While in more lengthen'd notes and slow Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies: Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes, In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats; Till by degrees, remote and small, The strains decay, And melt away In a dying, dying fall. By music minds an equal temper know, Warriors she fires with animated sounds; Morpheus rouses from his bed, Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes, Listening Envy drops her snakes; Intestine war no more our passions wage, And giddy factions hear away their rage. But when our country's cause provokes to arms, Each chief his sevenfold shield display'd, But when through all the' infernal bounds, What sounds were heard, O'er all the dreary coasts! Dismal screams, Fires that glow, Shrieks of woe, Sullen moans, Hollow groans, And cries of tortur'd ghosts! But, hark! he strikes the golden lyre; Thy stone, O Sisyphus! stands still, Ixion rests upon his wheel, And the pale spectres dance; The furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their heads. By the streams that ever flow, By the fragrant winds that blow By those happy souls who dwell Restore, restore Eurydice to life; Oh, take the husband, or return the wife !— To hear the poet's pray'r : O'er death and o'er hell, A conquest how hard and how glorious! With Styx nine times round her, But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes; Beside the falls of fountains, Or where Hebrus wanders, Rolling in meanders, All alone, Unheard, unknown, For ever, ever, ever lost! He trembles, he glows, Amidst Rhodope's snows: See, wild as the winds o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries Ah see, he dies! Yet ev'n in death Eurydice he sung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue; Eurydice the woods, Eurydice the floods, Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung. Music the fiercest grief can charm, And fate's severest rage disarm : And make despair and madness please: And antedate the bliss above. And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. ODE ON SOLITUDE. Written when the Author was about Twelve HAPPY the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter fire. Bless'd, who can unconcern'dly find Sound sleep by night; study and ease Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Steal from the world, and not a stone ODE. THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL. VITAL spark of heavenly flame! Quit, O quit this mortal frame! Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying; Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature! cease thy strife, And let me languish into life. Hark! they whisper; angels say, What is this absorbs me quite, The world recedes; it disappears! Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! |