Tis All In Vain To Keep A

On Cold December Fragrant Chaplets Blow, And Heavy Harvests Nod Beneath The Snow.

Soft Is The Strain When Zephyr Gently Blows, And The Smooth Stream In Smoother Numbers Flows; But When Loud Surges Lash The Sounding Shore, The Hoarse Rough Verse Should Like The Torrent Roar. When Ajax Strives Some Rock's Vast Weight To Throw, The Line Too Labours, And The Words Move Slow: Not So When Swift Camilla Scours The Plain, Flies O'er Th' Unbending Corn, And Skims Along The Main.

Love Finds An Altar For Forbidden Fires.

What Woeful Stuff This Madrigal Would Be, In Some Starved Hackney Sonneteer, Or Me! But Let A Lord Once Own The Happy Lines, How The Wit Brightens! How The Style Refines!

Love, Hope, And Joy, Fair Pleasure's Smiling Train, Hate, Fear, And Grief, The Family Of Pain, These Mix'd With Art, And To Due Bounds Confin'd Make And Maintain The Balance Of The Mind.