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-The Death of Pentheus,

The Story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, from the Fourth Book of Ovid's Metamorphofes,

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Notes on fome of the foregoing Stories in Ovid's Meta

morphofes,

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An Effay on Virgil's Georgics,

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POEMS

POEM S

O N

SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

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To Mr. DRYDEN.

OW long, great Poet, fhall thy facred lays

Ho

Provoke our wonder, and tranfcend our praise ?

Can neither injuries of time, or age,

Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage?

Not fo thy Ovid in his exile wrote,

Grief chill'd his breaft, and check'd his rifing thought:

Penfive and fad, his drooping mufe betrays

The Roman genius in its laft decays.

Prevailing warmth has ftill thy mind poffeft,
And fecond youth is kindled in thy breaft:
Thou mak'ft the beauties of the Romans known,
And England boafts of riches not her own;
Thy lines have heighten'd Virgil's majesty,
And Horace wonders at himself in thee.
Thou teacheft Perfius to inform our isle
In smoother numbers, and a clearer ftile;
And Juvenal, inftructed in thy page,
Edges his fatire, and improves his rage.
Thy copy cafts a fairer light on all,
And still out-fhines the bright original.

Now

Now Ovid boafts th' advantage of thy fong,
And tells his story in the British tongue;
Thy charming verse, and fair translation, show
How thy own laurel first began to grow:

How wild Lycaon chang'd by angry gods,

And frighted at himself, ran howling through the woods.
O may'st thou ftill the noble task prolong,

Nor age, nor fickness interrupt thy fong:
Then may we wond'ring read, how human limbs
Have water'd kingdoms, and diffolv'd in streams;
Of thofe rich fruits that on the fertile mold
Turn'd yellow by degrees, and ripen'd into gold:
How fome in feathers, or a ragged hide,
Have liv'd a fecond life, and diff'rent natures try'd,
Then will thy Ovid, thus transform'd, reveal

A nobler change than he himself can tell.

Magd. College, Oxon.
June 2, 1693.
The Author's age 22.

EXI
**

A POEM

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