The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,
Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings:-all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;

The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.

Yet, ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

ODE III.

TO ADVERSITY.

Daughter of Jove, relentless Power!
Thou Tamer of the human breast;
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The Bad affright, afflict the Best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain
The Proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before; unpitied, and alone.

When first thy Sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,

And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learnt to melt at others' woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light, they disperse, and with them go

The summer friend, the flattering foe :
By vain Prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid

With leaden eye, that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend:

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

O, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand! Not in thy Gorgon1 terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful Band (As by the impious thou art seen)

With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there

To soften, not to wound my heart.

The generous spark 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.

1 See note, Macbeth, p. 149.

ODE IV.

THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

PINDARIC.

I. 1.

Awake, Æolian lyre, awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's1 harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take;
The laughing flowers that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,

Through verdant vales, and Ceres'2 golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain,

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:

The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

I. 2.

O sovereign of the willing soul,

Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares,

And frantic Passions, hear thy soft control.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War 3
Has curbed the fury of his car,

And dropped his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptered hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feathered king4
With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing:
Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.

I. 3.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey,
Tempered to thy warbled lay,
O'er Idalia's velvet green5

The rosy crownèd Loves are seen
On Cytherea's day,

1 A mountain of Western Boeotia.
2 The Roman name given to the
Greek divinity Demeter, who pre-
sided over grain and the fruits of the
earth.

3 It was supposed that the god Mars resided chiefly in Thrace. 4 The eagle, sacred to Jupiter. 5 In the island of Cyprus. 6 A surname of Venus, derived

With antic Sport and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating
Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow, melting strains their queen's approach declare;
Where'er she turns, the Graces1 homage pay.
With arms sublime that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
The bloom of young Desire, and purple light of Love.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race what ills await!

Labour and Penury, the racks of Pain,
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate!
The fond complaint, my song, disprove,

And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,
He gives to range the dreary sky:

Till down the Eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's 2 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,

from the island of Cythera (now Cerigo), where she was specially worshipped.

The personifications of Grace and

Beauty were, according to Hesiod, three in number: viz. Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosynè.

2 The sun.

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

The unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's1 steep,
Isles, that crown the Ægean2 deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus 3 laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves
In lingering labyrinths creep,
How do your tuneful Echoes languish
Mute, but to the voice of Anguish!
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathed around;
Every shade and every fountain
Murmured deep a golden sound:

Till the sad Nine5 in Greece's evil hour

Left their Parnassus 6 for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains,
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.

III. 1.

Far from the sun and summer gale,

8

In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,

To him the mighty Mother9 did unveil

Her awful face: the dauntless child

Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.

"This pencil take," she said, "whose colours clear,
Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!
This can unlock the gates of Joy,

Of Horror that, and thrilling fears,

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."

1 A town in Phocis, celebrated for

the oracle of Apollo.

5 The Muses.

6 A mountain in Phocis, the fa

2 The sea that divides Greece from vourite haunt of the Muses.

Asia Minor.

3 A small stream which ran along the west side of the city of Athens. 4 A river of Asia Minor, celebrated for its windings.

7 Italian.
8 Shakspere.

9 Nature.