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 shar'd the baleful grove?
Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, th' incestuous queen
Sigh'd the sad call her son and husband heard, When once alone it broke the silent scene,
And he the wretch of Thebes no more appear'd.
O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart:
Thy withering power inspir'd each mournful line :
Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part,
Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine!
Thou who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad Nymph, at last?
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell,
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or in some hollow'd seat,
'Gainst which the big waves beat,
Hear drowning seamen's cries, in tempests brought?
Dark power, with shuddering meek submitted
Be mine, to read the visions old
Which thy awakening bards have told:
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true;
Ne'er be I found, by thee o'eraw'd,
In that thrice-hallow'd eve, abroad,
When ghosts, 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 whose spirit most possess'd
The sacred seat of Shakspeare'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!
O THOU, by Nature taught
To breathe her genuine thought,
In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong;
Who first, on mountains wild,
In Fancy, loveliest child,
Thy babe, or Pleasure's, nurs'd the powers of song!
Thou, who with hermit heart,
Disdain'st the wealth of art,
And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall;
But com'st a decent maid,
O chaste, unboastful Nymph, to thee I call!
By all the honey'd store,
On Hybla's thymy shore;
By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear;
By her* whose love-lorn woe,
In evening musings slow,
Sooth'd sweetly sad Electra's poet's ear:
*The andwv, or nightingale, for which Sophocles seems to have entertained a peculiar fondness.
By old Cephisus deep,
Who spread his wavy sweep
In warbled wanderings, round thy green retreat : On whose enamell'd side,
When holy Freedom died,
No equal haunt allur'd thy future feet.
O sister meek of Truth
To my admiring youth
Thy sober aid and native charms infuse!
The flowers that sweetest breathe,
Though Beauty cull'd the wreath,
Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues.
While Rome could none esteem
But virtue's patriot theme,
You lov'd her hills, and led her laureat band:
But staid to sing alone
To one distinguish'd throne;
And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land.
No more in hall or bower,
The Passions own thy power;
Love, only Love, her forceless numbers mean: For thou hast left her shrine;
Nor olive more, nor vine,
Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene.
Though taste, though genius, bless
To some divine excess,
Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole; What each, what all supply,
May court, may charm, our eye;
Thou, only thou, canst raise the meeting soul!
Of these let others ask,
To aid some mighty task,
1 only seek to find thy temperate vale;
Where oft my reed might sound
To maids and shepherds round,
And all thy sons, O Nature, learn my tale.
ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER.
As once,-if, not with light regard,
I read aright that gifted bard,
-Him whose school above the rest
His loveliest elfin queen has bless'd;-
One, only one, unrivall'd* fair,
Might hope the magic girdle wear,
At solemn turney hung on high,
The wish of each love-darting eye;
-Lo! to each other nymph, in turn, applied,
As if, in air unseen, some hovering hand,
Some chaste, and angel-friend to virgin-fame,
With whisper'd spell had burst the starting band,
It left unbless'd her loath'd dishonour'd side;
Happier hopeless Fair, if never
Her baffled hand, with vain endeavour,
Had touch'd that fatal zone to her denied!
Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name!
To whom, prepar'd and bath'd in heaven,
The cest of amplest power is given :
To few the godlike gift assigns,
To gird their best prophetic loins,
And gaze her visions wild, and feel unmix'd her
*Florimel. See Spenser, Leg. 4th.
The band, as fairy legends say,
Was wove on that creating day
When He, who call'd with thought to birth
Yon tented sky, this laughing earth,
And dress'd with springs and forests tall,
And pour'd the main engirting all,
Long by the lov'd enthusiast woo'd,
Himself in some diviner mood,
Retiring, sat with her alone,
And plac'd her on his sapphire throne;
The whiles, the vaulted shrine around,
Seraphic wires were heard to sound,
Now sublimest triumph swelling,
Now on love and mercy dwelling;
And she, from out the veiling cloud,
Breath'd her magic notes aloud:
And thou, thou rich-hair'd youth of morn,
And all thy subject life was born!
The dangerous passions kept aloof,
Far from the sainted growing woof:
But near it sat ecstatic Wonder,
Listening the deep applauding thunder;
And Truth, in sunny vest array'd,
By whose the tarsel's eyes were made;
All the shadowy tribes of mind,
In braided dance, their murmurs join'd,
And all the bright uncounted powers
Who feed on heaven's ambrosial flowers.
-Where is the bard whose soul can now
Its high presuming hopes avow?
Where he who thinks, with rapture blind,
This hallow'd work for him design'd?
High on some cliff, to heaven up-pil❜d,
Of rude access, of prospect wild,
|