1747 in poetry

Alas! regardless of their doom, The little victims play; No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day:

• * Yet, ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their Paradise. No more;—where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. — Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (full text here) Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France). February – Horace Walpole's tabby cat Selima drowns in a Chinese porcelain vase while pursuing goldfish in his London home; he commissions an epitaph from Thomas Gray, who sends him "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes" on March 1. Sir William Blackstone, The Panthion, published anonymously, attribution uncertain William Dunkin, Boeotia Philip Francis, A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace, parallel Latin and English texts; first collected edition (originally published in separate parts: The Odes, Epodes and Carmen Seculare of Horace 1743) Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (text), published anonymously (see quotation, above) Charlotte Lennox, Poems on Several Occasions William Livingston, Philosophic Solitude; or, The Choice of a Rural Life, celebrating rural life and nature; the book would go through five printings in the author's life; English Colonial America David Mallet, Amyntor and Theodora; or, The Hermit William Mason, Musaeus, a Monody to the memory of Pope, published anonymously; written in imitation of John Milton's Lycidas Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Six Town Eclogues, with some other Poems Samuel Niles, A Brief and Plain Essay on God's Wonder Working Providence for New-England [. . .