HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

- Ζήνα

Τὸν φρονεῖν Βροτούς ὁδώ

σαντα, τῷ πάθει μαθών

Θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.

ÆSCH. AGAM. ver. 181.

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, designed,
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 learned to melt at others' woe.

Scared 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 received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed 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.

O! gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Not circled with the vengeful band

(As by the impious thou art seen),

With thundering voice, and threatening mien, With screaming Horror's funeral cry, Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty:

Thy form benign, O 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.

12*

AWAKE, Æolian lyre, awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs

A thousand rills their mazy progress take :
The laughing flowers, that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,

Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign:

Now rolling down the steep amain,

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour;

The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

I. 2.

O! Sovereign of the willing soul,

Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares

And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War
Has curbed the fury of his car,

And dropt his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feathered king
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing:
Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie

The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.

I. 3.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey,
Tempered to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet-green

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen
On Cytherea's day;

With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating,
Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare :
Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay.

With arms sublime, that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way :

O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race what ills await!

Labor, and Penury, the racks of Pain,

Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of fate!

The fond complaint, my song, disprove,

And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?

Night and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary sky;

Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war.

II. 2.

In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, The Muse has broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode. And oft, beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,
In loose numbers wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves.
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

The unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,

Isles that crown the Egean deep,

Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves

In lingering labyrinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of anguish!
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathed around;
Every shade and hallowed fountain
Murmured deep a solemn sound:
Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,

Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.