And seeks for rest, e'en in the arms of death!
The young Alethes
grasps a broken mast,
And steers, half hoping, to the friendly sand:
All night he steered, and with the dawning morn
The land emerges from a sea of clouds 8.
While sage Iphthima press'd the higher strand,
And looks attentive o'er the rolling flood;
This
way and that she cast her longing eyes,
If or a boat, or sea-dividing ship,
Brought news of her Alethes; him she saw,
Half-naked, leaning on a foaming jaw 9.
Ah me! my son, my Alethes, my dear,
Joy of my youth, dear object of my woe!
Come, come, my dear! press, press my son to land!
What fate, what cruel fate, what more than death
Has laid my son incumbent on a wave ?
Here, here my hand! Stretch, stretch, my son, thy arm! 350
Thus she, outstretching o'er the foaming tide,
When a rough whirlwind sweeps along the main,
And plunged him headlong in the gulphy deeps:
Thrice he upraised his head; and thrice he sunk
In death, and thrice the circling eddies bell'd:
The fourth up-springing, Mother, mother! dear
Author of life, farewell! A wave supprest
His voice, and sunk him to the mighty dead 10.
Thus water-fowl upon the sable flood,
Now here, now there, their floating bodies shew,
But then are lost amidst the sounding foam,
And empty billows dash the yellow sand.
O Discord! gnashing fury, rav'nous fiend,
Hell's sharpest torment, nauseous qualm of life!
You bathe the poinard oft in Friendship's breast!
Peace, Virtue, Friendship, Harmony, and Love,
Delightful train of graces! shrink from thee;
Vice, Envy, Villany, deceitful thoughts,
Blood-thirsty Cruelty, insatiate Pride,
War, woe of mothers and new-married maids!
Attend thy shrine; and thence long plighted leagues
And unity are broke; thence streams of blood
Flow from the patriot's honest-thinking heart;
And rapine, bloodshed, carnage, train of Death!
Resistless, restless, tear the unhappy world.
Fly, fly foul fiend! and leave the mangled world,
Too long thy prey. Ah me! shall hapless men
For ever, ever feel thy iron rod ?
Come Peace, come life-befriending, lovely fair!
A thousand graces 'tend thy placid reign:
Stretch the soft pinions o'er a happy world;
Snatch the sharp weapon from the warrior's hand,
And chace the jarring monster down to hell.
Let Science raise on high her drooping head,
And Muses tune the soul-delightful lay.
In vain the poet glides in melting strains,
In vain attunes his soul to tuneful woe;
Deaf is the jar of Discord, dim the eye.
Of War, and Happiness far flies the earth.
Come Contemplation, then, my lovely fair!
Solemnly walking, unaffected grace! .
Absorpt from life, I join thy sable train,
And turn my aching eye from dismal war.
Hear how Palemon, from his humble bed,
Palæmon! whom twice fifty winters bend,
Pale, to the tomb; Vice, with her iron hand.
Ne'er gloomed his days, that innocently flow'd,
With mind serene, and aspect all composed,
Breathes virtue in each word, and paves the
To sweet felicity in heaven and earth :
While mournful, near, the consort of his love,
Droops the sad eye, and fair Lavinia's cheeks
Lie, rosy, drown'd in tears; paternal love
Melts the
young heart, and pours the briny tears.
With mournful look, and with attentive ear,
Near to his father's bed, Acasto stands,
And drinks large draughts of virtue.
Flutters, to meet the untainted minds above.
Death, sable shade! with silent awful step
Approaches gentle, and o'erwhelms his eyes;
He nods, and falls asleep, when on his tongue
The word, half-uttered, dies. So, in the noon
Of night, the crying babe the officious nurse
Sooths with half-sleeping sounds; when to repose
The innocent is lull'd, the song shall die,
Imperfect, on her sleep suspended tongue.
Solemnly slow, along the mournful plain,
The melancholy croud support the corse
Of young Philates, snatched, in early bloom
Of youth, from life, and all its fading joys.
Outstretched, in the sable-mantled dome,
Sleep reason, virtue, beauty, sweetness, youth,
All, all that man can boast, now withered lie.
Behind, with trembling steps, the hoary age
Of old Philanthes mourns; a staff supports
His tottering feet: he droops his silvered head;
And tears run trickling down his pallid cheeks.
He now and then looks to the sable hearse,
And all his soul's oppress'd with mighty woes,
And from his faultering tongue these accents break.
Ah me! my son, ah, comfort of my age!
My only son, supporter of our house!
Ah! why, Philætes, have you left your sire,
Struggling with age, and soul-corroding woe!
Why sunk in death the sun that brightly shone
On th' evening of my days! Almighty power,
Thine is the world-whate'er Thou wilt is done :
Thine is the young, and he that bows with age;
And whom Thou wilt thou call'st! Why then repine?
Death ne'er too soon enwraps the good: short life
Well spent is age, and not the hoary head.
Thus he. The sad attendance sigh'd; but chief
The young Acanthes gave to mighty woe
His manly mind. Not blood, with all its streams,
Could form such ties as bound him to his friend;
Their age, their thoughts, their words, their deeds, the same;
To virtue form'd alike their youthful souls.
The sun descending to the western waves,
Shot parallel to earth his evening ray,
And lines the virid hills with fusile gold.
To sigh for lost Philætes, through the field
Acanthes strays, and views the pleasing scene,
Where oft he with his dear Philætes roam'd.
Deep sorrow veils, with pearly drops, his eye,
And from his heaving breast these accents break:
Sleep'st thou for ever, O, my darling friend,
My other self! Has death for ever seal'd
The friendly eye, and bound the tuneful tongue?
Ah me! no parting word has blest thy friend;
No token of our spotless friendship left!
But I, alone, unfriended, sad, forlorn,
Shall mourn thy absence in this vale of tears.
He said, when through the field Philætes step'd:
A heavenly beauty, and unfading youth,
Flush'd in his cheeks, and sparkled from his eyes;
A snowy robe, in wreathy volumes, flowed
Down from his shoulders, and his golden hair
Play'd in the murmuring breeze. Ambrosia sheds
Its pleasing vapours on the ambient air.
He came, he spoke, and smiled upon his friend,
And melody drops from his youthful tongue.
"THINE is the youth, and he that bows with age;
And whom Thou wilt, Thou call'st. Why then repine?
Death ne'er too soon enwraps the good; short life
Well spent is age, and not the hoary hend.
But, ah! fond nature for Philætes mourns.
Why name Philætes, now my greatest woe,
Though once the comfort of my drooping mind!
Dear hapless youth! for thee my bosom sighs.
And shall till Death enwrap me to his reign.
Thus he. The sad attendance sigh'd; but chief
young Andræmon gave to silent woe
His manly mind: not blood, with all its streams,
Could so attach Andræmon to his friend;
Their age, their thoughts, their actions, words the same, 485 To virtue formed alike their youthful souls.
Whether the sun sports in the fields of light,
Or gloomy night her sable mantle throws
O'er sleeping earth, still imaged to the mind
Of young Andræmon is his darling friend.
Still sighs the breast, still melts the tearful
Still flows the soul in elegies of woe.
"This is a second draught of the conclusion, from line 438; but, after all, the poem remains unfinished, and in many passages is hardly intelligible; in others, the words must be pronounced as accented in Scotch. Bad as it is, however, it marks, when compared with the Cave or the Night-piece, the immense difference between the untutored genius of a rude mountaineer, who had passed a winter, perhaps, at the college of Aberdeen, and the enlarged and cultivated understanding of the same person, after having spent some years at Edinburgh in society and study. And this may illustrate the real difference between the supposed Ossian in a savage state, and a refined and enlightened poetical genius in a civilized age like the present.
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