!

And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king
With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing:
Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie

The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.

I. 3.

•Thee the voice, the dance, obey,

Temper'd to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet green

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen,
On Cytherea's day,

With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:

To brisk notes in cadence heating

Glance their many twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare:
Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime, that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom move

The bloom of young Desire, and purple light of Love

II. 1.

+Man's feeble race what ills await!

Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,

Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate! The fond complaint, my song, disprove,

And justify the laws of Jove.

Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body.

+ To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the day by its cheerful presence to dispel the gloom and terrors of the night.

Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of hoding cry,
He gives to range the dreary sky:

Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war. II. 2.

In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.

And oft, beneath the odʼrous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat

In loose numbers wildly sweet

Their feather cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.

Her track, where'er the Goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

+Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,

Isles, that crown th' Ægean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves

In lingering lab'rinths creep,

How do your tuneful Echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of Anguish!

* Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations: its connexion with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it.-(See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welsh Fragments; he Lapland and American Songs.)

+ Progress of poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to EngJand. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them; but this school exp red soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French modei, which has subsisted ever since.

Where each old poetic Mountain
Inspiration breath'd around;
Ev'ry shade and hallow'd fountain
Murmur'd deep a hollow sound:
Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour

Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,
And coward Vice, that revels in her chains,
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.

III. 1.

Far from the sun and summer-gale,

In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,

To him the mighty mother did unveil

Her awful face: the dauntless child

Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled.

'This pencil take,' she said, whose colours clear

Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!

This can unlock the gates of Joy;

Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears.

Or

ope

the sacred source of sympatnetic Tears.'

III. 2.

Nor second He, that rode sublime

Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
'The secrets of th' abyss to spy.

He pass'd the flaming bounds of space and time:
The living-throne, the sapphire-blaze,
Where angels tremble, while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding

pace.

III. 3.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!

Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er,

Scatters from her pictured urn

Thoughts, that breathe, and words, that burn.

But ah! 'tis heard no more-

Oh! lyre divine, what daring Spirit

Wakes thee now? though he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
+That the Theban eagle bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion

Through the azure deep of air:
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run

Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray
With orient hues, unborrow'd of the Sun:

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,

Beneath the Good how far-but far above the Great.

We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind, than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's day for Cowley (who had his merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late days, has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand in some of his Choruses,-above all in the last of Caractacus;

'Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread " &c.

+ Pindar.

VI. THE BARD.

Pindaric.

RUIN seize thee, ruthless king!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Though fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, or hauberk'st 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 Glo'sters stood aghast in speechiess trance; 'To arms!' cried Mortimer,|| and couch'd his quiv'ring lance.

J. 2.

On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the Poet stood

(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air);

This Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.

+ The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, forming a coat of mail, that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to every motion.

1 Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigion-eryri: it included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Mer onethshire, as far east as the river Conway. R. Hygden, speaking of the Castle of Conway, built by King Edward the First, says, Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis Erery, and Matthew of Westminster, (ad ann. 1283), Apud Aberconway ad pedes niontis Snowdonia fecit erigi castrum forte.'

§ Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law to King Edward.

Edmond de Mortimer, lord of Wigmore.

They both were Lords-Marchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the king in this expedition.