The generous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love, and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are1 to feel, and know myself a man.

THE PROGRESS OF POETRY.2

A PINDARIC ODE.

I. 1.

AWAKE, Æolian3 lyre, awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of Music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,

Through verdant vales, and Ceres golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain,

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour!

The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

(1) What others are, &c.-Sometimes erroneously printed "what others' are," that is, others' defects. The meaning is-teach me to feel what others are, and by this sympathy with men to become fully conscious that I also belong to the family of man.

(2) Dr. Johnson, in reference to this and the following ode, says slightingly, that at their first publication, " many were contented to be shown beauties that they could not see." The general estimate of these poems is, however, now very high, in spite of the obscurity of some particular parts. The writer has, indeed, in both poems, employed nearly all the resources of the poetic art, and frequently, with distinguished success.

(3) Eolian-Grecian or more especially Pindaric, which style the poet is about to imitate. Pindar speaks of his own poetry as an Eolian strain.

(4) From Helicon's, &c.-Poetry is here represented as a stream, sometimes quietly fertilising its shores, at other times rolling impetuously onward, a grand and awful spectacle; implying that poetry deals equally with the beautiful and the sublime.

I. 2.

Oh! Sovereign' of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares

And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War
Has curbed the fury of his car,

And dropt his thirsty lance, at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feathered king
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing:
Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightning of his eye.

I. 3.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey,

Tempered to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet green3

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen,

On Cytherea's day,

With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;

Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet;

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.

(1) Oh! sovereign, &c.-" Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar."-Gray. (2) Thee the voice, &c.-" Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body."-Gray.

(3) Velvet green-Dr. Johnson lays down, in reference to these words, the following canon:-" An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature." If, however, this rule be allowed to be generally correct, the exceptions to it are very numerous. The truth is, perhaps, that it is the manner in which epithets are introduced from either source that ennobles or degrades the subject, rather than any intrinsic superiority of Nature over Art. (See also note 2, p. 96.)

(4) Purple-i. e. in the classical sense, beautiful. (See note 2, p. 71.)

II. 1.

Man's feeble race1 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 heavenly 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's3 march they spy, and glittering shafts of war.
II. 2.

In climes beyond the solar road,
Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shivering 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,

Glory pursues, and generous Shame,

The unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods that waves o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles that crown the Ægean deep,

Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Meander's amber waves

(1) Man's feeble race, &c.—" 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."—Gray.

(2) Till-i. e. only until the sun appears, and then they vanish; and so poetry scatters cares and anxieties.

(3) Hyperion-"the one that goes or moves above," an epithet of the sun. The proper quantity is "Hyperion."

(4) In climes beyond, &c.-"Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations: its connexion with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it."—Gray.

(5) Woods that wave, &c.-" Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England."-Gray.

In lingering labyrinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of anguish!
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathed around;
Every shade and hallowed fountain
Murmured 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, O Albion! next, thy sea-encircled coast.
III. 1.

Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,

To him the mighty Mother did unveil

Her awful face: the dauntless child
Stretched 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;

Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,2

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."

III. 2.

Nor second he, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,

(1) Alike they scorn, &c.—Dr. Johnson says of this couplet, "His (Gray's) position is at least false in the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom we derive our first school of poetry, Italy was overrun by a tyrant power and 'coward vice,' nor was our state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts." It is, however, probable that the author meant to attribute the "tyrant power" to the state of Greece, and the "coward vice" to that of Italy, and to assign them as the reasons for the Muses' abandonment of both.

(2) Thrilling fears-Compare the reference to Shakspere at the close of Collins' "Ode to Fear.' (See p. 399.)

(3) Nor second he, &c.—This sublime eulogy on Milton must be pronounced in every respect worthy of its subject. The reference to the "living throne and sapphire blaze" is from Ezekiel i. 20, 26, 28. "This account," says Dr. Johnson, "of Milton's blindness, if we suppose it caused by study in the formation of his poem-a supposition surely allowable-is poetically true, and happily imagined."

The secrets of the abyss to spy.

He passed 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 pace.

III. 3.

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 eagle bare,
Sailing with supreme dominion,
Through the azure deep of air:
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
Such forms as glitter in the Muses' ray,
With orient hues, unborrowed 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.

(1) Two coursers, &c.-This verse and the following, Gray himself informs us, "are meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes." Dr. Johnson, however, remarks upon the passage-" The car of Dryden, with his two coursers,' has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which any other rider may be placed."

(2) Hark! his hands, &c.—In reference to Dryden, as the author of the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day.

(3) Thoughts that, &c.—i. e. thoughts that have a definite form and being, and words that kindle the feelings.

(4) Theban eagle-" Pindar compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens, that croak and clamour in vain below, while it pursues its flight, regardless of their noise."-Gray.

(5) Yet oft before, &c.-Dugald Stewart has remarked, in his "Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind," p. 486, "that Gray, in describing the infantine reveries of poetical genius, has fixed with exquisite judgment on that class of our conceptions which are derived from visible objects."