The GROTTO.

Written by the late Mr. GREEN of the Custom-House, under the Name of PETER DRAKE, a Fisherman of BRENTFORD.

Printed in the Year 1732, but never published.

Scilicet hic possis curvo dignoscere rectum,

Atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum.

HOR.

Our wits Apollo's influence beg,
The Grotto makes them all with egg:
Finding this chalk-stone in my nest,
I strain, and lay among the rest.

ADIEU awhile, forsaken flood,
To ramble in the Delian wood,
And pray the God my well-meant song
May not my subject's merit wrong.

Say, father Thames, whose gentle pace
Gives leave to view what beauties grace
Your flow'ry banks, if you have seen
The much sung GROTTO of the queen.
Contemplative, forget awhile
Oxonian towers, and Windsor's pile,
[Page 160]11 And Woolsey's pride (his greatest guilt)
And what great William since has built;
And flowing fast by Richmond scenes,
(Honour'd retreat of two great queens)
From Sion-house, whose proud survey
Brow-beats your flood, look cross the way,
And view, from highest swell of tide,
The milder scenes of Surry side.

Though yet no palace grace the shore,
To lodge that pair you shou'd adore;
Nor abbies, great in ruin, rise,
Royal equivalents for vice;
Behold a Grott, in Delphic grove,
The Graces' and the Muses' love.
(O might our laureat study here,
How would he hail his new-born year!)
A temple from vain glories free,
Whose goddess is Philosophy,
Whose sides such licens'd idols crown
As superstition wou'd pull down;
The only pilgrimage I know
That men of sense wou'd chuse to go:
Which sweet abode, her wisest choice,
Urania chears with heavenly voice,
While all the Virtues gather round,
To see her consecrate the ground.
If thou the God with winged feet,
In council talk of this retreat,
[Page 161]39 And jealous gods resentment show
At altars rais'd to men below;
Tell those proud lords of heaven, 'tis fit
Their house our heroes should admit;
While each exists, as poets sing,
A lazy lewd immortal thing,
They must (or grow in disrepute)
With earth's first commoners recruit.

Needless it is in terms unskill'd
To praise whatever Boyle shall build;
Needless it is the busts to name
Of men, monopolists of fame;
Four chiefs adorn the modest stone,
For virtue as for learning known;
The thinking sculpture helps to raise
Deep thoughts, the genii of the place:
To the mind's ear, and inward sight,
Their silence speaks, and shade gives light:
While insects from the threshold preach,
And minds dispos'd to musing teach:
Proud of strong limbs and painted hues,
They perish by the slightest bruise;
Or maladies begun within,
Destroy more slow life's frail machine;
From maggot-youth thro' change of state
They feel like us the turns of Fate;
Some born to creep have liv'd to fly,
And change earth-cells for dwellings high;
[Page 162]67 And some that did their six wings keep,
Before they dy'd been forc'd to creep.
They politics like ours profess,
The greater prey upon the less:
Some strain on foot huge loads to bring;
Some toil incessant on the wing;
And in their different ways explore
Wise sense of want by future store;
Nor from their vigorous schemes desist
Till death, and then are never mist.
Some frolick, toil, marry, increase,
Are sick and well, have war and peace,
And broke with age, in half a day
Yield to successors, and away.

Let not profane this sacred place,
Hyprocrisy with Janus' face;
Or pomp, mixt state of pride and care;
Court kindness, Falshood's polish'd ware;
Scandal disguis'd in Friendship's veil,
That tells, unask'd, th' injurious tale;
Or art politic, which allows
The jesuit-remedy for vows;
Or priest, perfuming crowned head,
Till in a swoon Truth lies for dead;
Or tawdry critic, who perceives
No grace, which plain proportion gives,
And more than lineaments divine
Admires the gilding of the shrine;
[Page 163]95 Or that self-haunting spectre Spleen,
In thickest fog the clearest seen;
Or Prophecy, which dreams a lie,
That fools believe and knaves apply;
Or frolick Mirth profanely loud,
And happy only in a crowd;
Or Melancholy's pensive gloom,
Proxy in Contemplation's room.

O Delia, when I touch this string,
To thee my Muse directs her wing.
Unspotted fair, with downcast look
Mind not so much the murm'ring brook;
Nor fixt in thought, with footsteps slow
Through cypress allies cherish woe:
I see the soul in pensive fit,
And mopeing like sick linnet sit,
With dewy eye and moulting wing,
Unperch'd, averse to fly or sing;
I see the favourite curls begin
(Disus'd to toilet discipline,)
To quit their post, lose their smart air,
And grow again like common hair;
And tears, which frequent kerchiefs dry,
Raise a red circle round the eye;
And by this bur about the moon,
Conjecture more ill weather soon.
Love not so much the doleful knell;
And news the boding night-birds tell;
[Page 164]123 Nor watch the wainscot's hollow blow;
And hens portentous when they crow;
Nor sleepless mind the death-watch beat;
In taper find no winding sheet;
Nor in burnt coal a coffin see,
Tho' thrown at others meant for thee:
Or when the coruscation gleams,
Find out not first the bloody streams;
Nor in imprest remembrance keep
Grim tap'stry figures wrought in sleep;
Nor rise to see in antique hall.
The moon-light monsters on the wall,
And shadowy spectres darkly pass
Trailing their sables o'er the grass.
Let vice and guilt act how they please
In souls, their conquer'd provinces;
By heaven's just charter it appears,
Virtue's exempt from quartering fears.
Shall then arm'd fancies fiercely drest,
Live at discretion in your breast?
Be wise, and pannic fright disdain,
As notions, meteors of the brain;
And sighs perform'd, illusive scene!
By magic lanthorn of the spleen.
Come here, from baleful cares releas'd,
With Virtue's ticket, to a feast,
Where decent mirth and wisdom join'd
In stewardship, regale the mind.
[Page 165]151 Call back the Cupids to your eyes,
I see the godlings with surprize
Not knowing home in such a plight,
Fly to and fro, afraid to light. —

Far from my theme, from method far,
Convey'd in Venus' flying car,
I go compell'd by feather'd steeds,
That scorn the rein when Delia leads.

No dawb of elegiac strain
These holy walls shall ever stain;
As spiders Irish wainscot flee,
Falshood with them shall disagree:
This floor let not the vulgar tread,
Who worship only what they dread;
Nor bigots who but one way see
Through blinkers of authority;
Nor they who its four saints defame
By making virtue but a name;
Nor abstract wit, (painful regale
To hunt the pig with slippery tail!)
Artists who richly chase their thought,
Gaudy without but hollow wrought,
And beat too thin, and tool'd too much
To bear the proof and standard touch;
Nor fops to guard this silvan ark
With necklace bells in treble bark;
Nor Cynics growl and fiercely paw,
The mastiffs of the moral law.
[Page 166]179 Come Nymph with rural honours drest,
Virtue's exterior form confest,
With charms untarnish'd, innocence
Display, and Eden shall commence:
When thus you come in sober fit,
And wisdom is prefer'd to wit;
And looks diviner graces tell,
Which don't with giggling muscles dwell;
And beauty like the ray-clipt sun,
With bolder eye we look upon;
Learning shall with obsequious mien
Tell all the wonders she has seen;
Reason her logic armour quit,
And proof to mild persuasion fit;
Religion with free thought dispense,
And cease crusading against sense;
Philosophy and she embrace,
And their first league again take place;
And morals pure, in duty bound,
Nymph-like the sister chiefs surround;
Nature shall smile, and round this cell
The turf to your light pressure swell,
And knowing beauty by her shoe,
Well air its carpet from the dew.
The Oak, while you his umbrage deck
Lets fall his acorns in your neck:
Zephyr his civil kisses gives,
And plays with curls, instead of leaves:
[Page 167]207 Birds, seeing you, believe it spring,
And during their vacation sing;
And flow'rs lean forward from their seats
To traffic in exchange of sweets;
And angels bearing wreaths descend,
Preferr'd as vergers to attend
This fane, whose deity intreats
The Fair to grace its upper seats.

O kindly view our letter'd strife,
And guard us through polemic life;
From poison vehicled in praise,
For satire's shots but slightly graze;
We claim your zeal, and find within,
Philosophy and you are kin.

What Virtue is we judge by you,
For actions right are beauteous too:
By tracing the sole female mind,
We best what is true Nature find:
Your vapours bred from fumes declare,
How streams create tempestuous air,
Till gushing tears and hasty rain
Make heaven and you serene again:
Our travels through the starry skies
Were first suggested by your eyes;
We by the interposing fan,
Learn how eclipses first began;
The vast ellipse from Scarbro's home,
Describes how blazing comets roam;
[Page 168]235 The glowing colours of the cheek
Their origin from Phoebus speak;
Our watch how Luna strays above
Feels like the care of jealous love;
And all things we in science know
From your known love for riddles flow.

Father! forgive, thus far I stray,
Drawn by attraction from my way.
Mark next with awe, the foundress well
Who on these banks delights to dwell;
You on the terrass see her plain,
Move like Diana with her train.
If you then fairly speak your mind,
In wedlock since with Isis join'd,
You'll own, you never yet did see.
At least in such a high degree,
Greatness delighted to undress;
Science a scepter'd hand caress;
A queen the friends of freedom prize;
A woman wise men canonize.

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Title (in Source Edition): The GROTTO. Printed in the Year 1732, but never published.

Author: Matthew Green

Themes: architecture; buildings; retirement

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References: DMI 27711

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Source edition

Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. V. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758], pp. 159-168. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.005) (Page images digitized by the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive from a copy in the archive's library.)

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The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

The GROTTO.

Printed in the Year 1732, but never published.

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