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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ode IV: To The Honourable Charles Townshend In The Country</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I. 1.<br>How oft shall i survey<br>This humble roof, the lawn, the greenwood shade,<br>The vale with sheaves o'erspread,<br>The glassy brook, the flocks which round thee stray?<br>When will thy cheerful mind<br>Of these have utter'd all her dear esteem?<br>Or, tell me, dost thou deem<br>No more to join in glory's toilsome race,<br>But here content imbrace<br>That happy leisure which thou had'st resign'd?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I. 2.<br>Alas, ye happy hours,<br>When books and youthful sport the soul could share,<br>Ere one ambitious care<br>Of civil life had aw'd her simpler powers;<br>Oft as your winged train<br>Revisit here my friend in white array,<br>Oh fail not to display<br>Each fairer scene where I perchance had part,<br>That so his generous heart<br>The abode of even friendship may remain. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I. 3.<br>For not imprudent of my loss to come,<br>I saw from contemplation's quiet cell<br>His feet ascending to another home<br>Where public praise and envied greatness dwell.<br>But shall we therefore, o my lyre<br>Reprove ambition's best desire?<br>Extinguish glory's flame?<br>Far other was the task injoin'd<br>When to my hand thy strings were first assign'd:<br>Far other faith belongs to friendship's honor'd name.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">II. 1.<br>Thee, Townshend, not the arms<br>Of slumbering ease, nor pleasure's rosy chain,<br>Were destin'd to detain:<br>No, nor bright science, nor the Muse's charms.<br>For them high heaven prepares<br>Their proper votaries, an humbler band:<br>And ne'er would Spenser's hand<br>Have deign'd to strike the warbling Tuscan shell,<br>Nor Harrington to tell<br>What habit an immortal city wears,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">II. 2.<br>Had this been born to shield<br>The cause which Cromwell's impious hand betray'd,<br>Or that, like Vere, display'd<br>His redcross banner o'er the Belgian field.<br>Yet where the will divine<br>Hath shut those loftiest paths, it next remains,<br>With reason clad in strains<br>Of harmony, selected minds to inspire,<br>And virtue's living fire<br>To feed and eternize in hearts like thine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">II. 3.<br>For never shall the herd, whom envy sways,<br>So quell my purpose or my tongue controul,<br>That I should fear illustrious worth to praise,<br>Because it's master's friendship mov'd my soul.<br>Yet, if this undissembling strain<br>Should now perhaps thine ear detain<br>With any pleasing sound,<br>Remember thou that righteous fame<br>From hoary age a strict account will claim<br>Of each auspicious palm with which thy youth was crown'd.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">III. 1.<br>Nor obvious is the way<br>Where heaven expects thee, nor the traveller leads,<br>Through flowers or fragrant meads,<br>Or groves that hark to Philomela's lay.<br>The impartial laws of fate<br>To nobler virtues wed severer cares.<br>Is there a man who shares<br>The summit next where heavenly natures dwell?<br>Ask him (for he can tell)<br>What storms beat round that rough laborious height.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">III. 2.<br>Ye heroes, who of old<br>Did generous England freedom's throne ordain;<br>From Alfred's parent reign<br>To Nassau, great deliverer, wise and bold;<br>I know your perils hard,<br>Your wounds, your painful marches, wintry seas,<br>The night estrang'd from ease,<br>The day by cowardice and falsehood vex'd,<br>The head with doubt perplex'd,<br>The indignant heart disdaining the reward</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">III. 3.<br>Which envy hardly grants. But, o renown,<br>O praise from judging heaven and virtuous men,<br>If thus they purchas'd thy divinest crown,<br>Say, who shall hesitate? or who complain?<br>And now they sit on thrones above:<br>And when among the gods they move<br>Before the sovran mind,<br>'Lo, these,' he saith, 'lo, these are they<br>'Who to the laws of mine eternal sway<br>'From violence and fear asserted human kind.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">IV. 1.<br>Thus honor'd while the train<br>Of legislators in his presence dwell;<br>If I may aught foretell,<br>The statesman shall the second palm obtain.<br>For dreadful deeds of arms<br>Let vulgar bards, with undiscerning praise,<br>More glittering trophies raise:<br>But wisest heaven what deeds may chiefly move<br>To favor and to love?<br>What, save wide blessings, or averted harms?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">IV. 2.<br>Nor to the imbattled field<br>Shall these achievements of the peaceful gown<br>The green immortal crown<br>Of valor, or the songs of conquest, yield.<br>Not Fairfax wildly bold,<br>While bare of crest he hew'd his fatal way,<br>Through Nasesby's firm array,<br>To heavier dangers did his breast oppose<br>Than Pym's free virtue chose,<br>When the proud force of Strafford he controul'd.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">IV. 3.<br>But what is man at enmity with truth?<br>What were the fruits of Wentworth's copious mind<br>When (blighted all the promise of his youth)<br>The patriot in a tyrant's league had join'd?<br>Let Ireland's loud-lamenting plains,<br>Let Tyne's and Humber's trampled swain<br>Let menac'd London tell<br>How impious guile made wisdom base;<br>How generous zeal to cruel rage gave place;<br>And how unbless'd he liv'd and how dishonor'd fell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">V. 1.<br>Thence never hath the Muse<br>Around his tomb Pierian roses flung:<br>Nor shall one poet's tongue<br>His name for music's pleasing labor chuse.<br>And sure, when nature kind<br>Hath deck'd some favor'd breast above the throng,<br>That man with grievous wrong<br>Affronts and wounds his genius, if he bends<br>To guilt's ignoble ends<br>The functions of his ill-submitting mind.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">V. 2.<br>For worthy of the wise<br>Nothing can seem but virtue; nor earth yield<br>Their fame an equal field,<br>Save where impartial freedom gives the prize.<br>There Somers fix'd his name,<br>Inroll'd the next to William. there shall Time<br>To every wondering clime<br>Point out that Somers, who from faction's croud,<br>The slanderous and the loud,<br>Could fair assent and modest reverence claim.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">V. 3.<br>Nor aught did laws or social arts acquire,<br>Nor this majestic weal of Albion's land<br>Did aught accomplish, or to aught aspire,<br>Without his guidance, his superior hand.<br>And rightly shall the Muse's care<br>Wreaths like her own for him prepare,<br>Whose mind's inamor'd aim<br>Could forms of civil beauty draw<br>Sublime as ever sage or poet saw,<br>Yet still to life's rude scene the proud ideas tame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">VI. 1.<br>Let none profane be near!<br>The Muse was never foreign to his breast:<br>On power's grave seat confess'd,<br>Still to her voice he bent a lover's ear.<br>And if the blessed know<br>Their ancient cares, even now the unfading groves,<br>Where haply Milton roves<br>With Spenser, hear the inchanted echos round<br>Through farthest heaven resound<br>Wise Somers, guardian of their fame below.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">VI. 2.<br>He knew, the patriot knew,<br>That letters and the Muses powerful art<br>Exalt the ingenuous heart,<br>And brighten every form of just and true.<br>They lend a nobler sway<br>To civil wisdom, than corruption's lure<br>Could ever yet procure:<br>They too from envy's pale malignant light<br>Conduct her forth to sight<br>Cloath'd in the fairest colors of the day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=454938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">VI. 3.<br>O Townshend, thus may Time, the judge severe,<br>Instruct my happy tongue of thee to tell:<br>And when i speak of one to freedom dear<br>For planning wisely and for acting well,<br>Of one whom glory loves to own,<br>Who still by liberal means alone<br>Hath liberal ends pursu'd;<br>Then, for the guerdon of my lay,<br>'This man with faithful friendship,' will i say,<br>'From youth to honor'd age my arts and me hath view'd.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Mark+Akenside">Mark Akenside</a></strong></div>