 | The Works of Thomas Love Peacock |  |
NECESSITY
Εγω και δια Μουσας.
Euripides: Alcestis.
Strophe
My steps have pressed the flowers,That to the Muses' bowers
The eternal dews of Helicon have given:
And trod the mountain height,
Where Science, young and bright,
Scans with poetic gaze the midnight-heaven;
Yet have I found no power to vie
With thine, severe Necessity!
No counteracting spell sublime,
By Orpheus, breathed in elder time,
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No drug imbued with strength divine,
To sons of Æsculapian line,
By pitying Phœbus taught, to soothe the stings of pain.
Antistrophe
Thee, goddess, thee aloneNone seek with suppliant moan:
No votive wreaths thine iron altars dress:
Immutably severe,
The song thou dost not hear,
That speaks the plaint of mortal wretchedness.
Oh, may I ne'er more keenly feel
Thy power, that breaks the strength of steel,
With whose dread course concordant still
Jove executes his sovereign will:
Vain were his might, unseconded by thee.
Regret or shame thou canst not know;
Nor pity for terrestrial woe
Can check thy onward course, or change thy stern decree.
Epode
And thou, in patience bear thy doom,Beneath her heaviest bonds opprest:
Tears cannot burst the marble tomb,
Where e'en the sons of gods must rest.
In life, in death, most loved, most blest,
Was she for whom our fruitless tears are shed;
And round her cold sepulchral bed,
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Wreaths of eternal fame shall spread,
By matchless virtue merited.
There oft the traveller from his path shall turn,
To grace with holy rites her funeral urn,
And muse beneath the lonely cypress shade,
That waves, in silent gloom, where her remains are laid.
| The Works of Thomas Love Peacock | |