Joseph Addison

A Poem To His Magesty, Presented To The Lord Keeper. To The Right Hon. Sir John Somers, Lord Keeper

If yet your thoughts are loose from state affairs,Nor feel the burden of a kingdom’s cares;If yet your time and actions are your own;Receive the present of a Muse unknown:A Must that, in adventurous numbers, singsThe rout of armies,a nd the fall of Kings,Britain advanc’d, and Europe’s peace restor’d,By Somers’ counsels, and by Nassau’s sword.To…

How are Thy servants blest, O Lord!

Eternal wisdom is their guide,Their help Omnipotence.In foreign realms, and lands remote,Supported by Thy care,Through burning climes they pass unhurt,And breathe in tainted air.When by the dreadful tempest borneHigh on the broken wave,They know Thou art not slow to her,Nor impotent to save.The storm is laid, the winds retire,Obedient to Thy will,The sea, that roars…

How long, great Poet, shall thy sacred lays

Can eneither injuries of time, or age,Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage?No so thy Ovid in his exile wrote,Grief chill’d his breast,and check’d his rising thought:Pensive and sad, his drooping Muse betraysThe Roman genius in its last decays.Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest,And second youth is kindled in thy breast;Thou mak’st the…

O Liberty! thou goddess, heavenly bright,

Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,And smiling Plenty leads thy smiling train.Eased of her load Subjection grows more light,And Poverty looks cheerful in thy sight.Giv’st beauty to the sun and pleasures to the day.thee, goddess, thee, Britannia’s isle adores!How oft has she exhausted all her stores!How oft on fields of death thy presence sought,Nor thinks…

Since, dearest Harry, you will needs request

That, down from Chaucer’s days to Dryden’s Times,Have spent their Noble Rage in British Rhimes;Without more Preface, wrote in Formal length,To speak the Undertakers want of strength,I’ll try to make they’re sev’ral Beauties known,And show their Verses worth, tho’ not my Own.Long had our dull Fore-Fathers slept Supine,Nor felt the Raptures of the Tuneful Nine;Till…

Salve magna parens frugum Saturnia tellus,

Aggredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.Virg. Geor. 2.While you, my Lord, the rural shades admire,And from Britannia’s public posts retire,Nor longer, her ungrateful sons to please,For their advantage sacrifice your ease;Me into foreign realms my fate conveys,Through nations fruitful of immortal lays,Where the soft season and inviting climeConspire to trouble your repose with rhyme.For wheresoe’er I…

I.

Thy softest sounds and sweetest numbrs chuse;the bright Cecilia’s praise rehearse,In warbling words,a nd glittering verse,that smootly run into a song,and gently die away,and melt upon the tongue.II.First let the sprightly violinThe joyful melody begin,And none of all her strings be mute,while the sharp sound and shriller layIn sweet harmonious notes decay,Soften and mellow’d by…

In the first rise and infancy of farce,

The raw unpractis’d authors could, with ease,A young and unexperienc’d audience please:No single character had e’er been shown,But the whole herd of fops was all their own;Rich in originals, they set to view,In every piece, a coxcomb that was new.But now our British theatre can boastDrolls of all kinds, a vast unthinking host!Fruitful of folly…