Poems, chiefly dramatic and lyric by the Revd. H. Boyd ... containing the following dramatic poems: The Helots, a tragedy, The Temple of Vesta, The Rivals, The Royal Message. Prize Poems, &c. &c |
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INTRODUCTION,
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 | Poems, chiefly dramatic and lyric |  |
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INTRODUCTION,
TO THE TWO FOLLOWING DRAMATIC POEMS.
The dissipation of the day is gone,With all her trivial scenes, her trivial sounds
Discordant, various, as the themes that fill
Her ear, still open to the novelties
Of every moment! they are fled far west
After Hyperion's gaudy wheels; the cares,
The pleasures frivolous, and anxious toils
As frivolous, awake in other lands
And bustle in his beam, where yet his beam
Dispenses light. They flourish in his smile
And they have charms for others, who delight
To turmoil in the varied chace, for me
I better love, at the still, midnight hour
Amid the pause of nature and of life
To hear the solemn pipe of him, who rules
The rude winds, call his levies to the war
Nocturnal! Better far I like to hear
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The concert of the gales in cadence deep,
Æolian harmony! or seems to pause
Respondent to their pause! they lift the mind
Like the full organ from the minstrelsie
Of idleness and youth to graver themes!
Ye lovers' hopes, farewell: ye pictur'd scenes
Of jealousy farewell! ye sanguine fields
Ye flows and ebbs of states in former times
Farewell! I sing the flow and ebb of souls!
I sing Presumption, dashing on the rocks
Of that eternal barrier (fixt by heaven
To guard from violence the bounds of right)
And her gay fragments, scatter'd on the wave,
I sing Despondence , in a baleful calm
With compass broke, upon the stagnant flood
With monsters teeming to her frighted eye
Portentous births, beneath the muffled noon
Of brazen skies!—Ye martial scenes, farewell
In Siloams' brook I wash your stains away!—
Charge not the muse with fiction, while she sings
Of old judicial blindness, mental sleep
Lethean, tho' the clamouring elements
Nay tho' the height of their proud masonry
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By dread Bellona's forceful strokes) proclaim'd
Their sleep a sleep of death, nor deem his tale
An insult to your reason, who, unwarn'd
By heaven's dread interdict, by heaven, whose hand
He saw in daily wonders, dar'd the deed
Illicit, which the sons of Israel mourn'd
In blood, thrice conquer'd by a feeble foe.
The first were victims to their proud contempt
Of heavenly justice, to destruction brought
By the dire sophistry of Vice matur'd;
Self-adulation, self-abuse! the last
By earthly love (a fatal passion) led
Of heavenly mercy to despond, renounc'd
His reason and his god. When now the cup
Of blessing, sent by gracious heaven, almost
Had reach'd his lips, his wild precipitance
Dash'd the celestial boon away: is this
A character, the coinage of the muse?—
Would heaven it were! then would the foulest fiend
That rides the night, and deepens all her glooms
The deadliest incubus, no more infest
Our isles! no more his visionary gall
Would dash the bowl, his visionary dread
Of want or infamy, or slighted love
Or slighted pride would arm the hand no more
Against the throbbing heart! O scorn of life!—
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Thy unrelenting fangs! Despondence! Hail
I know thee by thy fixt and beamless eye
Thy hollow woe-worn cheek and stealthy pace!
Yet, all unlovely as thou art thou charm'st
The hapless soul who quits her hold on heav'n
And oft to lawless, oft to ruthless deeds
Conduct'st him thro' the gloom! Ah! who can aid
With counsel, that ungovernable man
Whose moon-struck madness, on the friendly tower
Quenches the flaming beacon, flings away
His anchor, and presumes to ride the waves
When all the tempests are abroad? like him
Is he, who thinks to stem the storms of life
Without religion's aid! and what deprives
The wretched pilgrim of religious aid,
And flings him to Despondence for a cure
Of all his ills? Sad cure! what brings to birth
That sullen fiend, who quaffs the balmy tide
Of Hope, and pours in poison in its stead?
It is another fiend, Presumption nam'd,
Proud mother of a wayward child! 'Tis she
Who (still more frantic than old Canaan's race,
Who trusted in their rampires, and their stores,
And in their copious springs perennial wealth,
To bear them thro' the siege, tho' Israel storm'd
Their walls, for slattery woke while conscience slept
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The brittle strength of bones, the nervous net,
(Curious, but flimsey as the Gossamer
Against the breath of Heaven) the ceaseless dance
Of youthful spirits, and the sanguine maze,
Forgetful of the hand that rolls the tide,
Thro' all her blue meanders, to the fount
Of life, and still renews the still consum'd
With plastic progress; yet forgetful they
Of hourly admonition from without,
And from within, pursue their revels on,
Waste the bland stores of Nature in debauch,
And when the means are spent, they go to sale,
They sell their birthright oft, without a blush,
They sell the birthright of their country, lost
To shame! and by the venal vote procure
Fresh plunder for the harpies of the mind,
Which plague them into constant vigilance,
Vivacious still, and craving!—Yet for less.
Poor Belgia is baptiz'd with blood, and Gaul
Her blasted vineyards mourns, and yet we sleep
Secure, as Jericho, when Israel came
And shook her walls! O sleep! ye Orient gales,
Sleep on, nor bring the raging pest of Gaul
Across the surge! O chain the fellest fiend
Of all the fell, unbridled anarchy,
Nor let her hither point her deadly rage,
Tho' we deserve the visitant! we hear
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Of Jericho! We see the dreadful march
Of Magog , polar king, predicted long.
We hear below the subterranean voice
Of that stern delegate of God, who mines
His way in central horror, from the sea
Calabrian, to the broad Ionian surge,
Perhaps, to measure conquering step by step
With him who leads the northern legions on,
And match the music of his enginry
With hideous noise, beneath the rooted hills.
While, as the Hyperborean flag unfurls
Over proud Rhodope, the crescent pale
Of Othman fades, with more than wizard charms;
And, as the mighty spirit of the deep
Repeats his giant warnings, Tyber shrinks,
And hourly tells his terrors, lest he lose
His being and his name, or exil'd thence,
Be doom'd to wander by another shore!—
Such are the warnings of the moment, ye
That bear, attend—and ye that scorn, beware.
Some northern Potentate, mentioned by Ezekiel and St. John, by the name of Magog, who is destined to contribute to the fall of that power, supposed to be the Ottoman Empire, by the Commentators on the Revelations, the Decline and Fall of the Papal and Mahommedon Powers are, by Mede, Newton, Hind, &c. &c. on the Apocalypse shewn to correspond in time.
Some northern Potentate, mentioned by Ezekiel and St. John, by the name of Magog, who is destined to contribute to the fall of that power, supposed to be the Ottoman Empire, by the Commentators on the Revelations, the Decline and Fall of the Papal and Mahommedon Powers are, by Mede, Newton, Hind, &c. &c. on the Apocalypse shewn to correspond in time.
| Poems, chiefly dramatic and lyric | |