0 THOU, the friend of man, assign'd
With balmy hands his wounds to bind,
And charm his frantic woe:
When first Distress, with dagger keen,
Broke forth to waste his destin'd scene,
His wild unsated foe!
By Pella's* bard, a magic name,
By all the griefs his thought could frame,
Receive my humble rite:
Long, Pity, let the nations view
Thy sky-worn robes of tend'rest blue,
And eyes of dewy light!
But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Illissus' distant side,
Euripides, of whom Aristotle pronounces, on a comparison of him with Sophocles, that he was the greater master of the tender passions,
Deserted stream, and mute?
Wild Arun* too has heard thy strains,
And Echo, midst thy native plains,
Been sooth'd by Pity's lute.
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.
Come, Pity, come, by Fancy's aid,
E'en now my thoughts, relenting maid,
Thy temple's pride design:
Its southern site, its truth complete,
Shall raise a wild enthusiast heat
In all who view the shrine.
There Picture's toils shall well relate,
How chance, or hard involving fate,
O'er mortal bliss prevail :
The buskin'd muse shall near her stand,
And sighing prompt her tender hand,
With each disastrous tale.
* The river Arun runs by the village in Sussex, where Otway ha his birth.
There let me oft, retir'd by day,
In dreams of passion melt away,
Allow'd with thee to dwell:
There waste the mournful lamp of night,
Till, Virgin, thou again delight
To hear a British shell!
THOU, to whom the world unknown,
With all its shadowy shapes, is shown;
Who seest, appall'd, the 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, a 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
And those, the fiends, who, near allied,
O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks, preside;
Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air,
Lifts her red arm, expos'd and bare:
On whom that ravening* brood of Fate
Who lap the blood of Sorrow wait;
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee?
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 bardt who first invok'd thy name,
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,
With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,
Where thou and furies shar'd the baleful grove!
Alluding to the Kuvas apvкres of Sophocles. See the Electra. + Eschylus.
|