1

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 every labouring 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.

ODE IV.

TO ADVERSITY.

Ziva.

Τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ

σαντα, τῷ πάθει μαθὼν

Évτa nugías exeiv.-ESCHYLUS, in Agamemnone.

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless Power,

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, unpitied 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 bad 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 learn'd to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild 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 sable 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 general 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 the 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, Oh Goddess, wear,

Thy milder influence impart,

Thy philosophic train be there

To soften, not to wound my heart.

The generous 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.

AWAKE, Eolian lyre awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings,
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take :
The laughing flowers, that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
'Now the rich stream of music winds along

Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong.

Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain,

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour :

The rocks, and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

I. 2.

Oh! Sovereign of the willing soul,

Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares,

And frantic Passions hear thy soft controul.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War

Has curb'd the fury of his car,

a When the Author first published this and the following Ode, he was advised, even by his friends, to subjoin some few explanatory notes; but he had too much respect for the understanding of his readers to take that liberty.

The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described; its quiet majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony of numbers; and its more rapid and irresistible course, when swoln and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous passions.

c Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar.

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.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey,

Temper'd to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet-green

The rosy-crown'd Loves are seen

On Cytherea's day

With antic sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating
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.

Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse?

Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry:
He gives to range the dreary sky:
Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts of war.

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

e 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.

fIn 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 od'rous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat
In loose numbers wildly sweet

Their feather-cinctur'd 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. S.

& 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 ?
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breath'd around;

Ev'ry shade and hallow'd fountain
Murmur'd deep a solemn 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.

'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 Welch Fragments, the Lapland and American songs.]

8 Progress of poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surry, 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 expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since.