ODES. ODE TO PITY. O THOU, the friend of man, assigned With balmy hands his wounds to bind, And charm his frantic woe : When first Distress, with dagger keen, Broke forth to waste his destined scene, His wild unsated foe! By Pella's bard, a magic name, By all the griefs his thought could frame Receive my humble rite: Thy sky-worn robes of tenderest blue, But wherefore need I wander wide Deserted stream, and mute? Wild Arun too has heard thy strains, There first the wren thy myrtles shed And while he sung the female heart, Come, Pity, come, by Fancy's aid, There Picture's toils shall well relate The buskined Muse shall near her stand, There let me oft, retired by day, Allowed with thee to dwell: There waste the mournful lamp of night, Till, Virgin, thou again delight To hear a British shell! ODE TO FEAR. THOU, to whom the world unknown, I see, I see thee near. I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye! EPODE. In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue; The maids and matrons on her awful voice, Yet he, the bard who first invoked thy name, But reached from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel. But who is he whom later garlands grace, Who left a while o'er Hybla's dews to rove, With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace, Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove? Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, the incestuous queen And he the wretch of Thebes no more appeared. O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart: Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine! ANTISTROPHE, Thou who such weary lengths hast past, Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell, 'Gainst which the big waves beat, Hear drowning seamen's cries, in tempests brought? Dark power, with shuddering meek submitted thought, Be mine to read the visions old Which thy awakening bards have told : |