A PINDARIC ODE.

I. 3.

Thee the voice, the dance obey,

Temper'd to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet-green

The rofy- crowned loves are seen

On Cytherea's day

With antic Sports, and blue-ey'd Pleasures,

Frisking light in frolic measures;!
Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet:
To brifk notes in cadence beating,
Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare:

Where-e'er she turns the Graces homage pay. With arms fublime, that float upon the air, In gilding state fhe wins her eafy way:

Q'er

O'er her warm cheek, and rifing bofom, move The bloom of young defire, and purple light of Love.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race what ills await!

Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, fad refuge from the ftorms of Fate!
The fond complaint, my fong, difprove,
And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heav'nly Muse?

Night, and all her fickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary fky:

Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they fpy, and glitt'ring fhafts of war.

II. 2.

A PINDARIC ODE.

II. 2.

In climes beyond the folar road,

Where fhaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains

roam,

The Muse has broke the twilight gloom,

To cheer the shiv'ring native's dull abode.
And oft beneath the od'rous shade

Of Chili's boundless forefts laid,

She deigns to hear the favage youth repeat

In loose numbers wildly sweet

Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs, and dusky loves. Her track, where-e'er the Goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and gen'rous Shame,

Th' unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy

Woods that wave o'er Delphi's steep,

Ifles, that crown th' Egean deep,

Fields,

Fields, that cool Iliffus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves
In lingering lab'rinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of Anguish?

Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breath'd around;

Ev'ry fhade and hallow'd fountain
Murmur'd deep a folemn found:

Till the fad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,
Left their Parnaffus 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 loft,

They fought, oh Albion! next thy fea-encircled coaft.

III. I..

A PINDARIC ODE.

III. I.

Far from the fun and fummer gale,

In thy green lap has Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon ftray'd,

To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless child

89

Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil'd. This pencil take (the faid) whofe colours clear Richly paint the vernal year:

Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of Joy;

Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,

Or ope the facred fource of fympathetic Tears.

III. 2.

Nor fecond he, that rode fublime

Upon the feraph-wings of Ecstasy,

The fecrets of th' abyfs to spy."

He pafs'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time:

The