OF

ODE ON THE SPRING.

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours,
Fair Venus' train appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of Spring: While, whispering pleasure as they fly, Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade;
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade',
Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think

(At ease reclin'd in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care:

The panting herd's repose:

Yet hark, how through the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon 2:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gayly-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the Sun 3.

To Contemplation's sober eye 4
Such is the race of man:

And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay
But flutter through life's little day.

In Fortune's varying colours drest:
Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance;
Or chill'd by Age, their airy dance
They leave in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear in accents low
The sportive kind reply;
"Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering female mects,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,

No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown:
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone-
We frolic while 'tis May."

ODE

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT,

DROWNED IN A TUB OF GOLD FISHES.

'TWAS on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dy'd

The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima reclin'd,

Gaz'd on the lake below.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath

A grisly troop are seen,

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,
Condemn'd 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.

(As by the impious thou art seen)
With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horrour's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, oh, 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.

Τὸν φρονεῖν βροΐὲς ὁδιά -
σανία, τῷ πάθει μαθὼν
Θέλλα κυρίως ἔχειν.

Eschylus, in Agamemnone.

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, design'd,
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 learn'd to melt at others woe.

Scar'd 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 receiv'd,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believ'd.

Wisdom, in sable garb array'd,

Immers'd 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,

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!

Not in thy gorgon terrour's clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band,

ELEGY

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD.

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the Moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,

The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour,

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The peeling anthem swells the note of praise.