CHORAL ODE TO LOVE.

Ερωε, Ερως, ὁ κατ' ομμασιν.

EURIPIDES: Hippolytus.

[Written after 1812.]

I.

H love! oh love! whose shafts of fire
Invade the soul with sweet surprise,
Through the soft dews of young desire
Trembling in beauty's azure eyes!
Condemn not me the pangs to share
Thy too impassioned votaries bear,
That on the mind their stamp impress,
Indelible and measureless :

For not the sun's descending dart,
Nor yet the lightning brand of Jove,
Fall like the shaft that strikes the heart,
Thrown by the mightier hand of love.

II.

Oh! vainly, where, by Letrian plains,
Tow'rd Dian's dome Alpheus bends,
And from Apollo's Pythian fanes,

The steam of hecatombs ascends;
While not to love our altars blaze;
To love, whose tyrant power arrays
Against mankind each form of woe
That hopeless anguish bleeds to know:
To love who keeps the golden key,

That, when more favoured lips implore,
Unlocks the sacred mystery

Of youthful beauty's bridal door.

III:

Alas! round love's despotic power,

Their brands what forms of terror wave!

The Echalian maid in evil hour,

Venus to greet Alcides gave.

As yet in passion's love unread,
Unconscious of connubial ties,
She saw around her bridal bed

Her native city's flames arise.
All hapless maid! mid kindred gore
Whose nuptial torch the Furies bore!
To him consigned, an ill-starred bride,
By whom her sire and brethren died.

IV.

Oh towers of Thebes! oh sacred flow
Of mystic Dirce's fountain tides!
Say in what shapes of fear and woe

Love through his victim's bosom glides?
She, who to heaven's imperial sire

The care-dispelling Bacchus bore,
'Mid thunder and celestial fire

Embraced, and slept, to wake no more.
Too powerful love, inspiring still
The dangerous risk, the frantic will,
Bears like the bee's mellifluous wing,
A transient sweet, a lasting sting.

CONNUBIAL EQUALITY.

Η οφος η λοφος ην.

ESCHYLUS: Prometheus.

[Written in 1812.]

H! wise was he, the first who taught
This lesson of observant thought,

That equal fates alone may bless
The bowers of nuptial happiness;
That never where ancestral pride
Inflames, or affluence rolls its tide,
Should love's ill-omened bonds entwine
The offspring of an humbler line.

T

AL MIO PRIMIERO AMORE.

[Written in 1813.]

I.

O many a shrine my steps have strayed, Ne'er from their earliest fetters free: And I have sighed to many a maid, Though I have never loved but thee.

II.

Youth's visioned scenes, too bright to last,
Have vanished to return no more:
Yet memory loves to trace the past,
Which only memory can restore.

III.

The confidence, no heart has felt

But when with first illusions warm,

The hope, on one alone that dwelt,

The thought, that knew no second form,

IV.

All these were ours: and can it be

That their return may charm us yet?

Can aught remain to thee and me,
Beyond remembrance and regret?

V.

For now thy sweetest smiles appear
Like shades of joys for ever flown,
As music in an exile's ear

Recalls the strains his home has known.

VI.

No more can bloom the faded flower:
No more the extinguished fire can burn:
Nor hope nor fancy's mightiest power
Can burst young love's sepulchral urn.

H

LINES TO A FAVOURITE LAUREL

IN THE GARDEN AT ANKERWYKE COTTAGE.

[Written in 1814.]

OW changed this lonely scene! the rank weed chokes The garden flowers: the thistle's towering growth Waves o'er the untrodden paths: the rose that breathed Diffusive fragrance from its christening bed,

Scarce by a single bud denotes the spot

Where glowed its countless bloom : the woodbine droops
And trails along the ground, and wreathes no more
Around the light verandah's pillared shade

The tendrils of its sweetness: the green shrubs,
That made even winter gay, have felt themselves
The
power of change, and mournful is the sound
Of evening's twilight gale, that shrilly sweeps
Their brown and sapless leaves.

But thou remain'st
Unaltered save in beauty: thou alone,
Amid neglect and desolation, spread'st
The rich luxuriance of thy foliage still,
More rich and more luxuriant now, than when,
'Mid all the gay parterre, I called thee first
My favourite laurel: and 'tis something yet,
Even in this world where Ahrimanes reigns
To think that thou, my favourite, hast been left
Unharmed amid the inclemency of time,
While all around thee withered.

There is a solemn aspect in thy shade,

A mystic whisper in the evening gale,

Lovely tree!

That murmurs through thy boughs; it breathes of peace,
Of rest, to one, who, having trodden long

The thorny paths of this malignant world,

Full fain would make the moss that tufts thy root

The pillow of his slumber.

Many a bard,

Beneath some favourite tree, oak, beech, or pine,

Has by the pensive music of the breeze,

Been soothed to transient rest: but thou canst shed
A mightier spell: the murmur of thy leaves

Is full of meaning; and their influence,
Accessible to resolution, yields

No evanescent balm, but pours at once

Through all the sufferer's frame, the sweetest sleep
The weary pilgrim of the earth can know :

The long, oblivious, everlasting sleep

Of that last night on which no morn shall rise.

SIR PROTEUS:

A SATIRICAL BALLAD.

By P. M. O'DONOVAN, Esq.

ΣΤΗΣΑΤΕ ΜΟΙ ΠΡΩΤΗΑ ΠΟΛΥΤΡΟΠΟΝ.
HIC EST QUEM REQUIRIS!

[Published by Hookhams in 1814.]

THIS BALLAD IS INSCRIBED TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD BYRON,

With that deep conviction of the high value of his praise, and of the fatal import of his censure, which must necessarily be impressed by the profound judgment with which his opinions are conceived, the calm deliberation with which they are promulgated, the Protean consistency with which they are maintained, and the total absence of all undue bias on their formation, from private partiality or personal resentment: with that admiration of his poetical talents which must be universally and inevitably felt for versification undecorated with the meretricious fascinations of harmony, for sentiments unsophisticated by the delusive ardour of philanthropy, for narrative enveloped in all the Cimmerian sublimity of the impenetrable obscure.

I. JOHNNY ON THE SEA.
II. JOHNNY IN THE SEA.
III. JOHNNY UNDER THE SEA.

IV. CHEVY CHASE.

V. THE BATHOS.
VI. THE WORLD'S END.