| |
|
A Pindaric
Ode
Awake, Aeolian 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,
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres'
golden reign;
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour;
The rocks and
nodding groves re-bellow to the roar.
Oh!
Sov'reign of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and
solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen
Cares
And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War
Has curbed the
fury of his car,
And dropt his thirsty lance at thy
command.
Perching on the sceptred hand
Of Jove,
thy magic lulls the feathered king
With ruffled
plumes and flagging wing:
Quenched in dark clouds of
slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of
his eye.
Thee the voice, the dance, obey,
Tempered 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 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.
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 sceptres
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.
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 od'rous
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 gen'rous Shame,
Th'
unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.
Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles, that
crown th' Aegean deep,
Fields that cool Ilissus
laves,
Or where Maeander'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 breathed
around;
Ev'ry shade and hallowed fountain
Murmured
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.
Far from
the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was
Nature's Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon
strayed,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her
awful face: the dauntless child
Stretched 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
sympathetic Tears."
Nor second he, that rode
sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
The
secrets of th' Abyss to spy.
He passed the flaming
bounds of place 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.
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,
unborrowed 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.
|
|
|
