Fair Virtue's gem, se in most royal gold,
The worthiest owner of the fairest mansion,
Rich prize, for which Nature and Fortune hold
With Muses and Graces great contention:
All which by agreement this partition make,
None of themselves worthy of all discerning:
Nature your beauty, Graces your virtues take;
Fortune shares your honour, Muses your learning.
Map of perfection, who deserve to be,
And are the worthiest mark the world can yield
For all great Christian princes' love; they see
Such Virtue's wheat growing in Beauty's field:

Dearling of these, of future times the glory;
Branch royal sprung from many a regal stem;
On whose fair structure written is the story
Of Nature's chiefest skill, World's choicest gem,
Wit's richest cabinet, Virtue's best array,
Centre where lines of all hearts' loves do meet:
Sweet ground, whereon the Muses love to play;
Ripe in wit, though green in years, of form most sweet.
Scotland's fair fruit, England's great hope, France's love,
Ireland's awe, Cambria's joy, Great Britain's fame,
Abridgment of all worth. The mighty Jove,

What to do to make thy fame
Live beyond thee in the tomb?
And thine honorable name
Shine, a star, through History's gloom?

Seize the Spirit of thy Time,
Take the measure of his height,
Look into his eyes sublime,
And imbue thee with their light.

Know his words e'er they are spoken,
And with utterance loud and clear,
Firm, persuasive, and unbroken,
Breathe them in the people's ear.

Think whate'er the Spirit thinks,
Feel, thyself, whate'er he feels,
Drink at fountains where he drinks,

Come drink my friend Tom or you'll not have your share,
Come drink my friend Harry, and drive away care,
Come Dick, pr'ythee circle the bumper about,
Come landlord another, this bottle is out.

Beneath this turf lie roses whose pale blood
The very hand of Milton may have shed,
Or wreck of bays once pleated for the head
Of Quarles, whose early modesty withstood
No well-meant clamour of a student-brood;
Great poets here, and Platonists long dead,
By feathered Clio and Urania led,
Have waited for the moment and the mood.

Ah! who shall say these warm and russet walls,
This lustrous pool upon whose mirror falls
The shadow of so many an ancient tree,
Embrace not still the past, as perfumes hold

While amorous Tom in Beauty 's praise,
Holds forth in tender, love-sick lays,
Jack scarcely ever holds his tongue,
But will to Bacchus raise the song;
While Dick for momus chaunts aloud,
Whose humour charms the listning croud.

II.

With which of these shall you and I,
With which of these my friend comply?
Beauty must surely claim our lays,
Yet Bacchus will have equal praise,
And momus too:—then side with neither,
But freely toast them all together.

High up in hollow valleys where dim lakes
In Karahissar find no watershed,
By many a snow-gorged roaring river-bed,
In long white fluttering waves the poppy shakes;

But spring-tide comes at last, and April wakes,
And tears the petals from the golden head,
Till, of its pink wings disinherited,
The opium-laden capsule bends and bakes.

Then, after sunset, the sleek farmers creep
To slash the poppy-globes, and leave them soon
Oozing green tears beneath the gibbous moon;

Tears, that in scallop-shells, when dawn shall peep,

As I was walking in my lunar dream
Up those dim stairs that lead to break of day,
My soul's chimera barred the starry way,
And broke the thread-like hope, the glimmering beam;

Methought my spirit pealed a stifled scream, —
So hideous-fair the monster, loud and gay,
So turbulent and blithe, in riotous play.
It called upon me, shouting, to blaspheme:

And my weak flesh, pledg'd to God's work and word,
Discreet and mild, subdued to yearn and learn,
Almost redeemed, a blanching miracle, —
Flushing deep red, with acrid juices stirred,

Great King, since first this Isle by Jove's own hand,
Was set apart within great Ocean's arms;
And was appointed by her self to stand,
Fenced round about with rocks from foreign harms;
She into sundry parts hath oft been torn,
And greatest wounds by her own blows hath borne.

But all the fractions now which man did make,
Since it in one whole number Nature gave,
Are added up, and brought to one great stake,
And being all summed up, one total have;
For Britain now to all the dividend,
In one whole quotient, all doth comprehend.

How many fops in gay attire.
The croud ill judging still admire,
With superficial florid phrase
Tortering plain sense a thousand ways;
While self conceit each word supplies,
And folly thinks them wonderous wise;
Let real merit come in view,
Conspicuous to the knowing few,
Tho' poorly clad, the coxcomb kind,
Shall fly like chaff before the wind,
Their trim conceits and vague discourse,
Must yield to Truth's energic force,
And every vain conceited elf,
Become a victim to himself.

 To prove what's here asserted true,