Bid bright Astræa gild the morn,
Or bid a hundred suns be born,
To hecatomb the year;
Without thy aid, in vain the poles,
In vain the zodiac system rolls,
In vain the lunar sphere.
Come, fairest princess of the throng,
Bring sweet philosophy along,
In metaphysic dreams;
While raptur'd bards no more behold
A vernal age of purer gold,
In Heliconian streams.
Drive Thraldom with malignant hand,
To curse some other destin'd land,
By Folly led astray:
Ierne bear on azure wing;
Energic let her soar, and sing
Thy universal sway.
So, when Amphion bade the lyre
To more majestic sound aspire,
Behold the madding throng,
In wonder and oblivion drown'd,
To sculpture turn'd by magic sound,
And petrifying song.
THIS day, whate'er the Fates decree,
Shall still be kept with joy by me:
This day then let us not be told,
That you are sick, and I grown old;
Nor think on our approaching ills,
And talk of spectacles and pills;
To-morrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff.
Yet, since from reason may be brought
A better and more pleasing thought,
Which can in spite of all decays,
Support a few remaining days;
From not the gravest of divines.
Accept for once some serious lines.
Although we now can form no more
Long schemes of life, as heretofore;
Yet you, while time is running fast,
Can look with joy on what is past.
Were future happiness and pain
A mere contrivance of the brain;
As atheists argue, to entice
And fit their proselytes for vice;
(The only comfort they propose,
To have companions in their woes)
Grant this the case; yet sure 'tis hard
That virtue, styl'd its own reward,
And by all sages understood
To be the chief of human good,
Should acting die; nor leave behind
Some lasting pleasure in the mind,
Which, by remembrance, will assuage
Grief, sickness, poverty, and age;
And strongly shoot a radiant dart
To shine through life's declining part.
Say, Stella, feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well spent?
Your skilful hand employ'd to save.
Despairing wretches from the grave;
And then supporting with your store
Those whom you dragg'd from death before?
So Providence on mortals waits,
Preserving what it first creates.
Your generous boldness to defend
An innocent and absent friend;
That courage which can make you just
To merit humbled in the dust;
The detestation you express
For vice in all its glittering dress;
That patience under torturing pain,
Where stubborn stoics would complain :
Must these like empty shadows pass,
Or forms reflected from a glass?
Or mere chimeras in the mind,
That fly, and leave, no marks behind?
Does not the body thrive and grow
By food of twenty years ago?
And, had it not been still supplied,
It must a thousand times have died.
Then who with reason can maintain
That no effects of food remain ?
And is not virtue in mankind
The nutriment that feeds the mind;
Upheld by each good action past,
And still cotinued by the last?
Then, who with reason can pretend
That all effects of virtue end?
Believe me, Stella, when you show
That true contempt for things below,
Nor prize your life for other ends,
Than merely to oblige your friends;
Your former actions claim their part
And join to fortify your heart.
For Virtue, in her daily race,
Like Janus, bears a double face;
Looks back with joy where she has gone,
And therefore goes with courage on :
She at your sickly couch will wait,
And guide you to a better state.
O then, whatever Heaven intends!
Take pity on your pitying friends!
Nor let your ills affect your mind,
To fancy they can be unkind.
Me, surely me, you ought to spare,
Who gladly would your suffering share;
Or give my scrap of life to you,
And think it far beneath your due;
You, to whose care so oft I owe
That I'm alive to tell you so.
HORACE, BOOK I. ODE XIV.
PARAPHRASED, AND INSCRIBED TO IRELAND. 1726.
THE INSCRIPTION.
Poor floating isle, tost on Ill-fortune's waves,
Ordain'd by fate to be the land of slaves ;
Shall moving Delos now deep rooted stand:
Thou, fix'd of old, be now the moving land?
Although the metaphor be worn and stale,
Betwixt a state, and vessel under sail;
Let me suppose thee for a ship a while,
And thus address thee in the sailor's style.
UNHAPPY ship, thou art return'd in vain; New waves shall drive thee to the deep again..
Look to thyself, and be no more the sport
Of giddy winds, but make some friendly port.
Lost are thy oars, that us'd thy course to guide,
Like faithful counsellors, on either side,
Thy mast, which like some aged patriot stood
The single pillar for his country's good,
To lead thee, as a staff directs the blind,
Behold it cracks by yon rough eastern wind.
Your cables burst, and you must quickly feel
The waves impetuous enter at your keel.
Thus commonwealths receive a foreign yoke,
When the strong cords of union once are broke.
Torn by a sudden tempest is thy sail,
Expanded to invite a milder gale.
As when some writer in a public cause
His pen, to save a sinking nation, draws,
While all is calm, his arguments prevail;
The people's voice expands his paper sail ;
Till power, discharging all her stormy bags,
Flutters the feeble pamphlet into rags.
The nation scar'd, the author doom'd to death,
Who fondly put his trust in popular breath.
A larger sacrifice in vain you vow;
There's not a power above will help you now;
A nation thus, who oft Heaven's call neglects,
In vain from injur'd Heaven relief expects.
'Twill not avail, when thy strong sides are broke,
That thy descent is from the British oak;
Or, when your name and family you boast,
From fleets triumphant o'er the Gallic coast,
Such was Ierne's claim, as just as thine,
Her sons descended from the British line;
Her matchless sons, whose valour still remains
On French records for twenty long campaigns;
|