An ODE.

By the Same.

I.

ON Stow, the Muse's happy theme,
Let fancy's eye enamour'd gaze;
Where thro' one nobly simple scheme,
Ten thousand varying beauties please.
There patriot-virtue rears her shrine,
Nor love! art thou depriv'd of thine.

II.

Mark where from POPE'S exhaustless vein,
Pure flows the stream of copious thought,
While nature pours the genial strain,
With fairest springs of learning fraught;
The treasures of each clime and age,
Grace and enrich his sacred page.

III.

So while thro' Britain's fields her Thames
Prolifick rolls his silver tide;
The tribute of a thousand streams
Swells the majestick river's pride;
And where his gen'rous current strays,
The wealth of either world conveys.

IV.

Far other, is that wretch's song,
Whose scanty rill devoid of force,
With idle tinklings creeps along,
A narrow, crooked, dubious course;
Or foul with congregated floods,
Spreads a wide waste o'er plains, and woods.

V.

In action thus the mind express'd
High soars in Pope the true sublime;
A Stow unfolds a Cobham's breast,
A Bavius crawls in doggrel rhyme.
Thro' all their various works we trace
The greatly virtuous, and the base.