THE PROGRESS OF POESY.

AWAKE, Æolian lyre, awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs

A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers, that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:

The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.
Oh! sovereign of the willing soul!
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen cares

And frantic passions hear thy soft control:
On Thracia's hills the lord of war
Has curb'd the fury of his car,

And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command:
Perching on the scepter'd hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king
With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing:
Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie

The terror of his beak and lightning of his eye.

Thee the voice, the dance, obey,
Temper'd to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet-green

The rosy-crown'd Loves are seen

On Cytherea's day,

With antic sports and blue-eyed pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes, in cadence beating,
Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their queen's approach declare:
Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime, that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

Man's feeble race what ills await,

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

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate! The fond complaint, my song, disprove,

And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, her birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary sky;

Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of

war.

In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, The Muse has broke the twilight gloom,

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.

And oft, beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,

In loose numbers wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves.
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

Th' unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

Woods that wave o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles that crown the Egean deep,

Fields that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves

In lingering labyrinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute but to the voice of Anguish?
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathed around:
Every shade and hallow'd fountain
Murmur'd deep a solemn sound:

Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,
Left their Parnassus 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 lost,

They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.

Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,

To him the mighty mother did unveil

Her awful face: The dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled.

"This pencil take," she said, "whose 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 sacred source of sympathetic tears."

Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, The secrets of th' abyss to spy.

He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time: The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,

Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw but, blasted with excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car

Wide o'er the fields of glory bare

Two coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding

pace.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er,
Scatters from her pictured urn

Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.
But ah! 'tis heard no more.
Oh lyre divine! what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? though he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion
That the Theban eagle bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air:
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray
With Orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun:

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,

Beneath the good how far, but far above the great.

HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain
The proud are taught to taste of pain,

And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied, and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern, rugged nurse; thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:

What sorrow was thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learn'd to melt at others' wo.

Seared at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go

The summer friend, the flattering foe;

By vain Prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom, in sable garb array'd,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye that loves the ground, Still on thy solemn steps attend:

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!

Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band

(As by the impious thou art seen),

With thundering voice and threatening mien,

With screaming Horror's funeral cry,

Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, oh goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,

Thy philosophic train be there

To soften, not to wound my heart.

The generous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.