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ODES.

ODE TO PITY.

O THOU, the friend of man, assigned With balmy hands his wounds to bind, And charm his frantic woe :

When first Distress, with dagger keen, Broke forth to waste his destined scene, His wild unsated foe!

By Pella's bard, a magic name,

By all the griefs his thought could frame

Receive my humble rite:
Long, Pity, let the nations view

Thy sky-worn robes of tenderest blue,
And eyes of dewy light!

But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Ilissus' distant side,

Deserted stream, and mute?

Wild Arun too has heard thy strains,
And Echo, 'midst my native plains,
Been soothed by Pity's lute.

There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head,
To him thy cell was shown;

And while he sung the female heart,
With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art,
Thy turtles mixed their own.

Come, Pity, come, by Fancy's aid,
E'en now my thoughts, relenting maid,
Thy temple's pride design :
Its southern site, its truth complete,
Shall raise a wild enthusiast heat
In all who view the shrine.

There Picture's toils shall well relate
How chance, or hard involving fate,
O'er mortal bliss prevail :

The buskined Muse shall near her stand,
And sighing prompt her tender hand,
With each disastrous tale.

There let me oft, retired by day,
In dreams of passion melt away,

Allowed with thee to dwell:

There waste the mournful lamp of night, Till, Virgin, thou again delight

To hear a British shell!

ODE TO FEAR.

THOU, to whom the world unknown,
With all its shadowy shapes, is shown;
Who seest, 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;
Whilst 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 bard 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 queen
Sighed the sad call her son and husband heard,
When once alone it broke the silent scene,

And he the wretch of Thebes no more appeared.

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 hollowed 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 :

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