compare our happy lot, not only with the situation of those who are necessitated to labour beneath the blaze of an European sun, but with those who are condemned to endure the tenfold horrors of a torrid clime. It is a comparison of this kind which has rendered the following lines so pre-eminently striking, especially towards the close, where the personification of thirst introduces a thought that speaks to us in the very voice of nature. But ever against restless heat, Me, Goddess, in such cavern lay, Sore sighs the weary swain, beneath WARTON.* But not only does a retreat of this kind afford the most delicious refreshment to the languid and over-heated functions of the body, it communicates also to the intellectual powers a luxury of a still higher description, leading to those gentle thoughts and beautiful imaginings which dissipate for a time the cares and turmoils of a restless world, and woo the breast to peace and * Ode on the Approach of Summer. harmony. Who that has once enjoyed the tranquil blessings of an hour like this, is not ready to exclaim with the philosophic enthusiasm of Lucretius, Si non aurea sunt juvenum simulacra per ædeis What, though the dome be wanting, whose proud walls A thousand lamps irradiate, propt sublime By frolic forms of youths in massy gold, Flinging their splendours o'er the midnight feast; Though gold and silver blaze not o'er the board, Nor music echo round the gaudy roof? Yet listless laid the velvet grass along Near gliding streams, by shadowy trees o'er-arch'd, pomps we need not. Such Good. or to pause with delight over the picture which Gray, in the very spirit of the Roman bard, has given us of his minstrel-youth "to fortune and to fame unknown." "There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by." It is the pre-disposition which scenery of this kind, and at such an hour, gives to the empire of fancy and reverie, which has rendered it so great a favourite with the lovers of poetry and romantic fiction. Relieved not only from the oppression of intolerable heat, but surrounded by the soft shadowings of a dreamy twilight, the ear, at the same time, lulled by the lapse of murmuring water, and the breezy stirrings of over-hanging foliage, imagination fleets as it were into a world of its own creation, peopling its fairy realms with all that can soothe the senses, and delight the gifted spirit, with all that legendary lore, or bardic harpings have declared in knightly hall, or ladies' bower. And such was the enthusiasm which Milton owned, when he addressed the pensive inspirer of his earliest strains: When the sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke, With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep; And let some strange mysterious Dream Wave at his wings in aery stream Of lively portraiture display'd, Softly on my eye-lids laid; And, as I wake, sweet musick breathe Above, about, or underneath. Il Penseroso. |