The poems (1969) :: :: University of Virginia Library

From purling streams and the Elysian scene,
From groves that smile with never-fading green,
I reascend: in Atropos' despite
Restored to Celadon and upper light.
Ye gods, that sway the regions under ground,
Reveal to mortal view your realms profound;
At his command admit the eye of day:
When Celadon commands, what god can disobey?
Nor seeks he your Tartarean fires to know,
The house of torture and the abyss of woe;
But happy fields and mansions free from pain,
Gay meads and springing flowers, best please the gentle swain.

That little, naked, melancholy thing,

My soul, when first she tried her flight to wing,
Began with speed new regions to explore,
And blundered through a narrow postern door.
First most devoutly having said its prayers,
It tumbled down a thousand pair of stairs,
Through entries long, through cellars vast and deep,
Where ghostly rats their habitations keep,
Where spiders spread their webs and owlish goblins sleep.
After so many chances had befell,
It came into a mead of asphodel:
Betwixt the confines of the light and dark
It lies, of 'Lysium the St. James's Park.
Here spirit-beaux flutter along the Mall,
And shadows in disguise skate o'er the iced Canal;
Here groves embowered and more sequestered shades,
Frequented by the ghosts of ancient maids,
Are seen to rise. The melancholy scene,
With gloomy haunts and twilight walks between,
Conceals the wayward band: here spend their time
Greensickness girls that died in youthful prime,
Virgins forlorn, all dressed in willow-green-i,

With Queen Elizabeth and Nicolini.

More to reveal, or many words to use,
Would tire alike your patience and my muse.
Believe that never was so faithful found
Queen Proserpine to Pluto under ground,
Or Cleopatra to her Mark Antony,
As Orozmades to his Celadony.

P.S. Lucrece for half a crown will show you fun,
But Mrs. Oldfield is become a nun.
Nobles and cits, Prince Pluto and his spouse,
Flock to the ghost of Covent-Garden House:
Plays, which were hissed above, below revive,
When dead applauded that were damned alive.
The people, as in life, still keep their passions,
But differ something from the world in fashions.

Queen Artemisia breakfasts on bohea,
And Alexander wears a ramilie.

2 [Translation from Statius,

Thebaid VI 646–88, 704–24]

Then thus the king: ‘Whoe'er the quoit can wield,
And furthest send its weight athwart the field,

Let him stand forth his brawny arm to boast.’
Swift at the word, from out the gazing host
Young Pterelas with strength unequal drew,
Labouring the disc, and to small distance threw.
The band around admire the mighty mass,
A slippery weight and formed of polished brass.
The love of honour bade two youths advance,
Achaians born, to try the glorious chance;
A third arose, of Acarnania he,
Of Pisa one and three from Ephyre.
Nor more; for now Nesimachus's son,
By acclamations roused, came towering on.
Another orb upheaved his strong right hand,
Then thus: ‘Ye Argive flower, ye warlike band,
Who trust your arms shall raze the Tyrian towers,
And batter Cadmus' walls with stony showers,
Receive a worthier load; yon puny ball
Let youngsters toss.’
He said, and scornful flung the unheeded weight
Aloof: the champions trembling at the sight
Prevent disgrace, the palm despaired resign.
All but two youths the enormous orb decline:
These conscious shame witheld and pride of noble line.
As bright and huge the spacious circle lay,
With doubled light it beamed against the day:
So glittering shows the Thracian godhead's shield,
With such a gleam affrights Pangaea's field,
When blazing 'gainst the sun it shines from far,
And, clashed, rebellows with the din of war.

Phlegyas the long-expected play began,
Summoned his strength and called forth all the man.
All eyes were bent on his experienced hand,
For oft in Pisa's sports his native land
Admired that arm; oft on Alpheus' shore
The ponderous brass in exercise he bore:
Where flowed the widest stream he took his stand;
Sure flew the disc from his unerring hand,
Nor stopped till it had cut the further strand.
And now in dust the polished ball he rolled,
Then grasped its weight, elusive of his hold;
Now fitting to his grip and nervous arm,
Suspends the crowd with animation warm,
Nor tempts he yet the plain but, hurled upright,
Emits the mass, a prelude of his might.

Firmly he plants each knee and o'er his head,
Collecting all his force, the circle sped.
It towers to cut the clouds; now through the skies
Sings in its rapid way and strengthens as it flies;
Anon with slackened rage comes quivering down,
Heavy and huge, and cleaves the solid ground.

So from the astonished stars, her nightly train,
The sun's pale sister, drawn by magic strain,
Deserts precipitant her darkened sphere.
In vain the nations with officious fear
Their cymbals toss and sounding brass explore:
The Æmonian hag enjoys her dreadful hour,
And smiles malignant on the labouring power.

Third in the labours of the disc came on,
With sturdy step and slow, Hippomedon.
Artful and strong he poised the well-known weight,
By Phlegyas warned and fired by Mnestheus' fate,
That to avoid and this to emulate.
His vigorous arm he tried before he flung,
Braced all his nerves and every sinew strung;
Then, with a tempest's whirl and wary eye,
Pursued his cast and hurled the orb on high;
The orb on high tenacious of its course,
True to the mighty arm that gave it force,
Far overleaps all bound and joys to see
Its ancient lord secure of victory.
The theatre's green height and woody wall
Tremble ere it precipitates its fall;
The ponderous mass sinks in the cleaving ground,
While vales and woods and echoing hills rebound.
As when from Aetna's smoking summit broke,
The eyeless Cyclops heaved the craggy rock:
Where ocean frets beneath the dashing oar,
And parting surges round the vessel roar,
'Twas there he aimed the meditated harm,
And scarce Ulysses scaped his giant arm.
A tiger's pride the victor bore away,
With native spots and artful labour gay:
A shining border round the margin rolled,
And calmed the terrors of his claws in gold.

3 [Lines on Beech Trees]

And, as they bow their hoary tops, relate
In murmuring sounds the dark decrees of fate;
While visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf and swarm on every bough.

4 [Translation from Tasso,

Gerusalemme Liberata Canto xiv 32–9]

Preser commiato, e si'l desire gli sprona, &c:

Dismissed at length, they break through all delay
To tempt the dangers of the doubtful way;
And first to Ascalon their steps they bend,
Whose walls along the neighbouring sea extend.
Nor yet in prospect rose the distant shore,
Scarce the hoarse waves from far were heard to roar,
When thwart the road a river rolled its flood
Tempestuous, and all further course withstood:
The torrent-stream his ancient bounds disdains,
Swoll'n with new force and late-descending rains.
Irresolute they stand, when lo! appears
The wondrous sage: vigorous he seemed in years,
Awful his mien; low as his feet there flows
A vestment unadorned, though white as new-fall'n snows;
Against the stream the waves secure he trod,
His head a chaplet bore, his hand a rod.

As on the Rhine when Boreas' fury reigns
And winter binds the floods in icy chains,
Swift shoots the village-maid in rustic play,
Smooth, without step, adown the shining way,
Fearless in long excursion loves to glide,
And sports and wantons o'er the frozen tide;
So moved the seer, but on no hardened plain:

The river boiled beneath and rushed towards the main.
Where fixed in wonder stood the warlike pair
His course he turned and thus relieved their care:

‘Vast, O my friends, and difficult the toil
To seek your hero in a distant soil!
No common helps, no common guide, ye need,
Art it requires and more than winged speed.
What length of sea remains, what various lands,
Oceans unknown, inhospitable sands!
For adverse fate the captive chief has hurled
Beyond the confines of our narrow world.
Great things and full of wonder in your ears
I shall unfold; but first dismiss your fears,
Nor doubt with me to tread the downward road
That to the grotto leads, my dark abode.’

Scarce had he said, before the warriors' eyes
When mountain-high the waves disparted rise:
The flood on either hand its billows rears,
And in the midst a spacious arch appears.
Their hands he seized and down the steep he led,
Beneath the obedient river's inmost bed.
The watery glimmerings of a fainter day
Discovered half, and half concealed, their way,
As when athwart the dusky woods by night
The uncertain crescent gleams a sickly light.
Through subterraneous passages they went,
Earth's inmost cells and caves of deep descent.
Of many a flood they viewed the secret source,
The birth of rivers, rising to their course;
Whate'er with copious train its channel fills,
Floats into lakes or bubbles into rills.
The Po was there to see, Danubius' bed,
Euphrates' fount and Nile's mysterious head.
Further they pass, where ripening minerals flow,
And embryon metals undigested glow;
Sulphureous veins and living silver shine,
Which soon the parent sun's warm powers refine,
In one rich mass unite the precious store,
The parts combine and harden into ore.
Here gems break through the night with glittering beam,
And paint the margin of the costly stream.
All stones of lustre shoot their vivid ray,
And mix attempered in a various day.

Here the soft emerald smiles, of verdant hue,

And rubies flame, with sapphires heavenly blue;
The diamond there attracts the wondering sight,
Proud of its thousand dyes and luxury of light.

5 [Translation from Dante,

Inferno Canto xxxiii 1–78]

From his dire food the grisly felon raised
His gore-dyed lips, which on the clottered locks
Of the half-devoured head he wiped, and thus
Began: ‘Would'st thou revive the deep despair,
The anguish, that, unuttered, natheless wrings
My inmost heart? Yet if the telling may
Beget the traitor's infamy, whom thus
I ceaseless gnaw insatiate, thou shalt see me
At once give loose to utterance and to tears.

‘I know not who thou art nor on what errand
Sent hither; but a Florentine my ear,
Won by thy tongue, declares thee. Know, thou see'st
In me Count Ugolino, and Ruggieri,
Pisa's perfidious prelate, this: now hear
My wrongs and from them judge of my revenge.

‘That I did trust him, that I was betrayed
By trusting, and by treachery slain, it recks not
That I advise thee; that which yet remains
To thee and all unknown (a horrid tale),
The bitterness of death, I shall unfold.
Attend, and say if he have injured me.

‘Through a small crevice opening, what scant light
That grim and antique tower admitted (since
Of me the Tower of Famine hight, and known
To many a wretch) already 'gan the dawn
To send. The whilst I slumbering lay, a sleep
Prophetic of my woes with direful hand
Oped the dark veil of fate. I saw methought
Toward Pisa's mount, that intercepts the view
Of Lucca, chased by hell-hounds gaunt and bloody
A wolf full-grown; with fleet and equal speed
His young ones ran beside him. Lanfranc there
And Sigismundo and Gualandi rode
Amain, my deadly foes, headed by this
The deadliest: he their chief, the foremost he
Flashed to pursue and cheer the eager cry.
Nor long endured the chase: the panting sire,
Of strength bereft, his helpless offspring soon
O'erta'en beheld, and in their trembling flanks
The hungry pack their sharp-set fangs embrued.

‘The morn had scarce commenced when I awoke:
My children (they were with me) sleep as yet
Gave not to know their sum of misery,
But yet in low and uncompleted sounds
I heard 'em wail for bread. Oh! thou art cruel,
Or thou dost mourn to think what my poor heart

Foresaw, foreknew; oh! if thou weep not now,
Where are thy tears? Too soon they had aroused them,
Sad with the fears of sleep, and now the hour
Of timely food approached; when, at the gate
Below, I heard the dreadful clank of bars
And fastening bolts. Then on my children's eyes
Speechless my sight I fixed, nor wept, for all
Within was stone. They wept, unhappy boys,
They wept; and first my little dear Anselmo
Cried, ‘Father, why do you gaze so sternly?
What would you have?’ Yet wept I not or answered
All that whole day or the succeeding night,
Till a new sun arose with weakly gleam
And wan, such as mought entrance find within
That house of woe. But oh! when I beheld
My sons, and in four faces saw my own
Despair reflected, either hand I gnawed
For anguish, which they construed hunger. Straight
Arising all they cried, ‘Far less shall be
Our sufferings, sir, if you resume your gift;
These miserable limbs with flesh you clothed;
Take back what once was yours.’ I swallowed down
My struggling sorrow, nor to heighten theirs.
That day and yet another, mute we sat
And motionless. O earth, could'st thou not gape
Quick to devour me? Yet a fourth day came,
When Gaddo, at my feet outstretched, imploring
In vain my help, expired; ere the sixth morn
Had dawned, my other three before my eyes
Died one by one. I saw 'em fall; I heard
Their doleful cries. For three days more I groped
About among their cold remains (for then
Hunger had reft my eyesight), often calling
On their dear names, that heard me now no more;
The fourth, what sorrow could not, famine did.’

He finished; then with unrelenting eye
Askance he turned him, hasty to renew
The hellish feast, and rent his trembling prey.

6 [Translation from Propertius,

Elegies III v 1–2, 19–48]

Love, gentle power, to peace was e'er a friend:
Before the goddess' shrine we too, love's votaries, bend.
Still may his bard in softer fights engage:
Wars hand to hand with Cynthia let me wage.

Long as of youth the joyous hours remain,
Me may Castalia's sweet recess detain,
Fast by the umbrageous vale lulled to repose,
Where Aganippe warbles as it flows;
Or roused by sprightly sounds from out the trance,
I'd in the ring knit hands and join the Muses' dance.
Give me to send the laughing bowl around,
My soul in Bacchus' pleasing fetters bound;
Let on this head unfading flowers reside,
There bloom the vernal rose's earliest pride;
And when, our flames commissioned to destroy,
Age step 'twixt love and me, and intercept our joy;
When my changed head these locks no more shall know,
And all its jetty honours turn to snow;
Then let me rightly spell of nature's ways.
To Providence, to him my thoughts I'd raise,
Who taught this vast machine its steadfast laws,
That first, eternal, universal Cause;
Search to what regions yonder star retires,
Who monthly waning hides her paly fires,
And whence, anew revived, with silver light
Relumes her crescent orb to cheer the dreary night;
How rising winds the face of ocean sweep;
Where lie the eternal fountains of the deep;
And whence the cloudy magazines maintain
Their wintry war or pour the autumnal rain;
How flames perhaps, with dire confusion hurled,
Shall sink this beauteous fabric of the world;
What colours paint the vivid arch of Jove;
What wondrous force the solid earth can move,
When Pindus' self approaching ruin dreads,
Shakes all his pines and bows his hundred heads;
Why does yon orb, so exquisitely bright,
Obscure his radiance in a short-lived night;
Whence the Seven Sisters' congregated fires,

And what Bootes' lazy wagon tires;
How the rude surge its sandy bounds control;
Who measured out the year and bade the seasons roll;
If realms beneath those fabled torments know,
Pangs without respite, fires that ever glow;
Earth's monster-brood stretched on their iron bed;
The hissing terrors round Alecto's head;
Scarce to nine acres Tityus' bulk confined;
The triple dog that scares the shadowy kind;
All angry heaven inflicts or hell can feel,
The pendent rock, Ixion's whirling wheel,
Famine at feasts and thirst amid the stream.
Or are our fears the enthusiast's empty dream,
And all the scenes that hurt the grave's repose,
But pictured horror and poetic woes?

These soft, inglorious joys my hours engage;
Be love my youth's pursuit and science crown my age.
You, whose young bosoms feel a nobler flame,
Redeem what Crassus lost and vindicate his name.

7 Agrippina, a Tragedy

THE ARGUMENT

The drama opens with the indignation of Agrippina, at receiving her son's orders from Anicetus to remove from Baiae, and to have her guard taken from her. At this time Otho having conveyed Poppaea from the house of her husband Rufus Crispinus, brings her to Baiae, where he means to conceal her among the croud; or, if his fraud is discovered, to have recourse to the Emperor's authority; but, knowing the lawless temper of Nero, he determines not to have recourse to that expedient, but on the utmost necessity. In the meantime he commits her to the care of Anicetus, whom he takes to be his friend, and in whose age he thinks he may safely confide. Nero is not yet come to Baiae: but Seneca, whom he sends before him, informs Agrippina of the accusation concerning Rubellius Plancus, and desires her to clear herself, which she does briefly; but demands to see her son, who, on his arrival, acquits her of all suspicion, and restores her to her honours. In the meanwhile Anicetus, to whose care Poppaea had been entrusted by Otho, contrives the following plot to ruin Agrippina: He betrays his trust to Otho, and brings Nero, as it were by chance, to the sight of the beautiful Poppaea; the Emperor is immediately

struck with her charms, and she, by a feigned resistance, increases his passion; tho', in reality, she is from the first dazzled with the prospect of empire, and forgets Otho: She therefore joins with Anicetus in his design of ruining Agrippina, soon perceiving that it will be for her interest. Otho hearing that the Emperor had seen Poppaea, is much enraged; but not knowing that this interview was obtained thro' the treachery of Anicetus, is readily persuaded by him to see Agrippina in secret, and acquaint her with his fears that her son Nero would marry Poppaea. Agrippina, to support her own power, and to wean the Emperor from the love of Poppaea, gives Otho encouragement, and promises to support him. Anicetus secretly introduces Nero to hear their discourse; who resolves immediately on his mother's death, and, by Anicetus's means, to destroy her by drowning. A solemn feast, in honour of their reconciliation, is to be made; after which she being to go by sea to Bauli, the ship is so contrived as to sink or crush her; she escapes by accident, and returns to Baiae. In this interval Otho has an interview with Poppaea; and being duped a second time by Anicetus and her, determines to fly with her into Greece, by means of a vessel which is to be furnished by Anicetus; but he, pretending to remove Poppaea on board in the night, conveys her to Nero's apartment: She there encourages and determines Nero to banish Otho, and finish the horrid deed he had attempted on his mother. Anicetus undertakes to execute his resolves; and, under pretence of a plot upon the Emperor's life, is sent with a guard to murder Agrippina, who is still at Baiae in imminent fear, and irresolute how to conduct herself. The account of her death, and the Emperor's horrour and fruitless remorse, finishes the drama.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Agrippina The Empress mother
Nero The Emperor.
Poppaea Believed to be in love with Otho.
Otho A young man of quality, in love with Poppaea.
Seneca The Emperor's preceptor.
Anicetus Captain of the Guards.
Demetrius The Cynic, friend to Seneca.
Aceronia Confidante to Agrippina.

Scene, the Emperor's villa at Baiae

ACT I.

SCENE I.

[Agrippina. Aceronia]
AGRIPPINA
'Tis well, begone! your errand is performed. [Speaks as to Anicetus entering.]

The message needs no comment. Tell your master,
His mother shall obey him. Say you saw her
Yielding due reverence to his high command:
Alone, unguarded and without a lictor
As fits the daughter of Germanicus.
Say, she retired to Antium; there to tend
Her household cares, a woman's best employment.
What if you add, how she turned pale and trembled:
You think, you spied a tear stand in her eye,
And would have dropped, but that her pride restrained it?
(Go! you can paint it well) 'twill profit you,
And please the stripling. Yet 'twould dash his joy
To hear the spirit of Britannicus

Yet walks on earth: at least there are who know
Without a spell to raise, and bid it fire
A thousand haughty hearts, unused to shake
When a boy frowns, nor to be lured with smiles
To taste of hollow kindness, or partake
His hospitable board: they are aware
Of the unpledged bowl, they love not aconite.

ACERONIA
He's gone; and much I hope these walls alone
And the mute air are privy to your passion.
Forgive your servant's fears, who sees the danger
Which fierce resentment cannot fail to raise
In haughty youth and irritated power.

AGRIPPINA

And dost thou talk to me, to me, of danger,
Of haughty youth and irritated power,
To her that gave it being, her that armed
This painted Jove, and taught his novice hand
To aim the forked bolt; while he stood trembling,
Scared at the sound and dazzled with its brightness?

'Tis like, thou hast forgot, when yet a stranger

To adoration, to the grateful steam
Of flattery's incense and obsequious vows
From voluntary realms, a puny boy,
Decked with no other lustre than the blood
Of Agrippina's race, he lived unknown
To fame or fortune; haply eyed at distance
Some edileship, ambitious of the power
To judge of weights and measures; scarcely dared
On expectation's strongest wing to soar
High as the consulate, that empty shade
Of long-forgotten liberty: when I
Oped his young eye to bear the blaze of greatness;
Showed him where empire towered, and bade him strike
The noble quarry. Gods! then was the time
To shrink from danger; fear might then have worn
The mask of prudence; but a heart like mine,
A heart that glows with the pure Julian fire,

If bright ambition from her craggy seat
Display the radiant prize, will mount undaunted,
Gain the rough heights, and grasp the dangerous honour.

ACERONIA

Through various life I have pursued your steps,
Have seen your soul, and wondered at its daring:
Hence rise my fears. Nor am I yet to learn
How vast the debt of gratitude which Nero
To such a mother owes; the world you gave him
Suffices not to pay the obligation.

I well remember too (for I was present)
When in a secret and dead hour of night,
Due sacrifice performed with barbarous rites
Of muttered charms and solemn invocation,
You bade the Magi call the dreadful powers
That read futurity, to know the fate
Impending o'er your son: their answer was,
If the son reign, the mother perishes.
Perish (you cried) the mother! reign the son!
He reigns, the rest is heaven's; who oft has bade,
Even when its will seemed wrote in lines of blood,
The unthought event disclose a whiter meaning.
Think too how oft in weak and sickly minds

The sweets of kindness lavishly indulged
Rankle to gall; and benefits too great
To be repaid, sit heavy on the soul,
As unrequited wrongs. The willing homage
Of prostrate Rome, the senate's joint applause,
The riches of the earth, the train of pleasures
That wait on youth and arbitrary sway:
These were your gift, and with them you bestowed
The very power he has to be ungrateful.

AGRIPPINA

Thus ever grave and undisturbed reflection
Pours its cool dictates in the madding ear
Of rage, and thinks to quench the fire it feels not.
Sayest thou I must be cautious, must be silent,
And tremble at the phantom I have raised?
Carry to him thy timid counsels. He
Perchance may heed 'em: tell him too, that one
Who had such liberal power to give, may still
With equal power resume that gift, and raise
A tempest that shall shake her own creation
To its original atoms—tell me! say,
This mighty emperor, this dreaded hero,
Has he beheld the glittering front of war?
Knows his soft ear the trumpet's thrilling voice,
And outcry of the battle? Have his limbs

Sweat under iron harness? Is he not
The silken son of dalliance, nursed in ease
And pleasure's flowery lap? Rubellius lives,
And Sylla has his friends, though schooled by fear
To bow the supple knee, and court the times
With shows of fair obeisance; and a call
Like mine might serve belike to wake pretensions
Drowsier than theirs, who boast the genuine blood
Of our imperial house. [Cannot my nod]
Rouse [up] eight hardy legions, wont to stem

With stubborn nerves the tide, and face the rigour
Of bleak Germania's snows [?] Four, not less brave,
That in Armenia quell the Parthian force
Under the warlike Corbulo, by [me]
Marked for their leader: these, by ties confirmed
Of old respect and gratitude, are [mine].
Surely the Masians too, and those of Egypt,
Have not forgot [my] sire: the eye of Rome
And the Praetorian camp have long revered,
With customed awe, the daughter, sister, wife,

And mother of their Caesars. Ha! by Juno,
It bears a noble semblance. On this base
My great revenge shall rise; or say we sound
The trump of liberty; there will not want,
Even in the servile senate, ears to own
Her spirit-stirring voice; Soranus there,
And Cassius; Veto too, and Thrasea,
Minds of the antique cast, rough, stubborn souls,
That struggle with the yoke. How shall the spark
Unquenchable, that glows within their breasts,
Blaze into freedom, when the idle herd
(Slaves from the womb, created but to stare
And bellow in the Circus) yet will start,
And shake 'em at the name of liberty,
Stung by a senseless word, a vain tradition,

As there were magic in it? Wrinkled beldams
Teach it their grandchildren, as somewhat rare
That anciently appeared, but when, extends
Beyond their chronicle—oh! 'tis a cause
To arm the hand of childhood, and rebrace
The slackened sinews of time-wearied age.

Yes, we may meet, ungrateful boy, we may!
Again the buried Genius of old Rome
Shall from the dust uprear his reverend head,
Roused by the shout of millions: there before
His high tribunal thou and I appear.
Let majesty sit on thy awful brow
And lighten from thy eye: around thee call
The gilded swarm that wantons in the sunshine
Of thy full favour; Seneca be there
In gorgeous phrase of laboured eloquence
To dress thy plea, and Burrhus strengthen it
With his plain soldier's oath and honest seeming.
Against thee, liberty and Agrippina:

The world, the prize; and fair befall the victors.

But soft! why do I waste the fruitless hours
In threats unexecuted? Haste thee, fly
These hated walls that seem to mock my shame,
And cast me forth in duty to their lord.

My thought aches at him; not the basilisk
More deadly to the sight than is to me
The cool injurious eye of frozen kindness.
I will not meet its poison. Let him feel
Before he sees me. Yes, I will be gone,
But not to Antium—all shall be confessed,

Whate'er the frivolous tongue of giddy fame
Has spread among the crowd; things that but whispered
Have arched the hearer's brow and riveted
His eyes in fearful ecstasy: no matter
What, so it be strange, and dreadful—sorceries,
Assassinations, poisonings; the deeper
My guilt, the blacker his ingratitude.

And you, ye manes of ambition's victims,
Enshrined Claudius, with the pitied ghosts
Of the Syllani, doomed to early death
(Ye unavailing horrors, fruitless crimes!),
If from the realms of night my voice ye hear,
In lieu of penitence and vain remorse,
Accept my vengeance. Though by me ye bled,
He was the cause. My love, my fears for him,
Dried the soft springs of pity in my heart,
And froze them up with deadly cruelty.
Yet if your injured shades demand my fate,
If murder cries for murder, blood for blood,

Let me not fall alone; but crush his pride,
And sink the traitor in his mother's ruin.

[Exeunt.]

SCENE II.

[Otho, Poppaea]
Otho
Thus far we're safe. Thanks to the rosy queen
Of amorous thefts: and had her wanton son
Lent us his wings, we could not have beguiled
With more elusive speed the dazzled sight
Of wakeful jealousy. Be gay securely;
Dispel, my fair, with smiles, the timorous cloud
That hangs on thy clear brow. So Helen looked,
So her white neck reclined, so was she borne
By the young Trojan to his gilded bark
With fond reluctance, yielding modesty,
And oft reverted eye, as if she knew not
Whether she feared or wished to be pursued.

8 [Translation] from Propertius,

Elegies II i

To Maecenas

You ask why thus my loves I still rehearse,
Whence the soft strain and ever-melting verse:
From Cynthia all that in my numbers shines;
She is my genius, she inspires the lines;
No Phoebus else, no other muse I know;
She tunes my easy rhyme and gives the lay to flow.
If the loose curls around her forehead play,
Or lawless o'er their ivory margin stray;
If the thin Coan web her shape reveal,
And half disclose those limbs it should conceal;
Of those loose curls, that ivory front, I write,
Of the dear web whole volumes I indite.
Or if to music she the lyre awake,
That the soft subject of my song I make,
And sing with what a careless grace she flings
Her artful hand across the sounding strings.
If sinking into sleep she seem to close
Her languid lids, I favour her repose
With lulling notes, and thousand beauties see
That slumber brings to aid my poetry.
When less averse and yielding to desires,
She half accepts and half rejects my fires;
While to retain the envious lawn she tries,
And struggles to elude my longing eyes;

The fruitful muse from that auspicious night
Dates the long Iliad of the amorous fight.
In brief, whate'er she do, or say, or look,
'Tis ample matter for a lover's book;
And many a copious narrative you'll see,
Big with important nothing's history.

Yet would the tyrant Love permit me raise
My feeble voice to sound the victor's praise,
To paint the hero's toil, the ranks of war,
The laurelled triumph and the sculptured car,
No giant-race, no tumult of the skies,
No mountain-structures in my verse should rise;
Nor tale of Thebes or Ilium there should be,
Or how the Persian trod the indignant sea;
Not Marius' Cimbrian wreaths would I relate,
Nor lofty Carthage struggling with her fate.
Here should Augustus great in arms appear,
And thou, Maecenas, be my second care;
Here Mutina from flames and famine free,
And there the ensanguined wave of Sicily,
And sceptred Alexandria's captive shore,
And sad Philippi red with Roman gore.
Then, while the vaulted skies loud Ios rend,
In golden chains should loaded monarchs bend,
And hoary Nile with pensive aspect seem
To mourn the glories of his sevenfold stream,
While prows, that late in fierce encounter met,
Move through the sacred way and vainly threat.
Thee too the muse should consecrate to fame,
And with his garlands weave thy ever-faithful name;
But nor Callimachus' enervate strain
May tell of Jove and Phlegra's blasted plain,
Nor I with unaccustomed vigour trace
Back to its source divine the Julian race.
Sailors to tell of winds and seas delight,

The shepherd of his flocks, the soldier of the fight;
A milder warfare I in verse display;
Each in his proper art should waste the day.
Nor thou my gentle calling disapprove:
To die is glorious in the bed of love.
Happy the youth, and not unknown to fame,
Whose heart has never felt a second flame.
Oh, might that envied happiness be mine!
To Cynthia all my wishes I confine;
Or if, alas! it be my fate to try
Another love, the quicker let me die.
But she, the mistress of my faithful breast,
Has oft the charms of constancy confessed,
Condemns her fickle sex's fond mistake,
And hates the tale of Troy for Helen's sake.
Me from myself the soft enchantress stole:
Ah! let her ever my desires control.
Or if I fall the victim of her scorn,
From her loved door may my pale corse be borne.
The power of herbs can other harms remove,
And find a cure for every ill but love.
The Melian's hurt Machaon could repair,
Heal the slow chief and send again to war;
To Chiron Phoenix owed his long-lost sight,
And Phoebus' son recalled Androgeon to the light.
Here arts are vain, even magic here must fail,
The powerful mixture and the midnight spell.
The hand that can my captive heart release
And to this bosom give its wonted peace,
May the long thirst of Tantalus allay,
Or drive the infernal vulture from his prey.
For ills unseen what remedy is found,
Or who can probe the undiscovered wound?
The bed avails not or the leech's care,
Nor changing skies can hurt nor sultry air.
'Tis hard the elusive symptoms to explore:
Today the lover walks, tomorrow is no more;
A train of mourning friends attend his pall,
And wonder at the sudden funeral.

When then my fates that breath they gave shall claim,
When the short marble but preserves a name,
A little verse, my all that shall remain,
Thy passing courser's slackened speed retain
(Thou envied honour of thy poet's days,
Of all our youth the ambition and the praise!);
Then to my quiet urn awhile draw near,
And say, while o'er the place you drop a tear,
Love and the fair were of his life the pride;
He lived while she was kind, and, when she frowned, he died.

9 Ode 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 gaily-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.

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 dressed:
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.

10 Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College

Ανθρωπος: ικανη προφασις εις το δυστυχειν.

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 soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
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 enthrall?
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 possessed;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs 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 today:

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 murtherous 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 woe.

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 labouring 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,
The 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.

11 Sonnet [on the Death of Mr Richard West]

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire:
These ears, alas! for other notes repine,
A different object do these eyes require.
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.

Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men:
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain.
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.

12 Ode to Adversity

------ Ζν=να
Τον φρονειν βροτους οδω ------
σαντα, τω παθει μαθαν
θεντα κυριως εχειν.

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' woe.

Scared 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,
To her they vow their truth and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,
Immersed in rapturous 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, oh 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.

13 [Hymn to Ignorance.

A Fragment]

Hail, horrors, hail! ye ever-gloomy bowers,
Ye gothic fanes and antiquated towers,
Where rushy Camus' slowly-winding flood
Perpetual draws his humid train of mud:
Glad I revisit thy neglected reign;
Oh, take me to thy peaceful shade again.

But chiefly thee, whose influence breathed from high
Augments the native darkness of the sky;
Ah, Ignorance! soft salutary power!
Prostrate with filial reverence I adore.
Thrice hath Hyperion rolled his annual race,
Since weeping I forsook thy fond embrace.
Oh say, successful dost thou still oppose

Thy leaden aegis 'gainst our ancient foes?
Still stretch, tenacious of thy right divine,
The massy sceptre o'er thy slumbering line?
And dews Lethean through the land dispense
To steep in slumbers each benighted sense?
If any spark of wit's delusive ray
Break out, and flash a momentary day,
With damp, cold touch forbid it to aspire,
And huddle up in fogs the dangerous fire.

Oh say—she hears me not, but, careless grown,
Lethargic nods upon her ebon throne.

Goddess! awake, arise! alas, my fears!
Can powers immortal feel the force of years?
Not thus of old, with ensigns wide unfurled,
She rode triumphant o'er the vanquished world;
Fierce nations owned her unresisted might,
And all was Ignorance, and all was Night.

Oh! sacred age! Oh! times for ever lost!
(The schoolman's glory, and the churchman's boast.)
For ever gone—yet still to Fancy new,
Her rapid wings the transient scene pursue,
And bring the buried ages back to view.

High on her car, behold the grandam ride
Like old Sesostris with barbaric pride;
. . . a team of harnessed monarchs bend . . . .

14 Ode 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 dyed
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.

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 nor Susan heard.
A favourite 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 glisters gold.

15 [The Alliance of Education and Government.

A fragment]

ESSAY I

------ ποταγ', ω γ)αθε: ταν γαρ αοιδαν
ουτι πα εις Αιδαν γε τον εκλελαθοντα φυλαξεις.
THEOC[RITUS].

As sickly plants betray a niggard earth,
Whose barren bosom starves her generous birth,
Nor genial warmth nor genial juice retains
Their roots to feed and fill their verdant veins;
And as in climes, where winter holds his reign,
The soil, though fertile, will not teem in vain,
Forbids her gems to swell, her shades to rise,
Nor trusts her blossoms to the churlish skies:
So draw mankind in vain the vital airs,

Unformed, unfriended, by those kindly cares
That health and vigour to the soul impart,
Spread the young thought and warm the opening heart.
So fond Instruction on the growing powers
Of nature idly lavishes her stores,
If equal Justice with unclouded face
Smile not indulgent on the rising race,
And scatter with a free though frugal hand
Light golden showers of plenty o'er the land:
But Tyranny has fixed her empire there,
To check their tender hopes with chilling fear,
And blast the blooming promise of the year.

This spacious animated scene survey
From where the rolling orb, that gives the day,

His sable sons with nearer course surrounds,
To either pole and life's remotest bounds.
How rude so e'er the exterior form we find,
Howe'er opinion tinge the varied mind,
Alike to all the kind impartial heaven
The sparks of truth and happiness has given:
With sense to feel, with memory to retain,
They follow pleasure and they fly from pain;
Their judgement mends the plan their fancy draws,
The event presages and explores the cause.
The soft returns of gratitude they know,

By fraud elude, by force repel the foe;
While mutual wishes, mutual woes, endear
The social smile and sympathetic tear.

Say then, through ages by what fate confined
To different climes seem different souls assigned?
Here measured laws and philosophic ease
Fix and improve the polished arts of peace.
There Industry and Gain their vigils keep,
Command the winds and tame the unwilling deep.
Here force and hardy deeds of blood prevail;
There languid pleasure sighs in every gale.
Oft o'er the trembling nations from afar

Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war;
And, where the deluge burst, with sweepy sway
Their arms, their kings, their gods were rolled away.
As oft have issued, host impelling host,
The blue-eyed myriads from the Baltic coast.
The prostrate south to the destroyer yields
Her boasted titles and her golden fields:
With grim delight the brood of winter view
A brighter day and heavens of azure hue,
Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose,
And quaff the pendent vintage, as it grows.

Proud of the yoke and pliant to the rod,
Why yet does Asia dread a monarch's nod,
While European freedom still withstands
The encroaching tide, that drowns her lessening lands,
And sees far off with an indignant groan
Her native plains and empires once her own?
Can opener skies and suns of fiercer flame
O'erpower the fire that animates our frame,
As lamps, that shed at even a cheerful ray,
Fade and expire beneath the eye of day?
Need we the influence of the northern star
To string our nerves and steel our hearts to war?
And, where the face of nature laughs around,

Must sickening Virtue fly the tainted ground?
Unmanly thought! what seasons can control,
What fancied zone can circumscribe the Soul,
Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs,
By Reason's light on Resolution's wings,
Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes
O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows?
She bids each slumbering energy awake,
Another touch, another temper take,
Suspends the inferior laws that rule our clay:
The stubborn elements confess her sway;
Their little wants, their low desires, refine,
And raise the mortal to a height divine.

Not but the human fabric from the birth
Imbibes a flavour of its parent earth:
As various tracts enforce a various toil,
The manners speak the idiom of their soil.
An iron-race the mountain-cliffs maintain,
Foes to the gentler genius of the plain:
For where unwearied sinews must be found

With sidelong plough to quell the flinty ground,
To turn the torrent's swift-descending flood,
To brave the savage rushing from the wood,
What wonder if, to patient valour trained,
They guard with spirit what by strength they gained;
And while their rocky ramparts round they see,
The rough abode of want and liberty,
(As lawless force from confidence will grow)
Insult the plenty of the vales below?
What wonder in the sultry climes, that spread
Where Nile redundant o'er his summer-bed
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings,
If with adventurous oar and ready sail,

100

The dusky people drive before the gale,
Or on frail floats to distant cities ride,
That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide.

16 [Tophet]

Inscription on a Portrait

102

Such Tophet was; so looked the grinning fiend
Whom many a frighted prelate called his friend;

103

I saw them bow and, while they wished him dead,
With servile simper nod the mitred head.
Our Mother-Church with half-averted sight
Blushed as she blessed her grisly proselyte:
Hosannahs rung through Hell's tremendous borders,
And Satan's self had thoughts of taking orders.

17 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

117

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

118

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

119

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

120

The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

121

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

122

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;

123

Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.

124

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

125

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

126

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,

127

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden that with dauntless breast

128

The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

129

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

130

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

131

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

132

Yet even these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,

133

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

134

Ev'n from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

135

For thee who, mindful of the unhonoured dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
‘Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

136

‘Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
‘To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
‘That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
‘His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

137

‘And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
‘Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove,
‘Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
‘Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

‘One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
‘Along the heath and near his favourite tree;
‘Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
‘Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next with dirges due in sad array
‘Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.

138

‘Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the lay,
‘Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.

139

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompence as largely send:

140

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

142

18 A Long Story

144

In Britain's isle, no matter where,
An ancient pile of building stands:
The Huntingdons and Hattons there
Employed the power of fairy hands

To raise the ceiling's fretted height,
Each panel in achievements clothing,

145

Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.

Full oft within the spacious walls,
When he had fifty winters o'er him,
My grave Lord-Keeper led the brawls;
The Seal and Maces danced before him.

His bushy beard and shoe-strings green,
His high-crowned hat and satin-doublet,
Moved the stout heart of England's Queen,
Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.

What, in the very first beginning!
Shame of the versifying tribe!
Your history whither are you spinning?
Can you do nothing but describe?

146

A house there is (and that's enough)
From whence one fatal morning issues
A brace of warriors, not in buff,
But rustling in their silks and tissues.

The first came cap-a-pee from France
Her conquering destiny fulfilling,
Whom meaner beauties eye askance,
And vainly ape her art of killing.

The other Amazon kind heaven
Had armed with spirit, wit, and satire:
But Cobham had the polish given,
And tipped her arrows with good-nature.

To celebrate her eyes, her air—
Coarse panegyrics would but tease her.
Melissa is her nom de guerre.
Alas, who would not wish to please her!

With bonnet blue and capucine,
And aprons long they hid their armour,
And veiled their weapons bright and keen
In pity to the country-farmer.

Fame in the shape of Mr. P---t
(By this time all the parish know it)

147

Had told that thereabouts there lurked
A wicked imp they call a poet,

Who prowled the country far and near,
Bewitched the children of the peasants,
Dried up the cows and lamed the deer,
And sucked the eggs and killed the pheasants.

My lady heard their joint petition,
Swore by her coronet and ermine,
She'd issue out her high commission
To rid the manor of such vermin.

The heroines undertook the task;
Through lanes unknown, o'er stiles they ventured,
Rapped at the door nor stayed to ask,
But bounce into the parlour entered.

The trembling family they daunt,
They flirt, they sing, they laugh, they tattle,

148

Rummage his mother, pinch his aunt,
And up stairs in a whirlwind rattle.

Each hole and cupboard they explore,
Each creek and cranny of his chamber,
Run hurry-skurry round the floor,
And o'er the bed and tester clamber,

Into the drawers and china pry,
Papers and books, a huge imbroglio!
Under a tea-cup he might lie,
Or creased, like dogs-ears, in a folio.

On the first marching of the troops
The Muses, hopeless of his pardon,
Conveyed him underneath their hoops
To a small closet in the garden.

So Rumour says (who will, believe)
But that they left the door ajar,
Where, safe and laughing in his sleeve,
He heard the distant din of war.

Short was his joy. He little knew
The power of magic was no fable.
Out of the window, whisk, they flew,
But left a spell upon the table.

The words too eager to unriddle,
The poet felt a strange disorder:

149

Transparent birdlime formed the middle,
And chains invisible the border.

So cunning was the apparatus,
The powerful pothooks did so move him,
That, will he, nill he, to the Great-House
He went, as if the Devil drove him.

Yet no his way (no sign of grace,
For folks in fear are apt to pray)
To Phoebus he preferred his case,
And begged his aid that dreadful day.

The godhead would have backed his quarrel,
But, with a blush on recollection,
Owned that his quiver and his laurel
'Gainst four such eyes were no protection.

The court was sate, the culprit there,
Forth from their gloomy mansions creeping

150

The Lady Janes and Joans repair,
And from the gallery stand peeping:

Such as in silence of the night
Come (sweep) along some winding entry
(Styack has often seen the sight)
Or at the chapel-door stand sentry;

In peaked hoods and mantles tarnished,
Sour visages, enough to scare ye,
High dames of honour once, that garnished
The drawing-room of fierce Queen Mary!

The peeress comes. The audience stare,
And doff their hats with due submission:
She curtsies, as she takes her chair,
To all the people of condition.

The bard with many an artful fib
Had in imagination fenced him,
Disproved the arguments of Squib,
And all that Groom could urge against him.

But soon his rhetoric forsook him,
When he the solemn hall had seen;
A sudden fit of ague shook him,
He stood as mute as poor Macleane.

151

Yet something he was heard to mutter,
‘How in the park beneath an old-tree
‘(Without design to hurt the butter,
‘Or any malice to the poultry,)

‘He once or twice had penned a sonnet;
‘Yet hoped that he might save his bacon:
‘Numbers would give their oaths upon it,
‘He ne'er was for a conjurer taken.’

The ghostly prudes with hagged face
Already had condemned the sinner.
My lady rose and with a grace—
She smiled, and bid him come to dinner.

‘Jesu-Maria! Madam Bridget,
‘Why, what can the Viscountess mean?’
(Cried the square hoods in woeful fidget)
‘The times are altered quite and clean!

152

‘Decorum's turned to mere civility;
‘Her air and all her manners show it.
‘Commend me to her affability!
‘Speak to a commoner and poet!’

(Here 500 stanzas are lost.)

And so God save our noble King,
And guard us from long-winded lubbers,
That to eternity would sing,
And keep my lady from her rubbers.

19 Stanzas to Mr Bentley

153

In silent gaze the tuneful choir among,
Half pleased, half blushing, let the Muse admire,
While Bentley leads her sister-art along,
And bids the pencil answer to the lyre.

154

See, in their course, each transitory thought
Fixed by his touch a lasting essence take;
Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought,
To local symmetry and life awake!
The tardy rhymes that used to linger on,
To censure cold and negligent of fame,
In swifter measures animated run,
And catch a lustre from his genuine flame.
Ah! could they catch his strength, his easy grace,
His quick creation, his unerring line;
The energy of Pope they might efface,
And Dryden's harmony submit to mine.
But not to one in this benighted age

155

Is that diviner inspiration given,
That burns in Shakespeare's or in Milton's page,
The pomp and prodigality of heaven.
As when, conspiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems, that singly charm the sight,
Together dart their intermingled rays,
And dazzle with a luxury of light.
Enough for me, if to some feeling breast
My lines a secret sympathy [OMITTED]
And as their pleasing influence [OMITTED]
A sigh of soft reflection [OMITTED].

20 The Progress of Poesy.

A Pindaric Ode

161

φωναντα συνετοισιν :ες
δε το παν ερμηνεων χατιζει.
PINDAR, Olymp[ian Odes] II.

I.

1

Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs

162

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:

163

Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:
The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

2

Oh! Sovereign of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,

164

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,
And dropped his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptered hand
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 lightnings of his eye.

165

3

Thee 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,

166

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.

167

II.

1

Man's feeble race what ills await,
Labour, and penury, the racks 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

168

Hyperion's march they spy and glittering shafts of war.

169

2

In climes beyond the solar road,
Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom
To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.
And oft, beneath the odorous shade
Of Chile's boundless forests laid,
She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat
In loose numbers wildly sweet

170

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.

3

Woods that wave o'er Delphi's steep,

171

Isles that crown the Aegean deep,
Fields that cool Ilissus laves,
Or where Maeander's amber waves
In lingering lab'rinths 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,

172

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 darling 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.

173

‘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.’

2

Nor second he, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
The secrets of the abyss to spy.

174

He passed the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,
Wide o'er the fields of glory, bear

175

Two coursers of ethereal race,
With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.

3

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er
Scatters from her pictured urn
Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.
But ah! 'tis heard no more—

176

Oh! lyre divine, what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? Though he inherit
Nor the pride nor ample pinion,
That the Theban eagle bear
Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air:
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run

177

Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray
With orient hues, unborrowed of the sun:
Yet shall he mount and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
Beneath the Good how far—but far above the Great.

21 The Bard.

A Pindaric Ode

183

I.

1

‘Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!
‘Confusion on thy banners wait,
‘Though fanned by Conquest's crimson wing
‘They mock the air with idle state.
‘Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail,
‘Nor even thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail
‘To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,

184

‘From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!’
Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Gloucester stood aghast in speechless trance:
‘To arms!’, cried Mortimer and couched his quivering lance.

185

2

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair

186

Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air)
And, with a master's hand and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
‘Hark, how each giant-oak and desert cave
‘Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
‘O'er thee, oh king! their hundred arms they wave,
‘Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
‘Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,
‘To high-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay.

3

‘Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,
‘That hushed the stormy main:

187

‘Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
‘Mountains, ye mourn in vain
‘Modred, whose magic song
‘Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped head.
‘On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,
‘Smeared with gore and ghastly pale:
‘Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail;
‘The famished eagle screams and passes by.

188

‘Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
‘Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
‘Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
‘Ye died amidst your dying country's cries—
‘No more I weep. They do not sleep.
‘On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,
‘I see them sit, they linger yet,
‘Avengers of their native land;

189

‘With me in dreadful harmony they join,
‘And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.’

II.

1

“Weave the warp and weave the woof,
“The winding-sheet of Edward's race.
“Give ample room and verge enough
“The characters of hell to trace.
“Mark the year and mark the night,
“When Severn shall re-echo with affright
“The shrieks of death, through Berkeley's roofs that ring,

190

“Shrieks of an agonizing King!
“She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
“That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
“From thee be born who o'er thy country hangs
“The scourge of heaven. What terrors round him wait!
“Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
“And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.

2

“Mighty victor, mighty lord,
“Low on his funeral couch he lies!
“No pitying heart, no eye, afford
“A tear to grace his obsequies.

191

“Is the sable warrior fled?
“Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
“The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born?
“Gone to salute the rising morn.
“Fair laughs the morn and soft the zephyr blows,
“While proudly riding o'er the azure realm

192

“In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;
“Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm;
“Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
“That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening-prey.

3

“Fill high the sparkling bowl,
“The rich repast prepare,

193

“Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
“Close by the regal chair
“Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
“A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
“Heard ye the din of battle bray,
“Lance to lance and horse to horse?
“Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
“And through the kindred squadrons mow their way.

194

“Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,
“With many a foul and midnight murther fed,
“Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame,
“And spare the meek usurper's holy head.
“Above, below, the rose of snow,
“Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
“The bristled Boar in infant-gore
“Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
“Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom,
“Stamp we our vengeance deep and ratify his doom.

195

III.

1

“Edward, lo! to sudden fate
“(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun)
“Half of thy heart we consecrate.
“(The web is wove. The work is done.)”
‘Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn
‘Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn:
‘In yon bright track, that fires the western skies,
‘They melt, they vanish from my eyes.
‘But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height
‘Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?

196

‘Visions of glory, spare my aching sight,
‘Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
‘No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail.
‘All-hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail!

2

‘Girt with many a baron bold

197

‘Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
‘And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old
‘In bearded majesty, appear.
‘In the midst a form divine!
‘Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line;
‘Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face,
‘Attempered sweet to virgin-grace.
‘What strings symphonious tremble in the air,
‘What strains of vocal transport round her play!

198

‘Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
‘They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
‘Bright Rapture calls and, soaring as she sings,
‘Waves in the eye of heaven her many-coloured wings.

3

‘The verse adorn again
‘Fierce war and faithful love,
‘And truth severe, by fairy fiction dressed.
‘In buskined measures move

199

‘Pale Grief and pleasing Pain,
‘With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
‘A voice as of the cherub-choir
‘Gales from blooming Eden bear;
‘And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
‘That lost in long futurity expire.
‘Fond impious man, think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,

200

‘Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?
‘Tomorrow he repairs the golden flood,
‘And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
‘Enough for me: with joy I see
‘The different doom our fates assign.
‘Be thine despair and sceptered care;
‘To triumph, and to die, are mine.’
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

201

22 [Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude]

202

Now the golden Morn aloft
Waves her dew-bespangled wing;
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft
She wooes the tardy spring,
Till April starts, and calls around
The sleeping fragrance from the ground;
And lightly o'er the living scene
Scatters his freshest, tenderest green.

New-born flocks in rustic dance
Frisking ply their feeble feet;
Forgetful of their wintry trance

203

The birds his presence greet:
But chief the sky-lark warbles high
His trembling thrilling ecstasy
And, lessening from the dazzled sight,
Melts into air and liquid light.

Yesterday the sullen year
Saw the snowy whirlwind fly;
Mute was the music of the air,
The herd stood drooping by:

204

Their raptures now that wildly flow,
No yesterday nor morrow know;
'Tis man alone that joy descries
With forward and reverted eyes.

Smiles on past Misfortune's brow
Soft Reflection's hand can trace;
And o'er the cheek of Sorrow throw
A melancholy grace;

205

While Hope prolongs our happier hour,
Or deepest shades, that dimly lower
And blacken round our weary way,
Gilds with a gleam of distant day.

Still, where rosy Pleasure leads,
See a kindred Grief pursue;
Behind the steps that Misery treads,
Approaching Comfort view:
The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
Chastised by sabler tints of woe;
And blended form, with artful strife,
The strength and harmony of life.

See the wretch, that long has tossed
On the thorny bed of pain,

206

At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe and walk again:
The meanest flowret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air and skies,
To him are opening Paradise.

Humble Quiet builds her cell

207

Near the source whence Pleasure flows;
She eyes the clear crystalline well
And tastes it as it goes.
Far below [OMITTED] the crowd.
Broad and turbulent it grows
[OMITTED] with resistless sweep
They perish in the boundless deep

Mark where Indolence and Pride,
Softly rolling side by side,
Their dull but daily round.

23 [Epitaph on Mrs Clerke]

208

Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps:

209

A heart, within whose sacred cell
The peaceful virtues loved to dwell.
Affection warm, and faith sincere,
And soft humanity were there.
In agony, in death, resigned,
She felt the wound she left behind.
Her infant image, here below,
Sits smiling on a father's woe:
Whom what awaits, while yet he strays
Along the lonely vale of days?
A pang, to secret sorrow dear;
A sigh; an unavailing tear;
Till time shall every grief remove,
With life, with memory, and with love.

24 [Epitaph on a Child]

210

Here, freed from pain, secure from misery, lies
A child, the darling of his parents' eyes:
A gentler lamb ne'er sported on the plain,
A fairer flower will never bloom again.
Few were the days allotted to his breath;
Now let him sleep in peace his night of death.

25 The Fatal Sisters.

An Ode

215

[_]

PREFACE

In the eleventh century Sigurd, Earl of the Orkney Islands, went with a fleet of ships and a considerable body of troops into Ireland, to the assistance of Sictryg with the silken beard, who was then making war on his father-in-law Brian, King of Dublin: the Earl and all his forces were cut to pieces, and Sictryg was in danger of a total defeat; but the enemy had a greater loss by the death of Brian, their King, who fell in the action. On Christmas-day (the day of the battle), a native of

216

Caithness in Scotland saw at a distance a number of persons on horseback riding full speed towards a hill, and seeming to enter into it. Curiosity led him to follow them, till looking through an opening in the rocks he saw twelve gigantic figures resembling women: they were all employed about a loom; and as they wove, they sung the following dreadful song; which when they had finished, they tore the web into twelve pieces, and (each taking her portion) galloped six to the north and as many to the south.

Now the storm begins to lower,
(Haste, the loom of hell prepare,)

217

Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air.

Glittering lances are the loom,
Where the dusky warp we strain,
Weaving many a soldier's doom,
Orkney's woe, and Randver's bane.

See the grisly texture grow,
('Tis of human entrails made,)
And the weights that play below,
Each a gasping warrior's head.

Shafts for shuttles, dipped in gore,
Shoot the trembling cords along.
Sword, that once a monarch bore,
Keep the tissue close and strong!

218

Mista black, terrific maid,
Sangrida and Hilda see,
Join the wayward work to aid:
'Tis the woof of victory.

Ere the ruddy sun be set,
Pikes must shiver, javelins sing,
Blade with clattering buckler meet,
Hauberk crash and helmet ring.

(Weave the crimson web of war)
Let us go and let us fly,
Where our friends the conflict share,
Where they triumph, where they die.

As the paths of fate we tread,
Wading through the ensanguined field:

219

Gondula and Geira, spread
O'er the youthful King your shield.

We the reins to slaughter give,
Ours to kill and ours to spare:
Spite of danger he shall live.
(Weave the crimson web of war.)

They, whom once the desert-beach
Pent within its bleak domain,
Soon their ample sway shall stretch
O'er the plenty of the plain.

Low the dauntless Earl is laid,
Gored with many a gaping wound:
Fate demands a nobler head;
Soon a King shall bite the ground.

Long his loss shall Eirin weep,
Ne'er again his likeness see;

220

Long her strains in sorrow steep,
Strains of immortality!

Horror covers all the heath,
Clouds of carnage blot the sun.
Sisters, weave the web of death;
Sisters, cease. The work is done.

Hail the task, and hail the hands!
Songs of joy and triumph sing!
Joy to the victorious bands;
Triumph to the younger King.

Mortal, thou that hear'st the tale,
Learn the tenor of our song.
Scotland, through each winding vale
Far and wide the notes prolong.

Sisters, hence with spurs of speed:
Each her thundering faulchion wield;
Each bestride her sable steed.
Hurry, hurry to the field.

26 The Descent of Odin.

An Ode

223

Uprose the King of Men with speed,
And saddled straight his coal-black steed;
Down the yawning steep he rode,
That leads to Hela's drear abode.
Him the dog of darkness spied,
His shaggy throat he opened wide,
While from his jaws, with carnage filled,
Foam and human gore distilled:
Hoarse he bays with hideous din,
Eyes that glow and fangs that grin;
And long pursues with fruitless yell
The father of the powerful spell.
Onward still his way he takes,
(The groaning earth beneath him shakes,)
Till full before his fearless eyes
The portals nine of hell arise.

224

Right against the eastern gate,
By the moss-grown pile he sate,
Where long of yore to sleep was laid
The dust of the prophetic maid.
Facing to the northern clime,
Thrice he traced the runic rhyme;
Thrice pronounced, in accents dread,
The thrilling verse that wakes the dead;
Till from out the hollow ground
Slowly breathed a sullen sound.

Pr.
What call unknown, what charms, presume
To break the quiet of the tomb?
Who thus afflicts my troubled sprite,
And drags me from the realms of night?
Long on these mouldering bones have beat
The winter's snow, the summer's heat,
The drenching dews, and driving rain!

225

Let me, let me sleep again.
Who is he, with voice unblest,
That calls me from the bed of rest?

O.
A Traveller, to thee unknown,
Is he that calls, a Warrior's son.
Thou the deeds of light shalt know;
Tell me what is done below,
For whom yon glittering board is spread,
Dressed for whom yon golden bed.

Pr.
Mantling in the goblet see
The pure beverage of the bee,
O'er it hangs the shield of gold;
'Tis the drink of Balder bold:
Balder's head to death is given.
Pain can reach the sons of Heaven!
Unwilling I my lips unclose:
Leave me, leave me to repose.

O.
Once again my call obey.

226

Prophetess, arise and say,
What dangers Odin's child await,
Who the author of his fate.

Pr.
In Hoder's hand the hero's doom:
His brother sends him to the tomb.
Now my weary lips I close:
Leave me, leave me to repose.

O.
Prophetess, my spell obey,
Once again arise and say,
Who the avenger of his guilt,
By whom shall Hoder's blood be spilt.

Pr.
In the caverns of the west,
By Odin's fierce embrace compressed,
A wondrous boy shall Rinda bear,
Who ne'er shall comb his raven-hair,
Nor wash his visage in the stream,
Nor see the sun's departing beam:
Till he on Hoder's corse shall smile
Flaming on the funeral pile.
Now my weary lips I close:
Leave me, leave me to repose.

O.
Yet a while my call obey.
Prophetess, awake and say,

227

What virgins these, in speechless woe,
That bend to earth their solemn brow,
That their flaxen tresses tear,
And snowy veils, that float in air.
Tell me whence their sorrows rose:
Then I leave thee to repose.

Pr.
Ha! no Traveller art thou,
King of Men, I know thee now,
Mightiest of a mighty line—

O.
No boding maid of skill divine
Art thou, nor prophetess of good;
But mother of the giant-brood!

Pr.
Hie thee hence and boast at home,
That never shall enquirer come
To break my iron-sleep again,

228

Till Lok has burst his tenfold chain;
Never, till substantial Night
Has reassumed her ancient right;
Till wrapped in flames, in ruin hurled,
Sinks the fabric of the world.

27 The Triumphs of Owen.

A Fragment

231

Owen's praise demands my song,
Owen swift, and Owen strong;
Fairest flower of Roderic's stem,
Gwyneth's shield and Britain's gem.
He nor heaps his brooded stores,
Nor on all profusely pours;
Lord of every regal art,
Liberal hand and open heart.

Big with hosts of mighty name,
Squadrons three against him came;
This the force of Eirin hiding;
Side by side as proudly riding,

232

On her shadow long and gay
Lochlin ploughs the watery way;
There the Norman sails afar
Catch the winds and join the war:
Black and huge along they sweep,
Burthens of the angry deep.

Dauntless on his native sands
The Dragon-son of Mona stands;
In glittering arms and glory dressed,
High he rears his ruby crest.
There the thundering strokes begin,
There the press and there the din;
Talymalfra's rocky shore
Echoing to the battle's roar.
Where his glowing eye-balls turn,
Thousand banners round him burn.
Where he points his purple spear,

233

Hasty, hasty Rout is there,
Marking with indignant eye
Fear to stop and shame to fly.
There Confusion, Terror's child,
Conflict fierce and Ruin wild,
Agony that pants for breath,
Despair and honourable Death.

28 [The Death of Hoel]

234

Had I but the torrent's might,
With headlong rage and wild affright
Upon Deïra's squadrons hurled,
To rush and sweep them from the world!

Too, too secure in youthful pride,
By them my friend, my Hoël, died,
Great Cian's son: of Madoc old
He asked no heaps of hoarded gold;
Alone in nature's wealth arrayed,
He asked and had the lovely maid.

To Cattraeth's vale in glittering row

235

Twice two hundred warriors go;
Every warrior's manly neck
Chains of regal honour deck,
Wreathed in many a golden link:
From the golden cup they drink
Nectar, that the bees produce,
Or the grape's ecstatic juice.
Flushed with mirth and hope they burn:
But none from Cattraeth's vale return,
Save Aeron brave and Conan strong,
(Bursting through the bloody throng)
And I, the meanest of them all,
That live to weep and sing their fall.

29 [Caradoc]

Have ye seen the tusky boar,
Or the bull, with sullen roar,
On surrounding foes advance?
So Caradoc bore his lance.

30 [Conan]

236

Conan's name, my lay, rehearse,
Build to him the lofty verse,
Sacred tribute of the bard,
Verse, the hero's sole reward.
As the flame's devouring force;
As the whirlwind in its course;
As the thunder's fiery stroke,
Glancing on the shivered oak;
Did the sword of Conan mow
The crimson harvest of the foe.

31 [Sketch of his Own Character]

Too poor for a bribe and too proud to importune,
He had not the method of making a fortune:

237

Could love and could hate, so was thought somewhat odd;
No very great wit, he believed in a God.
A post or a pension he did not desire,
But left church and state to Charles Townshend and Squire.

238

32 [Epitaph on Sir William Williams]

239

Here, foremost in the dangerous paths of fame,
Young Williams fought for England's fair renown;
His mind each Muse, each Grace adorned his frame,
Nor Envy dared to view him with a frown.

At Aix uncalled his maiden sword he drew,
(There first in blood his infant glory sealed);
From fortune, pleasure, science, love, he flew,
And scorned repose when Britain took the field.

With eyes of flame and cool intrepid breast,
Victor he stood on Belle Isle's rocky steeps;

240

Ah gallant youth! this marble tells the rest,
Where melancholy Friendship bends and weeps.

33 Song I

(‘Midst beauty and pleasure's gay triumphs to languish’)

241

'Midst beauty and pleasure's gay triumphs, to languish
And droop without knowing the source of my anguish;
To start from short slumbers and look for the morning—
Yet close my dull eyes when I see it returning;

Sighs sudden and frequent, looks ever dejected,
Sounds that steal from my tongue, by no meaning connected!
Ah say, fellow-swains, how these symptoms befell me?
They smile, but reply not. Sure Delia will tell me!

242

34 Song II

(‘Thyrsis, when we parted, swore’)

Thyrsis, when we parted, swore
Ere the spring he would return.
Ah, what means yon violet flower,
And the buds that deck the thorn?
'Twas the lark that upward sprung!
'Twas the nightingale that sung!

243

Idle notes, untimely green,
Why such unavailing haste?
Western gales and skies serene
Prove not always winter past.
Cease my doubts, my fears to move;
Spare the honour of my love.

35 The Candidate

248

When sly Jemmy Twitcher had smugged up his face
With a lick of court whitewash and pious grimace,
A-wooing he went, where three sisters of old
In harmless society guttle and scold.

‘Lord! Sister,’ says Physic to Law, ‘I declare
Such a sheep-biting look, such a pick-pocket air,

249

Not I, for the Indies! you know I'm no prude;
But his nose is a shame and his eyes are so lewd!
Then he shambles and straddles so oddly, I fear—
No; at our time of life, 'twould be silly, my dear.’

‘I don't know,’ says Law, ‘now methinks, for his look,
'Tis just like the picture in Rochester's book.
But his character, Phyzzy, his morals, his life;
When she died, I can't tell, but he once had a wife.

250

‘They say he's no Christian, loves drinking and whoring,
And all the town rings of his swearing and roaring,
His lying and filching, and Newgate-bird tricks:—
Not I,—for a coronet, chariot and six.’

Divinity heard, between waking and dozing,
Her sisters denying and Jemmy proposing;
From dinner she rose with her bumper in hand,
She stroked up her belly and stroked down her band.

251

‘What a pother is here about wenching and roaring!
Why David loved catches and Solomon whoring.
Did not Israel filch from the Egyptians of old
Their jewels of silver and jewels of gold?
The prophet of Bethel, we read, told a lie;
He drinks: so did Noah; he swears: so do I.
To refuse him for such peccadillos were odd;
Besides, he repents, and he talks about God.

‘Never hang down your head, you poor penitent elf!
Come, buss me, I'll be Mrs Twitcher myself.
Damn ye both for a couple of Puritan bitches!
He's Christian enough that repents and that stitches.’

252

36 William Shakespeare to Mrs Anne,

Regular Servant to the Revd Mr Precentor of York

253

A moment's patience, gentle Mistress Anne!
(But stint your clack for sweet St Charitie)
'Tis Willy begs, once a right proper man,
Though now a book and interleaved, you see.

Much have I borne from cankered critic's spite,
From fumbling baronets and poets small,

254

Pert barristers and parsons nothing bright:
But what awaits me now is worst of all.

'Tis true, our master's temper natural
Was fashioned fair in meek and dovelike guise;
But may not honey's self be turned to gall
By residence, by marriage, and sore eyes?

If then he wreak on me his wicked will,

255

Steal to his closet at the hour of prayer,
And (when thou hear'st the organ piping shrill)
Grease his best pen, and all he scribbles, tear.

Better to bottom tarts and cheesecakes nice,
Better the roast meat from the fire to save,
Better be twisted into caps for spice,
Than thus be patched and cobbled in one's grave.

So York shall taste what Clouët never knew,
So from our works sublimer fumes shall rise:
While Nancy earns the praise to Shakespeare due
For glorious puddings and immortal pies.

37 [Epitaph on Mrs Mason]

256

Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die,
('Twas e'en to thee) yet the dread path once trod,
Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,
And bids the pure in heart behold their God.

38 [Parody on an Epitaph]

257

Now clean, now hideous, mellow now, now gruff,
She swept, she hissed, she ripened and grew rough,
At Broom, Pendragon, Appleby and Brough.

39 [Invitation to Mason]

Prim Hurd attends your call and Palgrave proud,
Stonhewer the lewd and Delaval the loud.

258

For thee does Powell squeeze and Marriott sputter,
And Glynn cut phizzes and Tom Nevile stutter.
Brown sees thee sitting on his nose's tip,
The Widow feels thee in her aching hip,
For thee fat Nanny sighs and handy Nelly,
And Balguy with a bishop in his belly!

259

40 On L[or]d H[olland']s Seat near M[argat]e, K[en]t

262

Old and abandoned by each venal friend,
Here H[olland] took the pious resolution
To smuggle some few years and strive to mend
A broken character and constitution.
On this congenial spot he fixed his choice;
Earl Godwin trembled for his neighbouring sand;
Here sea-gulls scream and cormorants rejoice,
And mariners, though shipwrecked, dread to land.
Here reign the blustering North and blighting East,
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing:
Yet nature cannot furnish out the feast,
Art he invokes new horrors still to bring.
Now mouldering fanes and battlements arise,

263

Arches and turrets nodding to their fall,
Unpeopled palaces delude his eyes,
And mimic desolation covers all.
‘Ah’, said the sighing peer, ‘had Bute been true,
Nor Shelburne's, Rigby's, Calcraft's friendship vain,

264

Far other scenes than these had blessed our view
And realised the ruins that we feign.
Purged by the sword and beautified by fire,
Then had we seen proud London's hated walls:
Owls might have hooted in St Peter's choir,
And foxes stunk and littered in St Paul's.’

41 Ode for Music

268

Air

‘Hence, avaunt, ('tis holy ground)
‘Comus and his midnight-crew,
‘And Ignorance with looks profound,
‘And dreaming Sloth of pallid hue,
‘Mad Sedition's cry profane,
‘Servitude that hugs her chain,
‘Nor in these consecrated bowers
‘Let painted Flattery hide her serpent-train in flowers.

Chorus

‘Nor Envy base nor creeping Gain
‘Dare the Muse's walk to stain,
‘While bright-eyed Science watches round:
‘Hence, away, 'tis holy ground!’

Recitative

From yonder realms of empyrean day
Bursts on my ear the indignant lay:
There sit the sainted sage, the bard divine,
The few whom genius gave to shine

269

Through every unborn age and undiscovered clime.
Rapt in celestial transport they,

(accomp.)

Yet hither oft a glance from high
They send of tender sympathy
To bless the place, where on their opening soul
First the genuine ardour stole.
'Twas Milton struck the deep-toned shell,
And, as the choral warblings round him swell,
Meek Newton's self bends from his state sublime,
And nods his hoary head and listens to the rhyme.

Air

‘Ye brown o'er-arching groves,
‘That Contemplation loves,
‘Where willowy Camus lingers with delight!
‘Oft at the blush of dawn

270

‘I trod your level lawn,
‘Oft wooed the gleam of Cynthia silver-bright
‘In cloisters dim, far from the haunts of Folly,
‘With Freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melancholy.’

Recitative

But hark! the portals sound and, pacing forth
With solemn steps and slow,
High potentates and dames of royal birth
And mitred fathers in long order go:
Great Edward with the lilies on his brow

271

From haughty Gallia torn,
And sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn
That wept her bleeding love, and princely Clare,
And Anjou's heroine, and the paler rose,
The rival of her crown and of her woes,
And either Henry there,
The murthered saint and the majestic lord,
That broke the bonds of Rome,
(Their tears, their little triumphs o'er,

(accomp.)

Their human passions now no more,
Save charity, that glows beyond the tomb).

272

All that on Granta's fruitful plain
Rich streams of regal bounty poured,
And bade these awful fanes and turrets rise,
To hail their Fitzroy's festal morning come;
And thus they speak in soft accord
The liquid language of the skies.

Quartetto

‘What is grandeur, what is power?
‘Heavier toil, superior pain.
‘What the bright reward we gain?
‘The grateful memory of the good.
‘Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
‘The bee's collected treasures sweet,
‘Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet
‘The still small voice of gratitude.’

Recitative

Foremost and leaning from her golden cloud
The venerable Margaret see!
‘Welcome, my noble son,’ (she cries aloud)
‘To this, thy kindred train, and me:
‘Pleased in thy lineaments we trace

273

‘A Tudor's fire, a Beaufort's grace.

Air

‘Thy liberal heart, thy judging eye,
‘The flower unheeded shall descry,
‘And bid it round heaven's altars shed
‘The fragrance of its blushing head:
‘Shall raise from earth the latent gem
‘To glitter on the diadem.

Recitative

‘Lo, Granta waits to lead her blooming band,
‘Not obvious, not obtrusive, she
‘No vulgar praise, no venal incense flings;
‘Nor dares with courtly tongue refined
‘Profane thy inborn royalty of mind:
‘She reveres herself and thee.

274

‘With modest pride to grace thy youthful brow
‘The laureate wreath, that Cecil wore, she brings,
‘And to thy just, thy gentle hand
‘Submits the fasces of her sway,
‘While spirits blest above and men below
‘Join with glad voice the loud symphonious lay.

Grand Chorus

‘Through the wild waves as they roar
‘With watchful eye and dauntless mien
‘Thy steady course of honour keep,
‘Nor fear the rocks nor seek the shore:
‘The star of Brunswick smiles serene,
‘And gilds the horrors of the deep.’

275

FRAGMENTARY AND UNDATED POEMS

277

42 [Translation from Statius,

Thebaid IX 319–27]

Crenaeus, whom the nymph Ismenis bore
To Faunus on the Theban river's shore,
With new-born heat amidst his native stream
Exults in arms, which cast an iron gleam.
In this clear wave he first beheld the day;
On the green bank first taught his steps to stray,
To skim the parent flood and on the margin play:
Fear he disdains and scorns the power of fate,
Secure within his mother's watery state.
The youth exulting stems the bloody tide,
Visits each bank and stalks with martial pride,
While old Ismenus' gently-rolling wave
Delights the favourite youth within its flood to lave.
Whether the youth obliquely steers his course
Or cuts the downward stream with equal force,
The indulgent river strives his steps to aid.

43 [Verse Fragments]

Gratitude

The Joy that trembles in her eye
She bows her meek & humble head
[OMITTED] in silent praise
[OMITTED] beyond the power of Sound.

(Mr Pope dead)

[OMITTED] and smart beneath the visionary scourge

278

—'tis Ridicule & not reproach that wounds
Their vanity & not their conscience feels
[OMITTED]
A few shall [OMITTED]
The cadence of my song repeat
& hail thee in my words.

44 [Impromptus]

279

[The Bishop of Chester]

The Bishop of Chester
Though wiser than Nestor
And fairer than Esther,
If you scratch him will fester.

[Here lies Edmund Keene Lord Bishop of Chester]

Here lies Edmund Keene Lord Bishop of Chester,
He eat a fat goose and could not digest her—

[Here lies Mrs Keene, the Bishop of Chester]

Here lies Mrs Keene, the Bishop of Chester,
She had a bad face which did sadly molest her.

[Here lives Harry Vane]

Here lives Harry Vane,
Very good claret and fine champagne.

[When you rise from your dinner as light as before]

When you rise from your dinner as light as before,
'Tis a sign you have eat just enough and no more.

45 [Couplet about Birds]

280

There pipes the woodlark, and the song-thrush there
Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air.

46 [Lines on Dr Robert Smith]

Do you ask why old Focus Silvanus defies,
And leaves not a chestnut in being?
'Tis not that old Focus himself has got eyes,
But because he has writ about seeing.

47 Satire on the Heads of Houses;

or, Never a Barrel the Better Herring

281

O Cambridge, attend
To the satire I've penned
On the heads of thy Houses,
Thou seat of the Muses!
Know the Master of Jesus
Does hugely displease us;
The Master of Maudlin
In the same dirt is dawdling;
The Master of Sidney
Is of the same kidney;
The Master of Trinity
To him bears affinity;
As the Master of Keys
Is as like as two peas,
So the Master of Queen's
Is as like as two beans;
The Master of King's
Copies them in all things;
The Master of Catherine
Takes them all for his pattern;
The Master of Clare
Hits them all to a hair;
The Master of Christ
By the rest is enticed;
But the Master of Emmanuel
Follows them like a spaniel;

282

The Master of Benet
Is of the like tenet;
The Master of Pembroke
Has from them his system took;
The Master of Peter's
Has all the same features;
The Master of St John's
Like the rest of the dons.

P.S.—As to Trinity Hall
We say nothing at all.

347

POEMS OF DOUBTFUL AUTHENTICITY

349

73 The Characters of the Christ-Cross Row,

By a Critic, To Mrs ------

[_]

The attribution of this poem is questionable.

350

Great D draws near—the Duchess sure is come,
Open the doors of the withdrawing-room:
Her daughters decked most daintily I see,
The dowager grows a perfect double D.
E enters next and with her Eve appears.
Not like yon dowager depressed with years:
What ease and elegance her person grace,
Bright beaming as the evening-star her face.
Queen Esther next—how fair e'en after death;
Then one faint glimpse of Queen Elizabeth;
No more, our Esthers now are nought but Hetties,
Elizabeths all dwindled into Betties.
In vain you think to find them under E,
They're all diverted into H and B.
F follows fast the fair—and in his rear
See folly, fashion, foppery straight appear,
All with fantastic clues, fantastic clothes,
With fans and flounces, fringe and furbelows.
Here Grub-street geese presume to joke and jeer,
All, all but Grannam Osborne's Gazetteer.
High heaves his hugeness H: methinks we see
Henry the Eighth's most monstrous majesty.
But why on such mock grandeur should we dwell?
H mounts to heaven and H descends to hell.
As H the Hebrew found, so I the Jew:
See Isaac, Joseph, Jacob pass in view.
The walls of old Jerusalem appear,
See Israel and all Judah thronging there. [OMITTED]
P pokes his head out, yet has not a pain:

351

Like Punch he peeps, but soon pops in again.
Pleased with his pranks, the pisgys calls him Puck,
Mortals he loves to prick and pinch and pluck.
Now a pert prig, he perks upon your face;
Now peers, pores, ponders with profound grimace;
Now a proud prince, in pompous purple dressed,
And now a player, a peer, a pimp or priest,
A pea, a pin, in a perpetual round,
Now seems a penny, and now shows a pound.
Like perch or pike in pond you see him come;
He in plantations hangs like pear or plum,
Pippin or peach, then perches on the spray,
In form of parrot, pye or popinjay.
P, Proteus-like, all tricks, all shapes can show,
The pleasantest person in the Christ-cross Row. [OMITTED]
As K a king, Q represents a queen,
And seems small difference the sounds between.
K as a man with hoarser accent speaks;
In shriller notes Q like a female squeaks.
Behold, K struts as might a king become;
Q draws her train along the drawing-room.
Slow follow all the quality of state:
Queer Queensberry only does refuse to wait. [OMITTED]
Thus great R reigns in town, while different far,
Rests in retirement little rural R;
Remote from cities lives in lone retreat,
With rooks and rabbit-burrows round his seat.
S sails the swan slow down the silver stream. [OMITTED]
So, big with weddings, waddles W,
And brings all womankind before your view:
A wench, a wife, a widow and a w[hor]e,
With woe behind and wantonness before.

352

74 Lines on the Accession of George III

[_]

The attribution of this poem is questionable.

The Old One's dead,
And in his stead,
The New One takes his place;
Then sing and sigh,
And laugh and cry,
With dismal cheerful face.