nion, that he entitled
the poem, Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish. This wish consists of
thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:

O may I _steal_
Along the _vale_
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!

The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:

Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I _have_,
And live, not _leave_,
Enamour'd of the present day!

My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one _beam_
Of honest _fame_!
And scorn the labour'd monument!

Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty nature's self shall die;
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!

It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said,
in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: "For the more
_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome, give grace and
pleasure. Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_, (of
which the moderns are too fond,) but from this truth." Yet the moderns
surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by his own
confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.

The next paragraph in his essay did not occur to him when he talked of
"that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must
take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme
consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he
was perfectly free from that shackle."

Another part of this essay will convict the following stanza of, what
every reader will discover in it, "involuntary burlesque:"

"The northern blast
The shatter'd mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock.
The breaking spout,
The _stars gone out_,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock."

But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes, if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?