[Page 243]

ODE on the Death of MATZEL, a favourite Bull-finch,

address'd to Mr. ST—PE, to whom the Author had given the Reversion of it when he left Dresden.

By the Same.
I.
1 TRY not my St—pe, 'tis in vain
2 To stop your tears, to hide your pain,
3 Or check your honest rage;
4 Give sorrow and revenge their scope,
5 My present joy, your future hope,
6 Lies murder'd in his cage.
II.
7 Matzel's no more, ye graces, loves,
8 Ye linnets, nightingales and doves,
9 Attend th' untimely bier;
10 Let ev'ry sorrow be exprest,
11 Beat with your wings each mournful breast,
12 And drop the nat'ral tear.
III.
13 In height of song, in beauty's pride,
14 By fell Grimalkin's claws he died —
15 But vengeance shall have way;
16 On pains and tortures I'll refine;
17 Yet, Matzel, that one death of thine,
18 His nine will ill repay.
[Page 244]
IV.
19 For thee, my bird, the sacred Nine,
20 Who lov'd thy tuneful notes, shall join
21 In thy funereal verse:
22 My painful task shall be to write
23 Th' eternal dirge which they indite,
24 And hang it on thy hearse.
V.
25 In vain I lov'd, in vain I mourn
26 My bird, who never to return
27 Is fled to happier shades,
28 Where Lesbia shall for him prepare
29 The place most charming, and most fair
30 Of all th' Elysian glades.
VI.
31 There shall thy notes in cypress grove
32 Sooth wretched ghosts that died for love;
33 There shall thy plaintive strain
34 Lull impious Phaedra's endless grief,
35 To Procris yield some short relief,
36 And soften Dido's pain.
VII.
37 'Till Proserpine by chance shall hear
38 Thy notes, and make thee all her care,
39 And love thee with my love;
40 While each attendant's soul shall praise
41 The matchless Matzel's tuneful lays,
42 And all his songs approve.

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Title (in Source Edition): ODE on the Death of MATZEL, a favourite Bull-finch, address'd to Mr. ST—PE, to whom the Author had given the Reversion of it when he left Dresden.
Author: Sir Charles Hanbury Williams
Themes: animals; grief; sadness; melancholy
Genres: ode
References: DMI 25812

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Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. IV. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 243-244. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.004) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

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