AGIB. Weak as thou art, yet, hapless, must thou know The toils of flight, or some severer woe! Still, as I haste, the Tartar shouts behind; And shrieks and sorrows load the saddening wind: He blasts our harvests, and deforms our land. SECANDER. Unhappy land, whose blessings tempt the sword, In vain, unheard, thon call'st thy Persian lord! In vain thou court'st him, helpless, to thine aid, To shield the shepherd, and protect the maid! Far off, in thoughtless indolence resign'd, Soft dreams of love and pleasure soothe his mind: 'Midst fair sultanas lost in idle joy, No wars alarm him, and no fears annoy. AGIB. Yet these green hills in summer's sultry heat, Have lent the monarch oft a cool retreat. Sweet to the sight is Zabran's flowery plain; And once by maids and shepherds lov'd in vain! No more the virgins shall delight to rove By Sargis' banks, or Irwan's shady grove; On Tarkie's mountain catch the cooling gale, Or breathe the sweets of Aly's flowery vale: Fair scene! but, ah! no more with peace possest, With ease alluring, and with plenty blest! No more the shepherds' whitening tents appear, Nor the kind products of a bounteous year; No more the date, with snowy blossoms crown'd! But ruin spreads her baleful fires around. SECANDER. In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves, For ever fam'd for pure and happy loves: In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair, Their eyes blue languish, and their golden hair! Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief must send; Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend. AGIB. Ye Georgian swains, that piteous learn from far Circassia's ruin, and the waste of war; Some weightier arms than crooks and staffs prepare Oft marks with blood and wasting flames the way. To death inur'd, and nurs'd in scenes of woe. He said; when loud along the vale was heard A shriller shriek; and nearer fires appear'd: The affrighted shepherds, through the dews of night Wide o'er the moonlight hills renew'd their flight. ODES. Ode to Pity. Thou, the friend of man assign'd, With balmy hands his wounds to bind, When first Distress, with dagger keen, By Pella's bard, a magic name, But wherefore need I wander wide Deserted stream, and mute? Wild Arun + too has heard thy strains, * Euripides, of whom Aristotle pronounces, on a comparison of him with Sophocles, that he was the greater master of the tender passions, ην τραγικωτερος, The river Arun runs by the village in Sussex, where Otway had his birth. There first the wren in myrtles shed And while he sung the female heart, Come, Pity, come, by fancy's aid, Its southern site, its truth complete, There Picture's toils shall well relate, The buskin'd Muse shall near her stand, There let me oft, retir'd by day There waste the mournful lamp of night, Ode to Fear. THOU, to whom the world unknown, Who seest, appall'd, the unreal scene, I see, I see the near. I know thy hurried step; thy haggard eye! EPODE. In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, Yet he, the bard + who first invok'd thy name, For not alone he nurs'd the poet's flame, But who is he whom later garlands grace; Alluding to the Kuvas apuктes of Sophocles. See the Electra. + Eschylus. |