Scene-the Promontory of Leucadia.
THIS is the spot:-'Tis here tradition says
That hopeless love from this high towering rock
Leaps headlong to oblivion or to death.
Oh, 'tis a giddy height! my dizzy head
Swims at the precipice—'tis death to fall!
Lie still, thou coward heart! this is no time
To shake with thy strong throbs the frame convulsed.
To die, to be at rest,-oh, pleasant thought!
Perchance to leap and live; the soul all still,
And the wild tempest of the passions husht
In one deep calm; the heart, no more diseased
By the quick ague fits of hope and fear,
Quietly cold;
Presiding powers, look down!
In vain to you I poured my earnest prayers,
In vain I sung your praises: chiefly thou,
Venus, ungrateful goddess, whom my lyre
Hymned with such full devotion! Lesbian groves,
Witness how often, at the languid hour
Of summer twilight, to the melting song
Ye gave your choral echoes. Grecian maids,
Who hear with downcast look and flushing cheek
That lay of love, bear witness! and ye youths,
Who hang enraptured on the empassioned strain,
Gazing with eloquent eye, even till the heart
Sinks in the deep delirium! and ye, too,
Ages unborn, bear witness ye, how hard
Her fate who hymn'd the votive hymn in vain!
Ungrateful goddess! I have hung my lute
In yonder holy pile: my hand no more
Shall wake the melodies that failed to move
The heart of Phaon-yet when rumour tells
How from Leucadia Sappho hurled her down
A self-devoted victim, he may melt
Too late in pity, obstinate to love.
O haunt his midnight dreams, black Nemesis!
Whom, self-conceiving in the inmost depths
Of chaos, blackest night long-labouring bore,
When the stern destinies, her elder brood,
And shapeless death, from that more monstrous birth
Leapt shuddering? haunt his slumbers, Nemesis!
Scorch with the fires of Phlegethon his heart,
Till helpless, hopeless, heaven-abandoned wretch,
He, too, shall seek beneath the unfathomed deep
To hide him from thy fury.
Far distant glitters as the sun-beams smile
And gaily wanton o'er its heaving breast!
Phoebus shines forth, nor wears one cloud to mourn
His votary's sorrows. God of day, shine on;—
By men despised, forsaken by the Gods,
O pleasant Lesbos! in thy secret streams
Delighted have I plunged, from the hot sun
Screened by the o'er-arching grove's delightful shade,
And pillowed on the waters! Now the waves
Shall chill me to repose.
Tremendous height!
Scarce to the brink will these rebellious limbs
Support me. Hark! how the rude deep below
Roars round the rugged base, as if it called
Its long-reluctant victim! I will come.
One leap, and all is over! The deep rest
Of death, or tranquil apathy's dead calm,
Welcome alike to me. Away, vain fears!
Phaon is cold, and why should Sappho live ?
Phaon is cold, or with some fairer one-
Thought worse than death!
[She throws herself from the precipice.
TRANSLATION OF A GREEK ODE ON ASTRONOMY, BY S. T. COLERIDGE;
Written for the prize at Cambridge, 1793.
HAIL venerable night!
O first-created hail!
Thou who art doom'd in thy dark breast to veil
The dying beam of light.
The eldest and the latest thou,
Hail venerable night!
Around thine ebon brow,
Glittering plays with lightning rays
A wreath of flowers of fire.
The varying clouds with many a hue attire
The many-tinted veil.
Holy are the blue graces of thy zone!
But who is he whose tongue can tell
The dewy lustres which thine eyes adorn ?
Lovely to some the blushes of the morn;
To some the glory of the day,
When blazing with meridian ray
The gorgeous sun ascends his highest throne;
But I with solemn and severe delight
Still watch thy constant car, immortal night!
For then to the celestial palaces
Urania leads, Urania, she
The goddess who alone
Stands by the blazing throne,
Effulgent with the light of deity.
Whom wisdom, the creatrix, by her side
Placed on the heights of yonder sky,
And smiling with ambrosial love, unlock'd
The depths of nature to her piercing eye.
Angelic myriads struck their harps around,
And with triumphant song
The host of stars, a beauteous throng,
Around the ever-living mind
TRANSLATION OF A GREEK ODE ON ASTRONOMY.
In jubilee their mystic dance begun;
When at thy leaping forth, O sun!
The morning started in affright,
Astonished at thy birth, her child of light.
Queen of the muses! mistress of the song!
For thou didst deign to leave the heavenly throng,
As earthward thou thy steps wert bending,
A ray went forth and harbingered thy way;
All ether laughed with thy descending.
Thou hadst wreathed thy hair with roses,
The flower that in the immortal bower
Its deathless bloom discloses.
Before thine awful mien, compell'd to shrink;
Fled ignorance abashed and all her brood;
Dragons, and hags of baleful breath,
Fierce dreams that wont to drink
The sepulchre's black blood;
Or on the wings of storms
Riding in fury forms
Shrieked to the mariner the shriek of death.
I boast, O goddess, to thy name
That I have raised the pile of fame!
Therefore to me be given
To roam the starry path of heaven,
To charioteer with wings on high
And to rein in the tempests of the sky.
Chariots of happy gods! fountains of light!
Ye angel-temples bright!
May I unblamed your flamy threshold tread ?
I leave earth's lowly scene;
I leave the moon serene,
The lovely queen of night;
I leave the wide domains
Beyond where Mars his fiercer light can fling,
And Jupiter's vast plains,
(The many-belted king;)
Even to the solitude where Saturn reigns.
Like some stern tyrant to just exile driven;
Dim seen the sullen power appears
In that cold solitude of heaven,
And slow he drags along
The mighty circle of long-lingering years.
Nor shalt thou escape my sight,
Who at the threshold of the sun-trod domes
Art trembling,-youngest daughter of the night!
And you, ye fiery-tressed strangers, you
Comets who wander wide,
Will I along your pathless way pursue,
Whence bending I may view
The worlds whom elder suns have vivified.
For hope, with loveliest visions soothes my mind That even in man, life's winged power,
When comes again the natal hour,
Shall on heaven-wandering feet
In undecaying youth,
Spring to the blessed seat;
Where round the fields of truth
The fiery essences for ever feed;
And o'er the ambrosial mead.
The breezes of serenity
Silent and soothing glide for ever by.
There priest of nature! dost thou shine
Newton! a king among the kings divine.
Whether with harmony's mild force,
He guides along its course
The axle of some beauteous star on high;
Or gazing in the spring
Ebullient with creative energy,
Feels his pure breast with rapturous joy possest,
Inebriate in the holy ecstasy!
I may not call thee mortal, then, my soul!
Immortal longings lift thee to the skies:
Love of thy native home inflames thee now,
With pious madness wise.
Know then thyself! expand thy wings divine!
Soon mingled with thy fathers thou shalt shine
A star amid the starry throng,
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