The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume IV.Cibber, Theophilus
General
The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume IV.
Cibber, Theophilus
Poets, English -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Poets, Irish -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
Parent of day! whose beauteous beams of light
Spring from the darksome womb of night,
And midst their native horrors mow
Like gems adorning of the negro's brow.
Not Heaven's fair bow can equal thee,
In all its gawdy drapery:
Thou first essay of light, and pledge of day!
Rival of shade! eternal spring! still gay!
From thy bright unexhausted womb
The beauteous race of days and seasons come.
Thy beauty ages cannot wrong,
But 'spite of time, thou'rt ever young.
Thou art alone Heav'n's modest virgin light.
Whose face a veil of blushes hide from human sight.
At thy approach, nature erects her head;
The smiling universe is glad;
The drowsy earth and seas awake
And from thy beams new life and vigour take.
When thy more chearful rays appear,
Ev'n guilt and women cease to fear;
Horror, despair, and all the sons of night
Retire before thy beams, and take their hasty flight.
Thou risest in the fragrant east,
Like the fair Phoenix from her balmy nest;
But yet thy fading glories soon decay,
Thine's but a momentary stay;
Too soon thou'rt ravish'd from our fight,
Borne down the stream of day, and overwhelm'd with night.
Thy beams to thy own ruin haste,
They're fram'd too exquisite to last:
Thine is a glorious, but a short-liv'd state:
Pity so fair a birth should yield so soon to fate;
Besides these pieces, this reverend gentleman has translated the
second book of Ovid's Art of Love, with several other occasional poems
and translations published in the third and fourth volumes of Tonson's
Miscellanies.
The Medicine, a Tale in the second Volume of the Tatlers, and Mr.
Partridge's Appeal to the Learned World, or a Further Account of the
Manner of his Death, in Prose, are likewise written by him.
[Footnote A: Jacob.]
* * * * *
Mr. JOSEPH MITCHEL,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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