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Alas! regardless of their doom,

The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come,

Nor care beyond to-day;

Yet see how all around 'em wait

The ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train! Ah! shew them where in ambush stand, To seize their prey, the murd'rous band! Ah! tell them they are men.

These shall the fury passions tear,
The vulturs of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame, that skulks behind ;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy, with rankling tooth,

That inly gnaws the secret heart!
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visag'd, comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning Infamy:

The stings of Falsehood those shall try, And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye,

That mocks the tear it forc'd to flow; And keen Remorse, with blood defil'd, And moody Madness laughing wild Amid severest woe.

Lo! in the vale of years beneath,
A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their queen:

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That ev'ry lab'ring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage;

Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.

To each his suff'rings; all are men
Condemn'd alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

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.

DA

ODE.

To Adversity.

AUGHTER of Jove, relentless pow'r,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,

The proud are taught to taste of pain!
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpity'd and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heav'nly birth,
And bade to form her infant mind:
Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore;

What sorrow was thou bad'st her know,

And, from her own, she learnt to melt at others' woe,

Scar'd at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

With Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,

And leave us leisure to be good.

Light they disperse; and with them go

The summer friend, the flatt'ring foe;

By vain Prosperity receiv'd,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believ'd.

Wisdom, in simple garb array'd,

Immers'd in rapt'rous thought profound, And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground
Still on thy solemn steps attend;

Warm Charity, the gen'ral friend,
With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh! gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread Goddess! lay thy chast'ning hand,

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with thy vengeful band:

(As by the impious thou art seen)

With thund'ring voice and threat'ning mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, O Goddess! wear,

Thy milder influence impart, Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound my heart: The gen'rous spark extinct revive; Teach me to love and to forgive;

Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are to feel, and know myself a man,

'R'

ODE.

The Bard. Pindaric.

I. 1.

UIN seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait;

Tho' fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant! shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears;
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears !'

Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay,

As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array:
Stout Gloster stood aghast in speechless trance:
To arms! cry'd Mortimer, and couch'd his quiv'ring
lance.

I. 2.

On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Rob'd in the sable garb of Woe,

With haggard eye the poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air,)
And with a master's hand and prophet's fire
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

'Hark how each giant oak and desert cave
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
O'er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, sing Cambria's fatal day,

To high-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay.

I. 3.

Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,

That hush'd the stormy main;

Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:

Mountains! ye mourn in vain

Modred, whose magic song

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topp'd head. On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,

Smear'd with gore, and ghastly pale;

Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail,
The famish'd eagle screams and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye dy'd amidst your dying country's cries-

No more I weep. They do not sleep;
On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,

I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land;

With me in dreadful harmony they join,

And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line."

II. 1.

"Weave the warp and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward's race;
Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.

Mark the year, and mark the night

When Severn shall re-echo with affright

The shrieks of death thro' Berkley's roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king!

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs
That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of heaven. What terrors round him
wait!

Amazement in his van, with Flight combin'd,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.

II. 2.

Mighty victor, mighty lord,

Low ou his fun'ral couch he lies!

No pitying heart, no eye, afford
A tear to grace his obsequies!

Is the sable warrior fled ?

Thy son is gone; he rests among the dead.
The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born,
Gone to salute the rising morn:

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm,
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,

Youth on the prow and pleasure at the helm,
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That hush'd in grim repose expects his ev'ning prey.

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