Prize Poem at Bath-Easton

On this mirth-devoted day, From these festal bowers away, In your sable vestments flee, Train of sad MELPOMENE! Ye, who midnight horrors dart Through the palpitating heart; Fear, that flies its shadowy cause, With hurried step and startled pause; Straw-crown’d Phrenzy’s glaring gaze, Chaunting shrill her changing lays: Nor let dim-ey’d Grief appear, Weaving mournful garlands here, Cypress-buds, and fading flowers, Wet with cold November’s showers; Nor with the damp, wan brow, and streaming wound, Let stern, self-pierc’d Despair her hollow groans resound.

THALIA come, fantastic Fair, Enthron’d in pantomimic car! Thine open brow with roses bind, By morning’s lucid rays entwin’d; Thine azure vest flow lightly down, And vivid glow thy rainbow zone! Haste thee, Nymph, with sunny hair, With varied voice, and jocund air, Adorn’d with all the laughing grace, That decks the sweet betwitching face Of her, who o’er the knee of snow Archly snaps young Cupid’s bow; For O! in that more beauteous maid Than Grecian pencil e’er display’d, Bright from ANGELICA’S unrival’d hand, Goddess, thy portrait glows, and charms the gazing Land.

Nor let this Delphic Vase alone Thy all-enlivening influence own; Exert then still thy magic power To whiten every passing hour For him, whose taste decided shines In the fair Priestess of these shrines; For her, who guides the devious feet Of Genius to this fair retreat, Her verdant prize extending there;— Ah still for them, the generous Pair, Collect thou each idea bright From Fancy’s shrine of missive light; From Health, from Love, from Virtue’s ray, To gild through life their varied day, Illume the night, and bless the rising morn, And with the beams of bliss the golden sun adorn.