By the hero's armed shades,
Glittering through the gloomy glades;
By the youths that dy'd for love,
Wandering in the myrtle grove,
Restore, restore Eurydice to life :
Oh take the husband, or return the wife !
He sung, and hell consented
To hear the Poet's prayer;
Stern Proferpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus fong could prevail
O'er death, and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious!
Though fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.
But foon, too foon the lover turns his eyes :
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in Mæanders
All alone,
Unheard, unknown,
He makes his moan;
And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever loft!
Now with Furies furrounded,
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidft Rhodope's snows:
See, wild as the winds, o'er the defert he flies;
Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals cries-
Yet ev'n in death Eurydice he fung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,
Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung.
Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm :
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please:
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker's praise confin'd the found.
When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,
Th' immortal powers incline their ear;
Borne on the swelling notes our fouls afpire,
While folemn airs improve the facred fire;
And angels lean from heaven to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let Poets tell,
To bright Cecilia greater power is given :
His numbers rais'd a shade from hell,
Her's lift the foul to heaven.
TRAGEDY OF BRUTUS.
Altered from Shakespeare by the Duke of Buckingham, at whose defire these two Choruses were composed, to fupply as many, wanting in his play. They were fet many years afterwards by the famous Bononcini, and performed at Buckingham-house.
E shades, where sacred truth is fought;
Groves, where immortal Sages taught :
Where heavenly visions Plato fir'd,
And Epicurus lay inspir'd!
In vain your guiltless laurels stood
Unspotted long with human blood.
War, horrid war, your thoughtful walks invades,
And steel now glitters in the Muses' shades.
ANTISTROPHE I.
Oh heaven-born sisters! source of art!
Who charm the sense, or mend the heart;
Who lead fair Virtue's train along,
Moral truth and mystic Song!
To what new clime, what distant sky,
Forsaken, friendless, shall ye fly?
Say, will ye bless the bleak Atlantic shore ?
Or bid the furious Gaul be rude no more?
When Athens sinks by fates unjust,
When wild Barbarians spurn her dust ;
Perhaps ev'n Britain's utmost shore
Shall cease to blush with stranger's gore;
See Arts her favage fons control,
And Athens rifing near the pole!
Till fome new Tyrant lifts his purple hand,
And civil madness tears them from the land.
ANTISTROPHE II.
Ye Gods! what justice rules the ball !
Freedom and Arts together fall;
Fools grant whate'er Ambition craves,
And men, once ignorant, are slaves.
Oh curs'd effects of civil hate,
In every age, in every state!
Still, when the luft of tyrant power succeeds,
Some Athens perishes, some Tully bleeds.
CHORUS OF YOUTHS AND VIRGINS.
H Tyrant Love! hast thou possest
The prudent, learn'd, and virtuous breast?
Wisdom and Wit in vain reclaim,
And Arts but foften us to feel thy flame.
Love, soft intruder, enters here,
But entering learns to be fincere.
Marcus with blushes owns he loves,
And Brutus tenderly reproves.
Why, Virtue, dost thou blame defire,
Which Nature has imprest?
Why, Nature, dost thou soonest fire'
The mild and generous breaft?
Love's purer flames the Gods approve;
The Gods and Brutus bend to Love:
Brutus for abfent Porcia fighs,
And sterner Caffius melts at Junia's eyes.
What is loose love? a transient guft,
Spent in a fudden storm of luft,
A vapour fed from wild defire,
A wandering, self-confuming fire.
But Hymen's kinder flames unite;
And burn for ever one;
Chaste as cold Cynthia's virgin light,
Productive as the Sun.
SEMICHORUS.
Oh fource of every social tye,
United wish, and mutual joy!
What various joys on one attend,
As fon, as father, brother, husband, friend?
Whether his hoary fire he spies,
While thousand grateful thoughts arife;
Or meets his spouse's fonder eye;
Or views his fmiling progeny;
What tender passions take their turns,
What home-felt raptures move!
His heart now melts, now leaps, now burns,
With reverence, hope, and love.
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