My tender themes delight the lover’s heart,
And comfort to the poor my solemn songs impart? 
   For Oh! thou Hope’s, thou Thought’s eternal King,
Who gav’st them power to charm, and me to sing —
Chief to thy praise my willing numbers soar,
And in my happier transports I adore;
Mercy! thy softest attribute proclaim,
Thyself in abstract, thy more lovely name;
That flings o’er all my grief a cheering ray,
As the full moon-beam gilds the watery way. 
And then too, Love, my soul’s resistless lord,
Shall many a gentle, generous strain afford,
To all the soil of sooty passion blind,
Pure as embracing angels and as kind;
Our Mira’s name in future times shall shine,
And—­though the harshest—­Shepherds envy mine. 
   Then let me (pleasing task!) however hard,
Join, as of old, the prophet and the bard;
If not, ah! shield me from the dire disgrace,
That haunts our wild and visionary race;
Let me not draw my lengthen’d lines along,
And tire in untamed infamy of song,
Lest, in some dismal Dunciad’s future page,
I stand the cibber of this tuneless age;
Lest, in another Pope th’ indulgent skies
Should give inspired by all their deities,
My luckless name, in his immortal strain,
Should, blasted, brand me as a second Cain;
Doom’d in that song to live against my will,
Whom all must scorn, and yet whom none could kill. 
   The youth, resisted by the maiden’s art,
Persists, and time subdues her kindling heart;
To strong entreaty yields the widow’s vow,
As mighty walls to bold beseigers bow;
Repeated prayers draw bounty from the sky,
And heaven is won by importunity;
Ours, a projecting tribe, pursue in vain,
In tedious trials, an uncertain gain;
Madly plunge on through every hope’s defeat,
And with our ruin only find the cheat. 
   “And why then seek that luckless doom to share?”
Who, I?—­To shun it is my only care. 
   I grant it true, that others better tell
Of mighty Wolfe, who conquer’d as he fell;
Of heroes born, their threaten’d realms to save,
Whom Fame anoints, and Envy tends whose grave;
Of crimson’d fields, where Fate, in dire array,
Gives to the breathless the short-breathing clay;
Ours, a young train, by humbler fountains dream,
Nor taste presumptuous the Pierian stream;
When Rodney’s triumph comes on eagle-wing,
We hail the victor whom we fear to sing;
Nor tell we how each hostile chief goes on,
The luckless Lee, or wary Washington;
How Spanish bombast blusters—­they were beat,
And French politeness dulcifies—­defeat. 
My modest Muse forbears to speak of kings,
Lest fainting stanzas blast the name she sings;
For who—­the tenant of the beechen shade,
Dares the big thought in regal breasts pervade? 
Or search his soul, whom each too-favouring god
Gives to delight in plunder, pomp, and blood? 
No; let me free from Cupid’s frolic round,