ODE TO FEAR.

THOU to whom the world unknown,

With all its shadowy shapes, is shown; Who see'st, appalled, the 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 disordered fly.
For lo, what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fixed 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 joined,
Who prompt to deeds accursed the mind:
And those, the fiends, who, near allied,
O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks, preside;
While Vengeance, in the lurid air,
Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare:
On whom that ravening brood of Fate
Who lap the blood of sorrow wait:
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild like thee?

EPODE.

In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, The grief-full Muse, addrest her infant tongue; The maids and matrons on her awful voice,

Silent and pale in wild amazement hung. Yet he, the bardt who first invoked thy name, Disdained in Marathon its power to feel: For not alone he nursed the poet's flame, But reached from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel.

But who is he whom later garlands grace;

Who left a while o'er Hybla's dews to rove, With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace, Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove! Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, the incestuous queent Sighed the sad calls her son and husband heard, When once alone it broke the silent scene,

And he the wretch of Thebes no more appeared.

Alluding to the Kuvas aquæres of Sophocles. See the Electra.

↑ Eschylus. Jocasta.

§ ουδ ετ' ορώρει βοη Εν πεν Σιωπη: φθεγμα δ' εξαίφνης τινος Βουξεν αυτόν, ώστε παντας όσθιας Στησαι φόβω δείσαντας εξαίφνης Τρίχας.

O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart:
Thy withering power inspired each mournful
line:

Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part,
Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine

ANTISTROPHE.

THOU who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad Nymph, at last?
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or, in some hallowed seat,

'Gainst which the big waves beat,

Hear drowning seamen's cries, in tempests brought? Dark power, with shuddering meek submitted thought.

Be mine to read the visions old
Which thy awakening bards have told:
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true;
Ne'er be I found, by thee o'erawed,
In that thrice-hallowed eve, abroad,
When ghosts, as cottage maids believe,
Their pebbled beds permitted leave;
And goblins haunt, from fire, or fen,
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!

O thou whose spirit most possest
The sacred seat of Shakspeare's breast!
By all that from thy prophet broke,
In thy divine emotions spoke;
Hither again thy fury deal,
Teach me but once like him to feel:
His cypress wreath my meed decree,
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee!

Nigh sphered in heaven, its native strains could] Lear;

I see recoil his sable steeds,
That bore him swift to savage deeds,

Thither oft his glory greeting,

From Waller's myrtle shades retreating,
With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue,
My trembling feet his guiding steps pursue;
In vain-Such bliss to one alone,

Of all the sons of soul, was known;
And Heaven, and Fancy, kindred powers,
Have now o'erturned th' inspiring bowers;

Or curtained close such scenes from every future view.

ODE,

Written in the beginning of the year 1746. 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 hallowed 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.

STROPHE.

O THOU, who sit'st a smiling bride By valour's armed and awful side, Gentlest of sky-born forms, and best adored; Who oft with songs, divine to hear, Win'st from his fatal grasp the spear, And hid'st in wreaths of flowers 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, though pierced with many a wound!

ANTISTROPHE,

When he whom e'en our joys provoke,

The fiend of nature joined his yoke,

And rushed in wrath to make our isle his prey: Thy form, from out thy sweet abode, O'ertook him on his blasted road,

And stopped his wheels, and looked his rage away.

O maid, for all thy love to Britain shown,
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 LIBERTY.

STROPHE.

WHO shall awake the Spartan fife, And call in solemn sounds to life, The youths, whose locks divinely spreading, Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue, At once the breath of fear and virtue shedding, Applauding freedom loved of old to view? What new Alcæus,* fancy-blest,

Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest,

At wisdom's shrine awhile its flame conceal

ing,

(What place so fit to seal a deed renowned?

Till she her brightest lightnings round revealing,

It leaped in glory forth, and dealt her prompted wound!

O goddess, in that feeling hour,
When most its sounds would court thy ears,

Let not my shell's misguided powert
E'er draw thy sad thy mindful tears.
No, Freedom, no, I will not tell
How Rome, before thy weeping face,
With heaviest sound, a giant-statue, fell,
Pushed by a wild and artless race
From off its wide ambitious base,

When Time his northern sons of spoil awoke,
And all the blended work of strength and grace,
With many a rude repeated stroke,

And many a barb'rous yell, to thousand fragments broke.

EPODE.

Yet, e'en where'er the least appeared,
The admiring world thy hand revered;
Still 'midst th: scattered states around,

Some reinnants of her strength were found;
They saw, by what escaped the storm,
How wondrous rose her perfect form;
How in the great, the laboured whole,
Each mighty master poured his soul!
For sunny Florence, seat of art,
Beneath her vines preserved a part,

Till they, whom Science loved to name,
(O who could fear it ?) quenched her flame.
And lo, a humbler relic laid

In jealous Pisa's olive shade!

See small Marinot joins the theme,
Though least, not last in thy esteem:
Strike, louder strike the ennobling strings
To those, whose merchant sons were kings;
To him, who, decked with pearly pride,
In Adria weds his green-haired bride;
Hail, port of glory, wealth, and pleasure,
Ne'er let me change this Lydian measure:
Nor e'er her former pride relate,
To sad Liguria's bleeding state.

Ah no! more pleased thy haunts I seek,
On wild Helvetia's¶ mountains bleak:
(Where, when the favoured of thy choice,
The daring archer heard thy voice;
Forth from his eyrie roused in dread,
The ravening eagle northward fled.)
Or dwells in willowed meads more near,
With those** to whom thy stork is dear;
Those whom the rod of Alva bruised,
Whose crown a British queentt refused!
The magic works, thou feel'st the strains,
One holier name alone remains;
The perfect spell shall then avail,
Hail, nymph, adorned by Britain, hail !

ANTISTROPHE.

Beyond the measure vast of though,
The works, the wizard time has wrought!

The family of the Medici.

↑ The little republic of San Marino.

The Venetians.

$'The Doge of Venice.

I Genoa.

1 Switzerland.

This pillared earth, so firm and wide,
By winds and inward labours torn,

In thunders dread was pushed aside,

And down the shouldering billows borne
And see, like gems, her laughing train,
The little isles on every side,

Mona,† once hid from those who search the main,
Where thousand elfin shapes abide,

And Wight who checks the west'ring tide,

For thee consenting Heaven has each bestowed, A fair attendant on her sovereign pride: To thee this blest divorce she owed, For thou hast made her vales thy loved, thy last abode?

SECOND EPODE.

Then too, 'tis said, an hoary pile
'Midst the green naval of our isle,
Thy shrine in some religious wood,
O soul-enforcing goddess, stood;
There oft the painted natives feet
Were wont thy form celestial meet:
Though now with hopeless toil we trace
Time's backward rolls, to find its place;
Whether the fiery-tressed Dane,
Or Roman's self o'erturned the fane,
Or in what heaven-left age it fell,
'Twere hard for modern song to tell.
Yet still, if Truth those beams infuse,
Which guide at once and charm the Muse,

*This tradition is mentioned by several of our old historians. Some naturalists too have endeavoured to support the probebility of the fact by arguments drawn from the correspondent disposition of the two opposite coasts. I do not remember that any poetical use has hitherto been made of it.

†There is a tradition in the Isle of Man, that a mermaid becoming enamoured of a young man of extraordinary beau ty, took an opportunity of meeting him one day as he walked

whole island, by covering it with a mist; so that all who at tempted to carry on any commerce with it, either never ar rived at it, but wandered up and down the sea, or were an a sudden wrecked upon its cliffs.