Thy temple's pride design: Its southern site, its truth complete, There Picture's toil shall well relate, The buskined Muse1 shall near her stand, There let me oft, retired by day, There, waste the mournful lamp of night, To hear a British shell! TO FEAR. Thou, to whom the world unknown, I see, I see thee near. I know thy hurried step; thy haggard eye! 1 See note 4, p. 332. ! Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, Epode. In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, Yet he, the bard' who first invoked thy name, But who is he whom later garlands grace2: Wrapped in thy cloudy veil, the incestuous queen3, Sighed the sad call her son and husband heard, When once alone it broke the silent scene, And he, the wretch of Thebes1, no more appeared. O Fear! I know thee by my throbbing heart: Antistrophe. Thou who such weary lengths hast past, 'Gainst which the big waves beat, 1 Eschylus, the tragic poet, fought at the battle of Marathon. 2 Sophocles. 3 Jocasta. 4 Edipus. Hear drowning seamen's cries in tempests brought? Which thy awakening bards have told : O thou, whose spirit most possessed Teach me but once like him to feel: TO SIMPLICITY. O thou, by Nature taught In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong; In Fancy, loveliest child, Thy babe, or Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song! Thou, who with hermit heart, And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall; In Attic1 robe arrayed, O chaste, unboastful Nymph, to thee I call! By all the honeyed store, 1 The Attic style was remarkable for its simplicity. 2 A mountain in Sicily, famous for its honey. By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear; In evening musings slow, By old Cephissus3 deep, Who spread his wavy sweep In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat: When holy Freedom died, No equal haunt allured thy future feet. O sister meek of Truth, To my admiring youth Thy sober aid and native charms infuse! Though Beauty culled the wreath, While Rome could none esteem You loved her hills, and led her laureat band: To one distinguished throne, And turned thy face, and fled her altered land. No more, in hall or bower, The Passions own thy power; Love, only Love, her forceless numbers mean: Nor olive more, nor vine, Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. Though taste, though genius, bless To some divine excess, Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole : May court, may charm our eye! Thou, only thou, canst raise the meeting soul! 1 The nightingale. 2 Sophocles. 3 A river of Greece, that rises in Phocis, and flows into the lake Copais in Boeotia. Of these let others ask To aid some mighty task; I only seek to find thy temperate vale; To maids and shepherds round, And all thy sons, O Nature, learn my tale. ON THE POETICAL CHARACTER. As once, -if, not with light regard, -Him, whose school above the rest, Her baffled hand, with vain endeavour, Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name! To whom, prepared and bathed in heaven, 3 To few the godlike gift assigns, To gird their best prophetic loins, And gaze her visions wild, and feel unmixed her flame! The band, as fairy legends say, Was wove on that creating day, When He who called with thought to birth Yon tented sky, this laughing earth, And dressed with springs and forests tall, And poured the main, engirting all, 1 Spenser. 2 Florimel; see Spenser, leg. 4. 3 Talisman. |