[Footnote 1: ‘Mrs Jane Clarke’ this lady, the wife of Dr Clarke, physician at Epsom, died April 27, 1757, and is buried in the church of Beckenham, Kent.]
* * * * *
STANZAS,
SUGGESTED BY A VIEW OF THE SEAT AND RUINS
AT
KINGSGATE, IN KENT, 1766.
1 Old, and abandon’d
by each venal friend,
Here Holland took
the pious resolution,
To smuggle a few years, and
strive to mend
A broken character
and constitution.
2 On this congenial spot he fix’d
his choice;
Earl Goodwin trembled
for his neighbouring sand;
Here sea-gulls scream, and
cormorants rejoice,
And mariners,
though shipwreck’d, fear to land.
3 Here reign the blustering North, and
blasting East,
No tree is heard
to whisper, bird to sing;
Yet Nature could not furnish
out the feast,
Art he invokes
new terrors still to bring.
4 Now mouldering fanes and battlements
arise,
Turrets and arches
nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled monasteries delude
our eyes,
And mimic desolation
covers all.
5 ‘Ah!’ said the sighing peer,
’had Bute been true,
Nor C—’s,
nor B—d’s promises been vain,
Far other scenes than this
had graced our view,
And realised the
horrors which we feign.
6 ’Purged by the sword, and purified
by fire,
Then had we seen
proud London’s hated walls:
Owls should have hooted in
St Peter’s choir,
And foxes stunk
and litter’d in St Paul’s.’
* * * * *
TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS.
Third in the labours of the disc came
on,
With sturdy step and slow, Hippomedon;
Artful and strong he poised the well-known
weight,
By Phlegyas warn’d, and fired by
Mnestheus’ fate,
That to avoid and this to emulate.
His vigorous arm he tried before he flung,
Braced all his nerves, and every sinew
strung,
Then with a tempest’s whirl and
wary eye
Pursued his cast, and hurl’d the
orb on high;
The orb on high, tenacious of its course,
10
True to the mighty arm that gave it force,
Far overleaps all bound, and joys to see
Its ancient lord secure of victory:
The theatre’s green height and woody
wall
Tremble ere it precipitates its fall;
The ponderous mass sinks in the cleaving
ground,
While vales and woods and echoing hills
rebound.
As when, from Aetna’s smoking summit
broke,
The eyeless Cyclops heaved the craggy
rock,
Where Ocean frets beneath the dashing
oar, 20
And parting surges round the vessel roar;
’Twas there he aim’d the meditated
harm,
And scarce Ulysses ’scaped his giant
arm.
A tiger’s pride the victor bore
away,
With native spots and artful labour gay,
A shining border round the margin roll’d,
And calm’d the terrors of his claws
in gold.