The frighted Indians with his thunder aw'd,
And claim'd their homage, and commenc'd a god
I flourish'd all the while in arts of peace,
Retir'd and shelter'd in inglorious ease:
I who before the songs of shepherds made,
When gay and young my rural lays I play'd,
And set my Tityrus beneath his shade.
A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY,
AT OXFORD.a
CECILIA, whose exalted hymns,
With joy and wonder fill the blest,
In choirs of warbling seraphims,
Known and distinguish'd from the rest,
Attend, harmonious saint, and see
Thy vocal sons of harmony;
Attend, harmonious saint, and hear our pray'rs;
Enliven all our earthly airs,
And, as thou sing'st thy God, teach us to sing of thee:
Tune ev'ry string and ev'ry tongue,
Be thou the muse and subject of our song.
Let all Cecilia's praise proclaim,
Employ the echo in her name.
Hark how the flutes and trumpets raise,
At bright Cecilia's name, their lays;
The organ labours in her praise.
• The success of Alexander's Feast, made it fashionable for succeeding poets, to try their hand at a musical ode: but they mistook the matter, when they thought it enough to contend with Mr. Dryden.It was reserved for one or two of our days to give us a true idea of lyric poetry in English.
Cecilia's name does all our numbers grace,
From ev'ry voice the tuneful accents fly,
In soaring trebles now it rises high,
And now it sinks, and dwells upon the base.
Cecilia's name through all the notes we sing,
The work of ev'ry skilful tongue,
The sound of ev'ry trembling string,
The sound and triumph of our song.
For ever consecrate the day,
To music and Cecilia;
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heav'n we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love;
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre,
The streams stand still, the stones admire;
The list'ning savages advance,
The wolf and lamb around him trip,
The bears in aukward measures leap,
And tigers mingle in the dance.
The moving woods attended, as he play'd,
And Rhodope was left without a shade.
Music religious heats inspires,
It wakes the soul, and lifts it high,
And wings it with sublime desires,
And fits it to bespeak the Deity.
Th' Almighty listens to a tuneful tongue,
And seems well pleas'd and courted with a song.
Soft moving sounds and heav'nly airs
Give force to ev'ry word, and recommend our pray'rs. When time itself shall be no more,
And all things in confusion hurl'd,
Music shall then exert its pow'r,
And sound survive the ruins of the world:
Then saints and angels shall agree
In one eternal jubilee :
All heav'n shall echo with their hymns divine,
And God himself with pleasure see
The whole creation in a chorus join.
Consecrate the place and day,
To music and Cecilia.
Let no rough winds approach, nor dare
Invade the hallow'd bounds,
Nor rudely shake the tuneful air,
Nor spoil the fleeting sounds.
Nor mournful sigh nor groan be heard,
But gladness dwell on every tongue;
Whilst all, with voice and strings prepar'd,
Keep up the loud harmonious song,
And imitate the blest above,
In joy, and harmony, and love.
TO MR. H. S. April 3, 1694.
SINCE, dearest Harry, you will needs
A short account of all the muse-possest,
That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times,
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes;
Without more preface, writ in formal length,
To speak the undertaker's want of strength,
I'll try to make their sev'ral beauties known,
And show their verses worth, tho' not my own.
Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine;
'Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and prose.
But age has rusted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit:
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenser, next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age;
An age that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursu'd
Henry Sacheverell, whose story is well known.-Yet with all his follies, some respect may seem due to the memory of a man, who had merit in his youth, as appears from a paper of verses under his name, in Dryden's Miscellanies; and who lived in the early friendship of Mr. Addison.
The introductory and concluding lines of this poem are a bad imitation of Horace's manner-Sermoni propiora. In the rest, the poetry is better than the criticism, which is right or wrong, as it chances; being echoed from the common voice.
Thro' pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleas'd at distance all the sights
Of arms and palfries, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote,
O'er-run with wit, and lavish of his thought:
His turns too closely on the reader press:
He more had pleas'd us, had he pleas'd us less.
One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes
With silent wonder, but new wonders rise.
As in the milky-way a shining white
O'er-flows the heav'ns with one continu'd light;
That not a single star can shew his rays,
Whilst jointly all promote the common blaze.
Pardon, great poet, that I dare to name
Th' unnumber'd beauties of thy verse with blame;
Thy fault is only wit in its excess,
But wit like thine in any shape will please.
What muse but thine can equal hints inspire,
And fit the deep-mouth'd Pindar to thy lyre:*
Pindar, whom others in a labour'd strain,
And forc'd expression, imitate in vain?
Well-pleas'd in thee he soars with new delight,
flight,
And plays in more unbounded verse, and takes a nobler
Blest man whose spotless life and charming lays
Employ'd the tuneful prelate in thy praise:
Blest man! who now shalt be for ever known
In Sprat's successful labours and thy own.
But Milton, next, with high and haughty stalks, Unfetter'd in majestick numbers walks;
Cowley had great merit, but nature had formed him to manage Anacreon's lute, and not Pindar's lyre.
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