And from each scene the noblest truths inspire. Nor less inspire my conduct than my song; Teach my best reason, reason; my best will Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve 50 Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear. Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, poured On this devoted head, be poured in vain. How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is man! How passing wonder He who made him such! 70 Who centered in our make such strange 80 Some flee the city, some the hermitage, Their aims as various as the roads they take Thy long-extended realms, and rueful Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds. No other merriment, dull tree! is thine. See yonder hallowed fane;-the pious work Of names once famed, now dubious or forgot, And buried midst the wreck of things Whistling aloud to bear his courage up, And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones, which were; 30 There lie interred the more illustrious dead. The wind is up: hark! how it howls! Methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary: Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, 60 (With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown,) That tell in homely phrase who lie below. Sudden he starts, and hears, or thinks he hears, 1 cowering. O'er some new-opened grave; and (strange Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 5 IO If ought of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, O nymph reserved, while now the brighthaired sun 5 Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede1 ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed: Now air is hushed, save where the weakeyed bat, With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, IO As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, 15 Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale May not unseemly with its stillness suit, 1 embroidery. 20 THE PASSIONS AN ODE FOR MUSIC 5 When Music, heavenly maid, was young, ΙΟ 15 |