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214
Annual Register

When Kings beheld thy Senators with awe,
And thy least mandate gave the nations law!
Dejected now from Virtue's radiant height,
Crush'd by their own corrupted weight,
See, like a dying lamp, thy Freedom glow;
And wait Ambition's meditated blow!
Far sooner would I tread Caranea's shores,
Where Aetna all her fierce explosions pours,
Than longer chuse, degenerate Rome, to rest,
A hopeless Native, in thy fatal breast!
When Vortue once her sacred Sense with withdrawals,
Weak is the rev'rence paid to flighted Laws!
Where Pow'r but courts the first advent'rous hand,
Soon Liberty forsakes the dangerous land.
Happy had Rome those useful maxims known,
While yet her strength and vigour were her own;
But lull'd in false security she lay,
And dos'd fair Freedom's last remains away,
Till, not one spark of Virtue left to save,
She sunk in Death, - Corruption dug her grave

Verses by a young African Negro Woman, at Bofton in New-England; who
did not quit her own country till she was ten years old, and has not been above eight in Boston.

RECOLLECTION.
To Miss A----- M-----, humbly inscribed by the Authoress.

MNEME, begin; inspire, ye sacred Nine!
Your vent'rous Afric in the deep design.
Do ye  rekindle the celestial fire, 
Ye god-like pow'r! I traced thy facred spring,
Assist my strains while I thy glories sing.
By thee, paft acts of many thousand years,
Rang'd in due order, to the mind appears;
The long-forgot thy gentle hand conveys,
Returns, and soft upon the fancy plays.
Calm, in the visions of the night he pours
Th' exhaustless treasures of his  secret stores.
Swift from above he wings his downy flight.
Thro's Phoebe's realm, fair regent of the night.
Thence to the raptur'd poet give his aid,
Dwells in his heart, or hovers round his head;
To give instruction to the lab'ring mind, Diffusing light celestial and refin'd.


215 
For the YEAR 1772.

Still he pursues. unweary'd in the race,
And wraps his senses in the pleasing maze.
The Heav'nly Phantom points the actions done
In the past worlds, and tribes beneath the fun. 
He, from his throne in ev'ry human breast,
Has vice condemn'd, and ev'ry virtue bless'd.
Sweet are the sounds in which thy words we hear,
Celestial music to the ravish'd ear.
We hear thy voice, resounding o'er the plains,
Excelling Maro's sweet Menellian strains.
But awful Thou! to that perfidious race,
Who scorn thy warning, nor the good embrace;
By thee unveil'd, the horrid crime appears,
Thy mighty hand redoubled fury bears;
The time mis-spent augments their hell of woes,
While through each breast the dire contagion flows.
Now turn and leave the rude ungrateful scene,
And paint fair Virtue in immortal green.
For ever flourish in the glowing veins,
For ever flourish in poetic strains,
Be thy emplou top guide my early days,
And Thine the tribute of youthful lays.
Now* eighteen years their destin'd course have run,
In due succession, round the central fun;
How did reach folly unregarded pass!
But sure 'tis graven on eternal brass!
To recollect, inglorious I return;
'Tis mine past follies and past crimes to mourn.
The virtue, ah! unequal to the vice,
Will scarce afford small reason to rejoice.
Such, Recollection! is thy pow'r, high-thron'd 
In ev'ry breast of mortals, beer own'd. 
The wretch, who dar'd the vengeance of the skies,
At last awakes with horror and surprise.
By thee alarm'd, he fees impending fate
He howls in anguish, and repents too late. 
But ost thy kindness moves with timely fear
The furious rebel in his mad career.
Thrice bless'd the man, who in thy sacred shrine
Improves the Refuge from the wrath divine.