timed episode. When Homer sings the labor of the fields, A sweet example for this rule he yields; Oft as the ox achieves the furrowed line, Drenched, by his master's hand, with purest wine, His goaded sides forget the smarting pain; Gayly he turns to rustic toils again. Thus let thy muse with sweet digression stray, And smooth, with softened note, her rougher lay; This done, pursue thy course with eager bent, And trace thy subject to its last extent. VIRGIL A MODEL FOR THE RURAL POET.HIS PICTURES VOCAL AS WELL AS ALIVE. But why these lengthened counsels shouldst thou Receive one general lesson in their stead; [need? Read Virgil's song! With what harmonious grace He calls to sylvan toil th' Ausonian race! Where'er the rustic scene his pencil tries, True as the fields themselves his pictures rise; 'Tis nature still; not yonder limpid stream, Where the pale shepherd sees his image gleam, More truly gives us, from its azure breast, The blossomed flowers in which its sides are dressed. Sings he the swains, their concert or their loves, APOSTROPHIC EULOGY OF VIRGIL. Virgil! my guide, and god of pastoral lays, NOTE. The allusion to the Princess Czartorinska, in Canto I. of the preceding poem, is best explained by the following extracts from the elegant epistles which passed between the princess and poet. To M. l'Abbé Delille: Forgive me, sir, if I break in upon your leisure: you must lay the fault upon your reputation and works, that a whole society should address itself to you for the completion of an object they have in view. Assembled together in a small hamlet where we principally reside, friendship, inclination, consanguinity, and a conformity of manners, bind us together; everything concurs to give us a hope that we shall never be separated. 'It is natural that we should desire to embellish our retreat; [your] poem of "The Garden" has discovered to us the means. Sensibility, remembrance, and gratitude, guide us in the attempt; and the whole hamlet is at this moment employed in raising a monument in honor of those authors who have so often instructed, interested, and amused us. They will be marked, according to their rank, upon four faces of a marble pyramid: on one side, Pope, Milton, Young, Sterne, Shakspeare, Racine, and Rousseau; on the other, Petrarch, Anacreon, Metastasio, Tasso, and La Fontaine; on the third, Madame de Sevigné, Madame Riccoboni, Madame de la Fayette, Madame des Houliéres, and Sappho; and on the fourth, Virgil, Gesner, Gresset, and the Abbé Delille. Each side will be accompanied with trees, shrubs, and flowers. The rose, the jasmin, and the lily, with beds of violets and pansies, will be on the female side; Petrarch, Anacreon, and Metastasio, will have the myrtle; and Tasso, the laurel. The weeping willow, the mournful cypress, and the yew, will accompany Shakspeare, Young, and Racine: as for the fourth side, the society will choose for it whatever may appear most agreeable in their orchards, woods, and meadows; and each inhabitant will plant some tree or shrub to perpetuate the memory of those authors who have given them a taste for rural life, and thereby contributed to their happi ness. They only want a suitable inscription to give force to their idea, and transmit it to posterity; it is to be engraved at the foot of the monument, and the whole hamlet, with one voice, has fixed upon you as its author. We request it as well from your heart as your ingenuity. This homage, When first my muse aspired to Nature's praise, CONCLUSION; THE POET'S WISH. Thus, in the shelter of my lonely rock, [shock, While groaned the earth with Discord's dreadful I sang, with artless voice and unconfined, Nature and art, the country and mankind, O would the gods, propitious to the strain, Grant the sole recompense I wish to gain! In my loved fields some seasons yet to tell, And live for books, my friends, and self, as well. simple and sincere, will be successfully paid by the author of "The Garden," the translator of "Virgil," and, above all, by a man of sensibility. We beg you, sir, to give credit to the very distinguished sentiments with which we are,' etc. Answer. Madame: The letter you have done me the honor to write to me reached me at Constantinople, whither I accompanied M. Le Comte de Choiseul-Gouthier, now ambassador from France. * I am far from having any pretensions to the place you would kindly appropriate to me, so near to [Virgil], in the charming project of your pyramids. It is suflicient to have disfigured his poetry by my feeble translations, without derogating from the honors you mean to pay him. Several persons of distinguished rank, that have been pleased to admire my pastoral verses, have caused a tree to be planted in their gardens, and called it by my name. This is the sole monument that becomes the modesty of the sylvan muse. ** "Your society, united as it is by the ties of blood, by the love of the arts, and, above all, by friendship, is the most amiable assemblage that has yet been seen in Poland. That liberty which the heroes of your country and house so courageously sought at the point of the sword, you have found, without cost or danger, in the solitude and tranquillity of the country. * * In regard to the inscription, * * I think it will be sufficient to engrave on the pyramid, Rustic Ballads for August. HOOD'S "RUTH." SHE stood breast high amid the corn, COLLINS'S "FIDELE'S TOMB." To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring And melting virgins, own their love. No goblins lead their nightly crew; And dress thy grave with pearly dew: To deck the ground where thou art laid. ** And servants that fly when she's waited upon : These fields, my dear Ellen, I knew them of yore, For pleasure is pure when affection is won: He shouted and ran, as he leaped from the stile ; Of ardent caressing, When virtue inspires us and doubts are all gone. COWPER'S "SHRUBBERY." O, HAPPY shades! to me unblest, Friendly to peace, but not to me, How ill the scene that offers rest, And heart that cannot rest, agree! This glassy stream, that spreading pine, Those alders quivering to the breeze, Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine, And please, if anything could please. But fixed, unalterable care Foregoes not what she feels within, Has lost its beauties and its powers. |