O'er mortal blifs prevail:

The buskin'd Muse shall near her stand,

And fighing prompt her tender hand,
With each difaftrous tale.

There let me oft, retir'd by day,
In dreams of paffion melt away,

Allow'd with thee to dwell:

There waste the mournful lamp of night, Till, Virgin, thou again delight

To hear a British fhell!

ODE TO FEAR.

Hou, to whom the world unknown

TH

1

With all its shadowy shapes is fhewn;

Who feest appall'd th' unreal scene,

While Fancy lifts the veil between :

Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear!

I fee, I fee thee near.

I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye!
Like thee I ftart, like thee disorder'd fly,
For, lo what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whofe limbs of giant mold
What mortal eye can fix'd behold?
Who ftalks his round, an hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight ftorm,
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of fome loofe hanging rock to fleep:
And with him thousand phantoms join'd,
Who prompt to deeds accurs'd the mind:
And those, the fiends, who near allied,
O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks prefide;

While Vengeance, in the lurid air,
Lifts her red arm, expos'd and bare:
On whom that ravening Brood of fate,
Who lap the blood of Sorrow, wait;
Who, Fear, this ghaftly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee?

EPODE.

In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice,
The grief-full Muse addreft her infant tongue;
The maids and matrons, on her awful voice,

Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung.

Yet he, the Bard* who first invok'd thy name,
Difdain'd in Marathon its power to feel:

For not alone he nurs'd the poet's flame,

But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot's fteel,

But who is he, whom later garlands grace,
Who left a while o'er Hybla's dews to rove,

With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,

Where thou and Furies fhar'd the baleful grove?

Wrapt in thy cloudy veil th' incestuous Queen *
Sigh'd the fad call her fon and husband heard,
When once alone it broke the filent fcene,

And he the wretch of Thebes no more appear'd.

O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart,
Thy withering power infpir'd each mournful line,
Tho' gentle Pity claim her mingled part,
Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine!

ANTISTROPHE.

Thou who fuch weary lengths haft paft,
Where wilt thou reft, mad Nymph, at last?
Say, wilt thou fhroud in haunted cell,

Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or in fome hollow'd feat,

'Gainft which the big waves beat,

Hear drowning feamens cries in tempefts brought! Dark power, with fhuddering meek fubmitted thought, Be mine, to read the visions old,

Which thy awakening bards have told:

* Jocafta.

And, left thou meet my blafted view, Hold each ftrange tale devoutly true;

Ne'er be I found, by thee o'er-aw'd,
In that thrice-hallow'd eve abroad,
When ghofts, as cottage-maids believe,
Their pebbled beds permitted leave,
And goblins haunt from fire, or fen,
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!

O thou whofe fpirit most poffeft
The facred feat of Shakespear's breast!
By all that from thy prophet broke,

In thy divine emotions spoke!
Hither again thy fury deal,

Teach me but once like him to feel:

His cypress wreath my meed decree, And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee!