Ah, why the voice of ire and bitter woe
O'er Tago's banks, ye nymphs of Tagus, fhew;
The flowery garlands from your ringlets torn,
Why wandering wild with trembling steps forlorn!
The dæmon's rage you faw, and markt his flight
To the dark manfions of eternal night :
You saw how howling through the shades beneath
He waked new horrors in the realms of death.
What trembling tempefts fhook the thrones of hell,
And groan'd along her caves, ye mufes, tell.
The rage of baffled fraud, and all the fire
Of powerlefs hate, with tenfold flames confpire;
From every eye the tawny lightnings glare,
And hell, illumined by the ghaftly flare,
(A drear blue gleam) in tenfold horror shews
Her darkling caverns; from his dungeon rofe
Hagar's ftern fon, pale was his earthy hue,
And from his eye-balls flafh'd the lightnings blue;
Convulfed with rage the dreadful fhade demands
The laft affiftance of th' infernal bands.
As when the whirlwinds, fudden bursting, bear
Th' autumnal leaves high floating through the air;
So rose the legions of th' infernal state,
Dark fraud, bafe art, fierce rage, and burning hate:
Wing'd by the furies to the Indian strand
They bend; the dæmon leads the dreadful band,
And in the bosoms of the raging Moors
All their collected living strength he pours.
One breast alone against his rage was steel'd,
Secure in spotlefs truth's celeftial fhield.
One evening past, another evening closed,
The regent still brave GAMA's fuit opposed;
The Lufian chief his guarded guest detain'd,
With arts on arts, and vows of friendship feign'd.
His fraudful art, though veil'd in deep disguise,
Shone bright to GAMA's manner-piercing eyes.
As in the fun's bright beam the gamefome boy
Plays with the fhining steel or crystal toy,
↳ As in the fun's bright beam-Imitated from Virgil, who, by the fame fimile, defcribes the fluctuation of the thoughts of Æneas, on the eve of the Latian war:
Cuncta videns, magno curarum fluctuat æftu,
Atque animum nunc huc celerem, nunc dividit illuc,
In partesque rapit varias, perque omnia verfat.
Sicut aquæ tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercuffum, aut radiantis imagine Luna,
Omnia pervolitat late loca: jamque fub auras
Erigitur, fummique ferit laquearia tecti.
This way and that he turns his anxious mind,
Thinks, and rejects the counfels he defign'd;
Explores himself in vain, in every part,
And gives no reft to his distracted heart:
So when the fun by day or moon by night
Strike on the polish'd brass their trembling light,
The glitt'ring fpecies here and there divide,
And caft their dubious beams from fide to fide;
Swift and irregular, by sudden starts,
The living ray with viewless motion darts,
Swift o'er the wall, the floor, the roof, by turns
The fun-beam dances, and the radiance burns.
In quick fucceffion thus a thousand views
The fapient Lusian's lively thought pursues;
Quick as the lightning every view revolves,
And, weighing all, fixt are his dread refolves.
Now on the walls, now on the pavement play,
And to the ceiling flash the glaring day.
Ariosto has also adopted this fimile in the eighth book of his Orlando
Furiofo :
Qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume
Dal Sol percoffa, o da' notturni rai,
Per gli ampli tetti và con lungo falto
A deftra, ed a finistra, e basso, ed alto.
So from a water clear, the trembling light
Of Phoebus, or the filver ray of night,
Along the spacious rooms with splendor plays,
Now high, now low, and shifts a thousand ways.
But the happiest circumstance belongs to Camoëns. The velocity and various shiftings of the fun-beam, reflected from a piece of crystal or polished steel in the hand of a boy, give a much stronger idea of the violent agitation and sudden shiftings of thought, than the image of the trembling light of the fun or moon reflected from a vessel of water. The brazen vessel however, and not the water, is only mentioned by Dryden. Nor must another inaccuracy pafs unobferved. That the reflection of the moon flashed th glaring day is not countenanced by the original. The critic however, who, from the mention of these, will infer any disrespect to the name of Dryden, is, as critics often are, ignorant of the writer's meaning. A very different inference is intended: if so great a master as Dryden has erred, let the reader remember, that other translators are liable to fail, and that a few inaccuracies ought, by no means, to be produced as the fpecimens of any compofition.
O'er India's fhore the fable night defcends,
And GAMA, now, fecluded from his friends,
Detain❜d a captive in the room of state,
Anticipates in thought to-morrow's fate;
For just Mozaide no generous care delays,
And VASCO's truft with friendly toils repays.
RED rofe the dawn; roll'd o'er the low'ring sky,
The skattering clouds of tawny purple fly.
While yet the day-spring struggled with the gloom,
The Indian monarch fought the regent's dome.
In all the luxury of Afian ftate
High on a gem-ftarr'd couch the monarch fate;
Then on th' illuftrious captive bending down.
His eyes, ftern darken'd with a threatening frown,
Thy truthless tale, he cries, thy art appears,
Confeft inglorious by thy cautious fears.
Yet ftill if friendship, honeft, thou implore,
Yet now command thy veffels to the shore:
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