Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

THOU,

ODE TO PITY.

the friend of man assign'd,

With balmy hands his wounds to bind,

And charm his frantic woe:

[blocks in formation]

Wild Arund too has heard thy strains,
And Echo, midst my native plains,

с

Been sooth'd by Pity's lute.

Euripides, of whom Aristotle pronounces, on a comparison of him with Sophocles, that he was the greater master of the tender passions, ἦν τραγικώτερος. [Καὶ ὁ Εὐριπίδης, εἰ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα μὴ εὖ οἰκονομεῖ, ἀλλα τραγικώτατός γε τῶν ποιητῶν paíveral. Aristot. de Poet. p. 44. ed. Tyrwhitt, 1794. D.]

a The river Arun runs by the village in Sussex where Otway had his birth.

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 unspoil'd by art,

Thy turtles mix'd their own.

20

[blocks in formation]

There Picture's toils shall well relate,
How chance, or hard involving fate,

[blocks in formation]

ODE TO FEAR.

THOU, to whom the world unknown,
With all its shadowy shapes, is shown;
Who see'st, appall'd, th' 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 disorder'd fly.
For, lo, what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fix'd 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 join'd,
Who prompt to deeds accurs'd the mind:

5

10

15

And those, the fiends, who, near allied,
O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks, preside;

[blocks in formation]

Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,

And look not madly wild, like thee!

25

e Alluding to the Kúvac apvктove of Sophocles. See the Electra.

E PODE.

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 invok'd thy name, 30 Disdain'd in Marathon its power to feel:

For not alone he nurs'd the poet's flame,

But reach'd 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, 35 With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace, Where thou and furies shar'd the baleful grove

g

Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, th' incestuous & queen Sigh'd the sad call her son and husband hear'd, When once alone it broke the silent scene, 40

And he the wretch of Thebes no more appear'd.

O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart:

Thy withering power inspir'd each mournful line : Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part,

f

Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine! 45

[blocks in formation]

h οὐδ ̓ ἔτ ̓ ὠρώρει βοή,

Ην μὲν σιωπή φθέγμα δ ̓ ἐξαίφνης τινὸς

θώϋξεν αὐτόν, ὥστε πάντας ὀρθίας

Στῆσαι φόβω δείσαντας ἐξαίφνης τρίχας.

See the dip. Colon. of Sophocles.

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 hollow'd seat,

'Gainst which the big waves beat,

50

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 :

55

And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true;
Ne'er be I found, by thee o'eraw'd,
In that thrice hallow'd eve, abroad,
When ghosts, as cottage maids believe,
Their pebbled beds permitted leave;
And goblins haunt, from fire, or fen,
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!

60

O thou whose spirit most possest The sacred seat of Shakspeare's breast!

65

By all that from thy prophet broke,

In thy divine emotions spoke;

Hither again thy fury deal,

Teach me but once like him to feel:
His
cypress wreath my meed decree,
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee!

70

« ForrigeFortsett »