Waar met de Lievde, en Vreede, en Godgeleerdheid praald,
Word met geen grav geerd nog met zeen beeld betaald:
Dies moet hier’t lugtgewele Erasmus overdekken,
Nadien geen mind’re plaats zyn tempel kan verstrekken!
TRANSLATION.
Erasmus, here, the eloquent and wise,
That Sun of Learning! rose, and spread
his beam
O’er a benighted world, thro’ low’ring
skies,
And shed on Basil’s tow’rs
his parting gleam.
There his great relics lie: he bless’d
the place:
No proud preserver of his fame shall prove
The Parian pile, tho’ fraught with sculptur’d
grace:
Reader! his mausoleum is above.
THE FOLLOWING TWO SONGS
Were written during a Period when it was confidently
believed that the
French would invade our Country.
SONG.
To the Tune of “Ye Gentlemen of England.”
No gentleman of England now sits at home at ease,
But emulates on shore the heroes of the seas;
A common cause unites them, to meet the daring foe,
All they wish, all they ask, is a fav’ring wind
to blow.
Oh! let them come along, and may no tempests low’r,
But fairly may we try our valour and our pow’r,
That Hist’ry may not say, should these robbers
be laid low,
To the storm ’tis alone the victory we owe.
Soon shall these infidels the dreadful diff’rence
prove,
’Twixt slaves impell’d by fear, and freemen
bound by love;
Our foes shall never rise again, when once they are
laid low,
On the sea, on the shore, for justice strikes the
blow.
SONG.
When storms on
the ocean
Create high emotion,
It pleases the
wish
Of the monarch
of fish,
For he gambols and sports in the motion.
Should a shoal
of small fry
Attempt to draw
nigh,
With a flap of
his tail,
Th’ imperial
whale
Makes them pay for their rashness, and die.
Oh! thus, on the
seas,
Just with the
same ease,
Should the enemy
come,
In ship, boat,
or bomb,
We will knock them about as we please;
Till at last they
shall cry,
“We are
the small fry,
And Britannia’s
the whale,
By a flap of whose
tail,
If we dare to approach her we die.”
SONNET,
Occasioned by reading an Inscription on the Tombstone of Captain Christensen, of Krajore, in Norway, who died in consequence of the Bite of his Dog, when it was mad.
Ah! hapless stranger! who, without a tear,
Can this sad record of thy fate survey?
No angry tempest laid thee breathless here,
Nor hostile sword, nor Nature’s
mild decay.
The fond companion of thy pilgrim feet,
Who watch’d thee in thy sleep, who
moan’d if miss’d,
And sprung with such delight his Lord to greet,
Imbu’d with death the hand he oft
had kiss’d.