Oh! sovereign of the willing soul,*
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen cares,

And frantic passions hear thy soft crontrol.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War
Has curb'd the fury of his car,

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 light'nings of his

Thee the voice, the dance obey,t
Temper'd 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;

eye

Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet;

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

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

་

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 given 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.

In climes beyond the solar road,t

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom,

To cheer the shiv'ring native's dull abode.
And oft, beneath the odorous 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,

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.

+ Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilised nations: its connection with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it.

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,*
Isles, that crown th' Egean 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 breathed 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.
Far from the sun and summer-gale,

In thy green lap was nature's darling+ laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless child
Stretch'd 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,

* 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 Surrey 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 subsisted almost to our own time. + Shakspere.

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 ecstacy,
The secrets of the abyss to spy.

He pass'd 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 расе.

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 Eaglet 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, unborrow'd 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.

THE BAR D.

PINDARIC.*

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!
Confusion on thy banners wait,

Though, fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state!
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!”
Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo'stert stood aghast in speechless trance:

To arms! cried Mortimer,‡ and couch'd his quiv'ring lance.

On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

Robed in the sable garb of wo,

With haggard eyes the poet stood

(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air),
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

"Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!

This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the Bards that fell into his hands to be put to

death.

+ Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law to King Edward.

Edmond de Mortimer, lord of Wigmore. Both of these were Lords-Marchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and who both probably accompanied the king in this expedition.