Deserted stream, and mute ?
Wild Arun + too has heard thy ftrains,
And Echo, 'midst my native plains,
Been sooth'd by Pity's lute.
There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentleft Otway's infant head,
To him thy cell was hewn ;
And while he fung the female heart,
With youth's soft notes unspoil'd by art,
Thy turtles mix'd their own.
Come, Pity, come, by fancy's aid,
Ev'n now my thoughts, relenting maid,
Thy temple’s pride design:
Its southern fite, its truth compleat
Shall raise a wild enthufiaft heat,
In all who view the shrine.
There Pi&ure's toil shall well relate,
How chance, or hard involving fate
+ A river in Suflex.
O'er mortal bliss prevail :
The buskin's Muse shall near her stand,
And fighing prompt her tender hand,
With each disastrous tale.
There let me oft, retir'd by day,
In dreams of paffio'n melt away,
Allow'd with thee to dwell :
There waste the mournful lamp of night,
Till, Virgin, thou again delight
To hear a British shell!
Hou, to whom the world unknown
With all its shadowy shapes is thewn;
Who seest appall'd th' unreal scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between :
Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear !
I fee, I see thee near.
I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye!
Like thee I start, like thee disorder'd fly,
For, lo what monsters in thy train appear !
Danger, whose limbs of giant mold
What mortal eye can fix'd behold ?
Who stalks his round, an hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight form,
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of fome loose hanging rock to sleep :
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 preside ;
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 ghafly 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,
Disdain'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 steel,
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 # Æschylus.
Wrapt
Wrapt in thy cleudy veil th' inceftuous Queen
Sigh'd the sad call her son and husband heard, When once alone it broke the filent 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, Tho' gentle Pity claim her mingled part,
Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine !
Thou who such weary lengths halt paft,
Where wilt thou reft, mad Nymph, at laft?
Say, wilt thou fhroud in haunted cell,
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or in some hollow'd feat,
'Gainst which the big waves beat,
Hear drowning seamens cries in tempests brought !
Dark power, with fhuddering meek fubmitted
Be mine, to read the visions old,
(thought; Which thy awakening bards have told:
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