Yet is thy root sincere, sound as the rock, So stands a kingdom, whose foundation yet Fails not, in virtue and in wisdom laid, Though all the superstructure, by the tooth Pulveriz'd of venality, a shell Stands now, and semblance only of itself! Thine arms have left thee. Winds have rent them off Long since, and rovers of the forest wild With bow and shaft, have burnt them. [left Some have A splinter'd stump, bleach'd to a snowy white; But since, although well qualified by age In my own ear such matter as I may. One man alone, the father of us all, With the thought-tracing quill, or task'd his mind THE CAST-AWAY. OBSCUREST night involv'd the sky; No braver chief could Albion boast, He lov'd them both, but both in vain, Nor him beheld, nor her again. Not long beneath the whelming brine, Expert to swim, he lay : Nor soon he felt his strength decline, Or courage die away; But wag'd with death a lasting strife, He shouted; nor his friends had fail'd They left their outcast mate behind, Some succour yet they could afford; The cask, the coop, the floated cord, But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore, Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he Alone could rescue them; Yet bitter felt it still to die He long survives, who lives an hour And so long he, with unspent pow'r, And ever as the minutes flew, At length, his transient respite past, Could catch the sound no more. For then, by toil subdued, he drank The stifling wave, and then he sank. No poet wept him; but the page That tells his name, his worth, his age And tears by bards or heroes shed I therefore purpose not, or dream, To give the melancholy theme But misery still delights to trace No voice divine the storm allay'd, We perish'd, each alone: But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he. 221 JAMES BEATTIE. JAMES AMES BEATTIE, an admired poet and a moralist, was born about 1735, in the county of Kincardine, in Scotland. His father was a small farmer, who, though living in indigence, had imbibed so much of the spirit of his country, that he procured for his son a literary education, first at a parochial school, and then at the college of New Aberdeen, in which he entered as a bursar or exhibitioner. In the intervals of the sessions, James is supposed to have added to his scanty pittance by teaching at a country-school. Returning to Aberdeen, he obtained the situation of assistant to the master of the principal grammar-school, whose daughter he married. From youth he had cultivated a talent for poetry; and in 1760 he ventured to submit the fruit of his studies in this walk to the public, by a volume of "Original Poems and Translations. They were followed, in 1765, by "The Judgment of Paris ;" and these performances, which displayed a familiarity with poetic diction, and harmony of versification, seem to have made him favourably known in his neighbourhood. US |