[Page 217]

An ODE.

I.
1 ON Stow, the Muse's happy theme,
2 Let fancy's eye enamour'd gaze;
3 Where thro' one nobly simple scheme,
4 Ten thousand varying beauties please.
5 There patriot-virtue rears her shrine,
6 Nor love! art thou depriv'd of thine.
II.
7 Mark where from POPE'S exhaustless vein,
8 Pure flows the stream of copious thought,
9 While nature pours the genial strain,
10 With fairest springs of learning fraught;
11 The treasures of each clime and age,
12 Grace and enrich his sacred page.
III.
13 So while thro' Britain's fields her Thames
14 Prolifick rolls his silver tide;
15 The tribute of a thousand streams
16 Swells the majestick river's pride;
17 And where his gen'rous current strays,
18 The wealth of either world conveys.
[Page 218]
IV.
19 Far other, is that wretch's song,
20 Whose scanty rill devoid of force,
21 With idle tinklings creeps along,
22 A narrow, crooked, dubious course;
23 Or foul with congregated floods,
24 Spreads a wide waste o'er plains, and woods.
V.
25 In action thus the mind express'd
26 High soars in Pope the true sublime;
27 A Stow unfolds a Cobham's breast,
28 A Bavius crawls in doggrel rhyme.
29 Thro' all their various works we trace
30 The greatly virtuous, and the base.

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About this text

Title (in Source Edition): An ODE.
Themes: places; poetry; literature; writing; patriotism; glory of the British nation; nature
Genres: ode
References: DMI 22431

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Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. II. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 217-218. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.002) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

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