Condemn'd alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
'Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies,
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

ODE IV.

TO ADVERSITY.

Ζῆνα

Τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ

σαντα, τῶ πάθει μαθὼν

Θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν. -ÆSCHYLUS, in Agamemnone.

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless Power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge and tort'ring 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.

i

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heav'nly birth,
And bad 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 learn'd 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 flatt'ring foe;

By vain Prosperity receiv'd,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believ'd.

Wisdom in sable garb array'd

Immers'd in rapt'rous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid

With leaden eye, that loves the ground.

Still on thy solemn steps attend :
Warm Charity, the general friend,
With Justice to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,
Dread goddess, lay thy chast'ning hand!

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band

(As by the impious thou art seen)
With thund'ring voice, and threat'ning 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.

ODE V.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

PINDARIC.

Φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσιν· ἐς

Δὲ τὸ πᾶν ἐρμηνέων, χατίζει. -PINDAR. Olymp. II.

I. 1.

AWAKE, Eolian lyre awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings,
From Helicon's harmonious springs

A thousand rills their mazy progress take :
The laughing flowers, that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.

'Now the rich stream of music winds along

Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong.

Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign :

Now rolling down the steep amain,

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour :

The rocks, and nodding groves ves rebellow to the roar.

C

I. 2.

Oh! Sovereign of the willing soul,

Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,

Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares,

And frantic Passions hear thy soft controul.

And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king
With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing:

Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie

The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.

With antic sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,

Frisking light in frolic measures ;

Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet :
To brisk notes in cadence beating

Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare :

Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime, that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:

O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move

The bloom of young Desire, and purple light of Love.

e

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 giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry:

He gives to range the dreary sky:

Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts of war.

Isles that crown th' Egean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,
Or where Mæander'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 breath'd around;
Ev'ry shade and hallow'd fountain
Murmur'd deep a solemn sound :
Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant-power,
And coward Vice, that revels in her chains.
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.

Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations: its connexion with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erse, Norwegian, and Welch Fragments, the Lapland and American songs.]

& Progress of poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surry, and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers: Milton improved on them: but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since.