O Friendship! if my soul forego
Thy dear delights while here below;
To mortify and grieve me,
May I myself at last appear
Unworthy, base, and insincere,
Or may my friend deceive me!

ODE TO PEACE.

COME, peace of mind, delightful guest!
Return and make thy downy nest
Once more in this sad heart:
Nor riches I nor power pursue,
Nor hold forbidden joys in view;
We therefore need not part.

Where wilt thou dwell, if not with me,
From avarice and ambition free,
And pleasure's fatal wiles?

For whom, alas! dost thou prepare

The sweets that I was wont to share,
The banquet of thy smiles?

The great, the gay, shall they partake
The heaven that thou alone canst make?
And wilt thou quit the stream

That murmurs through the dewy mead,
The grove and the sequester'd shed,
To be a guest with them?

For thee I panted, thee I prized,
For thee I gladly sacrificed

Whate'er I loved before;

And shall I see thee start away,

And helpless, hopeless, hear thee say—

Farewell we meet no more?

BOADICEA.

AN ODE.

WHEN the British warrior queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods,
Sought, with an indignant mien,
Counsel of her country's gods;

Sage beneath a spreading oak
Sat the Druid, hoary chief;
Every burning word he spoke
Full of rage, and full of grief.

Princess! if our aged eyes

Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, "Tis because resentment ties

All the terrours of our tongues.

Rome shall perish-write that word
In the blood that she has spilt;
Perish, hopeless and abhorr'd,
Deep in ruin as in guilt.

Rome, for empire far renown'd,

Tramples on a thousand states; Soon her pride shall kiss the groundHark! the Gaul is at her gates!

Other Romans shall arise,
Heedless of a soldier's name;
Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize,
Harmony the path to fame.

Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,

Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings,

Shall a wider world command.

Regions Cæsar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway;
Where his eagles never flew,
None invincible as they.

Such the bard's prophetic words,
Pregnant with celestial fire,
Bending as he swept the chords
Of his sweet but awful lyre.

She, with all a monarch's pride,
Felt them in her bosom glow:
Rush'd to battle, fought, and died ;
Dying hurl'd them at the foe;

Ruffians, pitiless as proud,

Heaven awards the vengeance due;

Empire is on us bestow'd,

Shame and ruin wait for you.

ODE TO APOLLO.

ON AN INK-GLASS ALMOST DRIED IN THE SUN.

PATRON of all those luckless brains,
That, to the wrong side leaning,
Indite much metre with much pains,
And little or no meaning;

Ah why, since oceans, rivers, streams,
That water all the nations,
Pay tribute to thy glorious beams,
In constant exhalations;

Why, stooping from the noon of day,
Too covetous of drink,
Apollo, hast thou stolen away
A poet's drop of ink?

Upborne into the viewless air,

It floats a vapour now,

Impell'd through regions dense and rare,
By all the winds that blow :
Ordain'd perhaps ere summer flies,
Combined with millions more,

To form an Iris in the skies,
Though black and foul before.
Illustrious drop? and happy then
Beyond the happiest lot,
Of all that ever pass'd my pen,
So soon to be forgot!

Phoebus, if such be thy design,

To place it in thy bow,

Give wit, that what is left may shine
With equal grace below.