By old Cephisus deep,

Who spread his wavy sweep

In warbled wanderings, round thy green retreat;

On whose enamell'd side,

When holy Freedom died,

No equal haunt allur'd thy future feet.

O sister meek of Truth,
To my admiring youth

Thy sober aid and native charms infuse!

The flowers that sweetest breathe,

Though Beauty cull'd the wreath,

Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues.

While Rome could none esteem

But virtue's patriot theme,

You lov'd her hills, and led her laureat band:

But staid to sing alone

To one distinguish'd throne;

And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land.

No more, in hall or bower,

The Passions own thy power;

Love, only love, her forceless numbers mean:
For thou hast left her shrine

Nor olive more, nor vine,

;

Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene.

Though taste, though genius, bless

To some divine excess,

Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole; What each, what all supply,

May court, may charm our eye;

Thou, only thou, canst raise the meeting soul!

Of these let others ask,

To aid some mighty task,

I only seek to find thy temperate vale;
Where oft my reed might sound

To maids and shepherds round,

And all thy sons, O Nature, learn my tale.

ODE,

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR MDCCXLVI.

[IBID.]

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blest?
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,

Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,

She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there.

ODE TO MERCY.

[IBID.]

STROPHE.

O THOU, who sit❜st, a smiling bride,

By Valour's arm'd and awful side,

Gentlest of sky-born forms, and best ador'd;

Who oft with songs, divine to hear,

Win'st from his fatal

grasp the spear,

And hids't in wreaths of flow'rs his bloodless sword!

Thou who, amidst the deathful field,

By godlike chiefs alone beheld,

Oft with thy bosom bare art found,

Pleading for him, the youth who sinks to ground:
See, Mercy, see, with pure and loaded hands,
Before thy shrine my country's genius stands,
And decks thy altar still, tho' pierc'd with many a

wound!

ANTISTROPHE.

When he whom ev'n our joys provoke,

The fiend of Nature, join'd his yoke,

And rush'd in wrath to make our isle his prey;
Thy form, from out thy sweet abode,

O'ertook him on his blasted road,

And stop'd his wheels, and look'd his rage away.
I see recoil his sable steeds,

That bore him swift to savage deeds,
Thy tender melting eyes they own;

O maid, for all thy love to Britain shewn,
Where Justice bars her iron tower,

To thee we build a roseate bower,

Thou, thou shalt rule our queen, and share our monarch's throne! ·

ODE TO FEAR.

[IBID.]

THOU, to whom the world unknown,
With all its shadowy shapes, is shewn ;
Who seest, appall'd, th' unreal scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between :
Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear!

I see, I see thee near.

I know thy hurried step; thy haggard eye!
Like thee I start; like thee disorder'd fly.
For, lo, what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fix'd behold?
Who stalks his round, an hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm;
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep:
And with him thousand phantoms join'd,
Who prompt to deeds accurs'd the mind:
And those, the fiends, who, near allied,
O'er nature's wounds and wrecks preside;