Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, He gives to range the dreary sky; Till down the eastern cliffs afar1 Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war. II. 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 Chili's boundless forests laid, She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat, In loose numbers wildly sweet, Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous shame, Th' unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy flame. II. 3. Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep, Or where Maander's amber waves How do your tuneful echoes languish Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour, Left their Parnassus, for the Latian plains. And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast. III. 1. Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's4 Darling laid, To him the mighty mother did unveil Her awful face: The dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled. "This pencil take," she said, "whose colors clear 1 or seen the morning's well-appointed star Come marching up the eastern hills afar.-Cowley. * Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations: its connec tion with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it. ? 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 Surrey, 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. 4 Shakspeare 1 Milton. Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy! Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears." Nor second He,' that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, The secrets of th' abyss to spy. He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time: The living Throne,2 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 Two coursers of ethereal race,3 With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace. III. 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.5 But ah! 'tis heard no more Oh! Lyre divine, what daring spirit Wakes thee now? Though he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, With orient hues, unborrow'd 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. THE BARD." I. 1. "Ruin seize thec, ruthless King!8 Confusion on thy banners wait! 2 "For the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels-and above the firmament, that was over their beads, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire-stone-This was the appearance of the glory of the Lord."--Ezekiel 1. 20, 26, 28. * Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes. "Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder "-Job. "Words that weep, and tears that speak."-Cowley. 6 Pindar compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak and clamor in vain below, while it pursues its flight, regardless of their noise. 7 This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death. "Over this inimitable ode a tinge so wildly awful, so gloomily terrific, is thrown, as without any exception to place it at the head of lyric poetry.”—Drake's Literary Hours. "This abrupt execration plunges the reader into that sudden, fearful perplexity which is designed Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing, Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail He wound with toilsome march his long array. "To arms!" cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quivering lance, I. 2. On a rock, whose haughty brow 5 With haggard eyes the Poet stood; Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air;7) "Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave, O'er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave, Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day, To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay."8 to predominate through the whole. The irresistible violence of the prophet's passions bears him away, who, as he is unprepared by a formal ushering in of the speaker, is unfortified against the impressions of his poetical frenzy, and overpowered by them, as sudden thunders strike the deepest. All readers of taste, I fancy, have felt this effect from the passage; they will be pleased, however, to see their own feelings so well expressed as they are in this note."-Maton. 1 The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings interwoven, forming a coat of mail, that sat close to the body, and adapted itself to every motion. 2 Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that mountainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigian-eryrie: it included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway. 3 Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law to King Edward. 4 Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. They both were Lords Marchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the king in this expedition. 6 "The turbulent impetuosity of the preceding stanza, and the sedate majesty of this, form a most pleasing and animated contrast."- Wakefield. The image was taken from a well-known picture of Raphael, representing the Supreme Being in the vision of Ezekiel: there are two of these paintings, both believed to be originals; one at Florence, the other in the Duke of Orleans' collection at Paris. 7 "Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurl'd Paradise Lost, i. 535. 8 "Hoel," observes Mr. Mitford, "is called high-born, as being the son of Owen Gwynedd, prince of North Wales." Llewellyn's poetry, we are told, was characterized by his countrymen as a soft lay, and the Bard is himself styled the tender-hearted prince. Dr. Evans mentions Cadwallo and Urien among those bards of whom no works remain. I. 3. 1 "Cold is Cadwallo's tongue, That hush'd the stormy main: Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed: Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.' Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes, I see them sit; they linger yet, 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 Berkley's roof that ring, She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,7 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! 1 "The cloud-capt towers."-Shakspeare. 2 The shores of Caernarvonshire, opposite to the Isle of Anglesey. 3 Camder, and others observe, that eagles used annually to build their aerie among the rocks of Snowdon, which from thence (as some think) were named by the Welsh Craigian-eryrie, or the Cragi of the Eagles. At this day the highest point of Snowdon is called the Eagle's Nest. 4 "Here," says an anonymous critic, "a vision of triumphant revenge is judiciously made to ensue, after the pathetic lamentation which precedes it. Breaks-double rhymes-an appropriated cadence -and an exalted ferocity of language, forcibly picture to us the uncontrollable tumultuous workings of the prophet's stimulated bosom."-Mason. "Can there be an image more just, apposite, and nobly imagined, than this tremendous tragical winding-sheet! In the rest of this stanza the wildness of thought, expression, and cadence, are ad. mirably adapted to the character and situation of the speaker, and of the bloody spectres, his assist ants. It is not indeed peculiar to it alone, but a beauty that runs throughout the whole composition, that the historical events are briefly sketched out by a few striking circumstances, in which the Poet's office of rather exciting and directing, than satisfying the reader's imagination, is perfectly observed. Such abrupt hints, resembling the several fragments of a vast ruin, suffer not the mind to be raised to the utmost pitch by one image of horror, but that instantaneously a second and a third are pre sented to it, and the affection is still uniformly supported."-Anon. Critic. "Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkley Castle. ↑ Isabel of France, Edward the Second's adulterous Queen, whose relentless cruelty is well known. Triumphs of Edward the Third in France. 1760-1820.] GRAY. Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, II. 2. "Mighty victor, mighty lord, Is the sable warrior fled ?2 Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey."5 "Fill high the sparkling bowl, The rich repast prepare, 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.7 Heard ye the din of battle bray,8 1 Death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even robbed in his last moments by his cour. tiers and his mistress. Edward, the Black Prince, dead some time before his father. 3 The summer friends, in the Hymn to Adversity. "This image is inexpressibly beautiful, but not superior to that which it so happily and unaffectedly introduces."— Wakefield. * Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign. See Froissart, and other contemporary writers. "This representation of the whirlwind, under the image of a beast of prey lying in ambush in the daytime, expectant of the night, is not only perfectly just and natural, but incomparably sublime.”— Wake field. Richard the Second (as we are told by Archbishop Scroop and the confederate lords in their manifesto, by Thomas of Walsingham, and all the older writers) was starved to death. The story of his assassination by Sir Piers of Exon is of much later date. "This stanza (as an ingenious friend remarks) has exceeding merit. It breathes, in a lesser compass, what the ode breathes at large, the high spirit of lyric enthusiasm. The transitions are sudden and impetuous; the language full of fire and force; and the imagery carried, without impropriety, to the most daring height. The manner of Richard's death by famine exhibits such beauties of personification, as only the richest and most vivid imagination could supply. From thence we are hurried, with the wildest rapidity, into the midst of battle; and the epithet kindred, places at once before our eyes all the peculiar horrors of civil war. Immediately, by a transition most striking and unexpected, the poet falls into a tender and pathetic address; which, from the sentiments, and also from the numbers, has all the melancholy flow, and breathes all the plaintive softness, of Elegy. Again the scene changes; again the Bard rises into an allegorical description of carnage, to which the metre is admirably adapted: and the concluding sentence of personal punishment on Edward is denounced with a solemnity that chills and terrifies.”—Mason. 7 What can exceed the terrible sublimity of this picture ? and what is at all worthy to be put in competition with it, except that of Milton, which our author seems to have had in view? "He ceased, for both seem'd highly pleased; and Death 8 Ruinous wars of York and Lancaster. 2 P 50* |