EPISTLE

THE FOURTH

Remarks on the fuppofed Parfimony of Nature in beftowing Poetic Genius.-The Evils and the Advantages of Poetry exemplified in the Fate of different Poets.

EPISTLE IV.

AY, generous Power, benignant Nature, fay,

SAY

Who temp'reft with thy touch our human clay,
Warming the fields of Thought with genial care,
The various fruits of mental growth to bear;
Shall not thy vot'ries glow with just disdain,
When Sloth or Spleen thy bounteous hand arraign ?
Art thou the Niggard they pretend thou art,
A grudging Parent with a Stepdame's heart;
And doft thou fhed, with rare, reluctant toil,
Bright Fancy's germins in the mental foil?
Is Genius, thy fweet Plant of richest power,
Whofe dearly priz'd and long-expected flower
More tardy than the Aloe's bloom appears,
Ordain'd to blow but in a thousand years?
Perish the fickly thought-let those who hold
Thy quick'ning influence fo coy, fo cold,

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Calmly

Calmly the habitable earth furvey,

From time's first æra to the paffing day;

In what rude clime, beneath what angry fkies,
Have plants Poetic never dar'd to rife?

In torrid regions, where 'tis toil to think,
Where fouls in ftupid ease fupinely fink;
And where the native of the defert drear
Yields to blank darkness half his icy year;
In these unfriendly fcenes, where each extreme
Of heat and cold forbids the mind to teem,

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Poetic bloffoms into Being start,

Spontaneous produce of the feeling heart.

Can we then deem that in those happier lands,

Where every vital energy expands;

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Where Thought, the golden harvest of the mind,

Springs into rich luxuriance, unconfin'd;

That in fuch foils, with mental weeds o'ergrown,

If, when scarce rifing, with a ftem infirm,
It dies the victim of the mining worm;

If mildew, riding in the eastern gust,

Turns all its ripening gold to fable dust?

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These foes combin'd (and with them who may cope ?) Are not more hoftile to the Farmer's hope, Than Life's keen paffions to that lighter grain Of Fancy, scatter'd o'er the infant brain. Pleasure, the rambling Bird! the painted Jay ! May snatch the richest feeds of Verse away; Or Indolence, the worm that winds with art

Thro' the close texture of the cleaneft heart,
May, if they haply have begun to fhoot,
With partial mischief wound the fick❜ning root;
Or Avarice, the mildew of the foul,.

500

May sweep the mental field and blight the whole;
Nay, the meek errors of the modest mind,.

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To its own vigor diffidently blind,,

And that cold spleen, which falsely has declar’d

The powers of Nature and of Art impair'd,

The gate that Genius has unclos'd may guard,

And rivet to the earth the rifing Bard:

L.

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