IL

By music, minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,
Music her soft, assuasive voice applies;
Or, when the soul is press'd with cares,
Exalts her in enlivening airs.

Warriors she fires with animated sounds;
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds :
Melancholy lifts her head,
Morpheus rouses from his bed,
Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes,
Listening Envy drops her snakes;
Intestine war no more our passions wage,
And giddy factions hear away their rage.

III.

But when our
country's cause provokes to arms,
How martial music every bosom warms!
So when the first bold vessel dared the seas,
High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain,
While Argo saw her kindred trees
Descend from Pelion to the main.
Transported demi-gods stood round,
And men grew heroes at the sound,

Inflamed with glory's charms;
Each chief his sevenfold shield display'd,
And half unsheathed the shining blade:
And seas, and rocks, and skies rebound
To arms! to arms! to arms!

IV.

But when, through all the infernal bounds
Which flaming Phlegethon surrounds,
Love, strong as death, the poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appear'd,

O'er all the dreary coasts!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,

Shrieks of woe,

Sullen moans,

Hollow groans,

And cries of tortured ghosts!

But, hark! he strikes the golden lyre;

And see! the tortured ghosts respire,

See, shady forms advance!

Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still,
Ixion rests upon his wheel,

The Furies sink upon their iron beds,

And the pale spectres dance;

By those happy souls who dwell
In yellow meads of asphodel,

Or amaranthine bowers;
By the heroes' armed shades,
Glittering through the gloomy glades ;
By the youths that died for love,
Wandering in the myrtle grove,
Restore, restore Eurydice to life:
Oh take the husband, or return the wife!

He sung, and hell consented
To hear the poet's prayer;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus
song could prevail

O'er death, and o'er hell,
conquest how hard and how glorious!
Though fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.

VI.

But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,

And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their

heads.

Or where Hebrus wanders, Rolling in meanders, All alone, Unheard, unknown, He makes his moan; And calls her ghost, For ever, ever, ever lost! Now with furies surrounded, Despairing, confounded, He trembles, he glows, Amidst Rhodope's snows:

See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals'

cries

Music the fiercest grief can charm,

And fate's severest rage disarm ;

Music can soften pain to ease,

And make despair and madness please:

Our joys below it can improve,

And antedate the bliss above.

This the divine Cecilia found,

And to her Maker's praise confined the sound. When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,

The immortal powers incline their ear; Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire, While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;

And angels lean from heaven to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let poets teli.
To bright Cecilia greater power is given;
His numbers raised a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heaven.

A vapour fed from wild desire,
A wandering, self-consuming fire.
But Hymen's kinder flares unite,
And burn for ever one;
Chaste as cold Cynthia's virgin light,
Productive as the sun.

SEMICHORUS.

O source of every social tie,
United wish, and mutual joy!
What various joys on one attend,
As son, as father, brother, husband, friend!
Whether his hoary sire he spies,
While thousand grateful thoughts arise ;
Or meets his spouse's fonder eye;
Or views his smiling progeny:

What tender passions take their turns,
What home-felt raptures move!
His heart now melts, now leaps, now burns,
With reverence, hope, and love.

CHORUS.

Hence guilty joys, distastes, surmises,
Hence false tears, deceits, disguises,
Dangers, doubts, delays, surprises;

Fires that scorch, yet dare not shine:
Purest love's unwasting treasure,
Constant faith, fair hope, long leisure,
Days of ease, and nights of pleasure;
Sacred Hymen! these are thine.

ODE ON SOLITUDE.
HAPPY the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years, slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixt; sweet recreation :
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

THE

DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.

Ode.

I.

VITAL spark of heavenly flame!

Quit, oh quit this mortal frame! Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life!

Against the poets their own arms they turn'd,
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learn'd.
So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art
By doctors' bills to play the doctor's part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e'er spoil so much as they.
Some drily plain, without invention's aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made.
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.

You then whose judgment the right course
would steer,

Know well each ANCIENT'S proper character;
His fable, subject, scope, in every page;
Religion, country, genius of his age:
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.

Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims
bring,

And trace the Muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.
When first young Maro1 in his boundless mind
A work to outlast immortal Rome design'd,
Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law,
And but from nature's fountain scorn'd to draw:
But when to examine every part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same,
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design :
And ruies as strict his labour'd work confine,
As if the Stagirite o'erlook'd each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.

Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, For there's a happiness as well as care. Music resembles poetry: in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master-hand alone can reach. If, where the rules not far enough extend2, (Since rules were made but to promote their end) Some lucky licence answer to the full The intent proposed, that licence is a rule. Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, May boldly deviate from the common track. Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend; From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, Which, without passing through the judgment, gains The heart, and all its end at once attains. In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes, Which out of nature's common order rise, The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.

1 "Cum canerem reges et prælia, Cynthius aurem Tellit."-VIRG. Eclog. vi.

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands; Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, Destructive war, and all-involving age. See from each clime the learn'd their incense bring! Hear, in all tongues consenting pæans ring! In praise so just let every voice be join'd, And fill the general chorus of mankind. Hail, bards triumphant ! born in happier days; Immortal heirs of universal praise !

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
O may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes)
To teach vain wits a science little known,
To admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

IJ.

Or all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. Whatever nature has in worth denied, She gives in large recruits of needful pride; For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind: Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense. If once right reason drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day. Trust not yourself; but your defects to know Make use of every friend--and every foe.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,

The

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear; The whole at once is bold, and regular.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be. In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend ; And if the means be just, the conduct true, Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due. As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, To avoid great errors, must the less commit; Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, For not to know some trifles, is a praise. Most critics, fond of some subservient art, Still make the whole depend upon a part: They talk of principles, but notions prize, And all to one loved folly sacrifice.

Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say, A certain bard encountering on the way, Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage, As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage; Concluding all were desperate sots and fools, Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules. Our author, happy in a judge so nice, Produced his play, and begg'd the knight's advice; Made him observe the subject, and the plot, The manners, passions, unities; what not? All which, exact to rule, were brought about, Were but a combat in the lists left out. "What! leave the combat out?" exclaims the

knight;

Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite. “Not so, by Heav'n!" (he answers in a rage) "Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the

stage."

So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain. "Then build a new, or act it in a plain."

"Diligenter legendum est ac pæne ad scribendi sollicitadinem: Nec per partes modo scrutanda sunt omnia, sed perlectus liber utique ex integro resumendus."-QUINT.

Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.

Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glittering thoughts struck out at every line;
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something, whose truth, convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
For works may have more wit than does 'em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

gay:

Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still,-The style is excellent;
The sense, they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on every place ;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction
But true expression, like the unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words express'd
Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd:
For different styles with different subjects sort,
As several garbs with country, town, and court.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense 2;
Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze the unlearn'd and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play3,

These sparks with awkward vanity display
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday ;
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,

As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse, though thousand charms con-
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; [spire,

PERS. Sat. i.