ODE I.

ON THE SPRING.

Lo! where the rosy-bosomed hours,
Fair Venus' train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year,
The attic warbler pours her throat
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of spring, While, whispering pleasure as they fly, Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky Their gathered fragrance fling.

Where er the oak's thick branches stretch

A broader, browner shade, Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade.* Beside some water's rushy brink With me the Muse shall sit, and think

(At ease reclined in rustic state) How vain the ardour of the crowd, How low, how little, are the proud, How indigent the great.

Still is the toiling hand of Care,

The panting herds repose,

Yet hark! how through the peopled air,

The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honeyed spring,

And float amid the liquid noon;†
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gayly-gilded trim,
Quick-glancing to the sun.

a bank

O'er-canopied with luscious woodbine.

Shaksp. Mid. Dream. Nare per æstatem liquidam. Virg. Georg. lib. 4. -sporting with quick glance, Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold. Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 7.

To contemplation's sober eye,*
Such is the race of man,

And they that creep and they that fly
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay
But flutter through life's little day,

In fortune's varying colours drest;
Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chilled by Age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.
Methinks I hear, in accents low,

The sportive kind reply,

Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,

No painted plumage to display;
On hasty wings thy youth is flown,
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone-
We frolic while 'tis May.

ODE II.

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes. 'Twas on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had died

The azure flowers that blow,
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,

Gazed on the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,

The velvet of her paws,

Her coat that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,

She saw, and purred applause.

• While insects from the threshold preach, &c. Mr. Green in the Grotto. Dodsley's Miscellanies, vol. v. P. 161.

Still had she gazed, but, 'midst the tide,

Two angel forms were seen to glide,

The Genii of the stream:
Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue,
Through richest purple, to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw:
A whisker first, and then a claw,

With many an ardent wish,

She stretched in vain to reach the prize: What female heart can gold despise?

What Cat's averse to fish? Presumptuous maid! with looks intent, Again she stretched, again she bent,

Nor knew the gulf between:
(Malignant Fate sat by and smiled,)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled;
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood,
She mewed to every watery god

Some speedy aid to send.
No Dolphin came; no Nereid stirred,
Nor cruel Tom or Susan heard:

A fav'rite has no friend!

From hence, ye Beauties! undeceived,
Know one false step is ne'er retrieved,

And be with caution bold:
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes,
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize,
Nor all that glistens gold.

ODE III.

ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE.

YE distant Spires! ye antique Towers!
That crown the watery glade
Where grateful science still adores

Her Henry's holy shade;

And ye that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights the expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead, survey,

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way;

Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
Ah fields beloved in vain!

Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!

I feel the gales that from ye blow

A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing
My weary soul they seem to sooth,
And, redolentt of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.

• King Henry VI. founder of the College.
† And bees their honey redolent of spring.

Dryden's Fable on the Pythag. System.

Say, father Thames! for thou hast seer.
Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margent green,

The paths of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?

The captive linnet which enthral?
What idle progeny succeed

To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?

While some, on earnest business bent,
Their murmuring labours ply
'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint,
To sweeten liberty;

Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dare descry
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,

And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,

Less pleasing when possest; The tear forgot as soon as shed,

The sunshine of the breast; Their buxom health of rosy hue, Wild wit, invention ever new,

And lively cheer of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light
That fly the approach of morn.

Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come,

Nor care beyond to-day:

Yet see how all around 'em wait
The ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune's baleful train! Ah! show them where in ambush stand, To seize their prey, the murderous band! Ah! tell them they are men.

These shall the fury passions tear,
The vultures of the mind;
Disdainful anger, pallid fear,

And shame that skulks behind;
Or pining love shall waste their youth,
Or jealousy, with rankling tooth,

That inly gnaws the secret heart;
And envy wan, and faded care,
Grim-visaged, comfortless despair,
And sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter scorn a sacrifice.

And grinning infamy,

The stings of falsehood those shall try, And hard unkindness' altered eye,

That mocks the tear it forced to flow; And keen remorse, with blood defiled, And moody madness* laughing wild Amid severest wo.

Lo! in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of death,

More hideous than their queen:

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every lab'ring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage;
Lo! poverty to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming age.

To each his sufferings; all are men
⚫ Condemned alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise,
No more; where ignorance is bliss
'Tis folly to be wise.

ODE IV.

TO ADVERSITY.

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade to form her infant mind;

Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learned to melt at others'

Wo.

Sacred at thy frown terrific fly

Self-pleasing folly's idle brood, Wild laughter, noise and thoughtless joy, And leave us leisure to be good. Light they disperse; and with them go The summer friend, the flattering foe: By vain prosperity received,

Wisdom, in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapt'rous thought profound,
And melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend;
Warm charity, the general friend,
With justice, to herself severe,

And pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh! gently on thy suppliant's head,
Dread goddess! lay thy chastening hand,
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band;
(As by the impious thou art seen,)
With thundering voice and threatening mien,
With screaming horror's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell disease, and ghastly poverty.

Thy form benign, O Goddess! wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound my heart: The generous spark extinct revive; Teach me to love and to forgive; Exact my own defects to scan, What others are to feel, and know myself a man.

ODE V.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.-PINDARIC.

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When the author first published this and the following Ode, he was advised, even by his friends, to subjoin some few explanatory notes, but had too much respect for the understanding of his readers to take that liberty

I. 1.

AWAKE, Æolian 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, impetous, see it pour;
The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

Awake, my glory! awake, lute and harp.

David's Psalms. Pindar styles his own poetry, with its musical accompani ments, Eolian song, Æolian strings, the breath of the Æolian flute. The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are here united. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described, as well in its quiet

And Madness laughing in his ireful mood.

barren) with all the pomp of diction, and luxuriant harmony of numbers, as in its more rapid and irresistible course when swollen and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous pas

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,

II. 2.

Perching on the sceptred handt

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.

Theet the voice, the dance obey,
Tempered to thy warbled lay:

O'er Idalia's velvet green

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.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race what ills await!S
Labour and penury, the rack 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's march they spy and glittering shafts of

In loose numbers, wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous shame,

The unconquerable mind and freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods that wave o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles that crown the Egean deep,
Fields that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves
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, oh, Albion! next thy sea-encircled

coast.

III. 1.

Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was nature's darlings 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,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.

•Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations; its connexion with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it. (See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welsh Fragments, the Lapland and American Songs, &c.) ↑ Extra anni solisque vias.- Virgil.

Tutta lontana dal camin del sole.-Petrurch, Canz, 2 Progress of poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there: Spencer imitated the Italian writers, Milton improved on them:

but this school expired soon after the restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since. § Shakspeare.