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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. 403

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.

Hail O Urania hail!

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 P
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
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.

my

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,

mind

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,

A god the gods among.

THE WIFE OF FERGUS.

A MONODRAMA.

Scene, the Palace Court. The Queen speaking from the Battlements.

CEASE-cease your torments! spare the sufferers! Scotchmen, not theirs the deed;-the crime was mine, Mine is the glory.

Idle threats! I stand
Secure. All access to these battlements

Is barr'd beyond your sudden strength to force,
And lo! the dagger by which Fergus died!

Shame on you, Scotchmen, that a woman's hand
Was left to do this deed! Shame on you, Thanes,
Who with slave-patience have so long endured
The wrongs, the insolence of tyranny!

Ye coward race!-that not a husband's sword
Smote that adulterous king! that not a wife
Revenged her own pollution; in his blood
Wash'd her soul pure; and for the sin compell'd,
Atoned by virtuous murder! Oh, my God!
Of what beast-matter hast thou moulded them,
To bear with wrongs like these? There was a time
When, if the bard had feign'd you such a tale,
Your eyes had throbb'd with anger, and your hands
In honest instinct would have grasped the sword.
O miserable men who have disgraced

Your fathers, whom your sons must blush to name!

Ay, ye can threaten me! ye can be brave
In anger to a woman! one whose virtue
Upbraids your coward vice; whose name will live
Honour'd and prais'd in song, when not a hand
Shall root from your forgotten monuments

The cankering moss.

Fools! fools! to think that death

Is not a thing familiar to my mind!

As if I knew not what must consummate
My glory! as if aught that earth can give

Could tempt me to endure the load of life!
Scotchmen! ye saw when Fergus to the altar
Led me, his maiden queen. Ye blest me ther,
I heard you bless me, and I thought that Heaven
Had heard you also, and that I was blest,
For I loved Fergus. Bear me witness, God!
With what a sacred heart-sincerity

My lips pronounced the unrecallable vow

That made me his, him mine; bear witness, Thou'
Before whose throne I this day must appear,
Stain'd with his blood and mine! my heart was his
His in the strength of all its first affections.
In all obedience, in all love, I kept

Holy my marriage vow. Behold me, Thanes!
Time hath not changed the face on which his eye
So often dwelt, when with assiduous care

He sought my love, with seeming truth, for one,
Sincere herself, impossible to doubt.

Time hath not changed that face;-I speak not now,
With pride, of beauties that will feed the worm
To-morrow! but with joyful pride I say
That if the truest and most perfect love
Deserved requital, such was ever mine.
How often reeking from the adulterous bed,
Have I received him! and with no complaint.
Neglect and insult, cruelty and scorn,

Long, long did I endure, and long curb down
The indignant nature.

Tell your countrymen,
Scotchmen, what I have spoken-say to them,
le saw the queen of Scotland lift the dagger,
Red from her husband's heart; that in her own
She plunged it.

stabs herself.

Tell them also, that she felt

No quilty fear in death.

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