With fcreaming Horror's funeral cry,

Defpair, and fell Disease, and ghaftly Poverty,

Thy form benign, oh Goddess, wear,

Thy milder influence impart, Thy philofophic Train be there,

To foften, not to wound the heart, The gen'rous fpark 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.

THE

THE

PROGRESS of POESY.

A PINDARIC ODE.

Φωνάντα συνετοῖσιν ̓ ἐς

Δὲ τὸ πᾶν ἑρμηνέων χατίζει.

PINDAR, Olymp. II.

ADVERTISEMENT.

When the Author firft publifhed this and the following Ode, he was advised, even by his Friends, to fubjoin fome few explanatory Notes; but he had too much respect for the understanding of his Readers to take that liberty.

THE

PROGRESS OF POESY.

A PINDARIC ODE.

I. I.

*AWAKE, Æolian lyre, awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling

ftrings.

From Helicon's harmonious fprings

A thousand rills their mazy progrefs take:

The

*Awake, up my glory awake, lute and harp. David's Pfalms. Pindar ftyles his own poetry with its mufical accom、 panyments,

Αἰοληίς μολπή, Αιόλιδες χορδαίς Αἰολίδων πνοαὶ ἀυλῶν. Æolian Song, Eolian ftrings, the breath of the Æolian flute.

D

The

The laughing flow'rs, that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.

Now the rich stream of mufic winds along,

Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,

Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign;

Now rolling down the fleep amain,

Headlong, impetuous, fee it pour :

The rocks, and nodding groves rebellow to the

roar.

Oh!

The fubject and fimile, as ufual with Pindar, are united. The various fources of poetry, which gives life and luftre to all it touches, are here defcribed; its quiet majeftic progrefs enriching every fubject (otherwife dry and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant karmony of numbers; and its more rapid and irrefiftible courfe, when fwoln and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous paffions.