:

ODES.

CLASS THE SEVENTH.

ODE I.

ON

THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

BY THE REV. SAMUEL COBB, M. A.

THE Muse, who taught the Theban swan
To stretch his silver wings, and soar
Where vulgar pinions never can,
In regions of the sky, unknown before:
She, queen of numbers, who could raise
The voice of Prior to a pitch so high,
As might with envied Cowley vie,
When listening to his lays,

Old smiling Janus blest the new-born century ;
Now from her airy bower descends,

(Not always the companion of the great)

To honor things of meaner state,

And to my song attentive bends.

As Cytherea's feign'd to fly

From amorous Gods, and leave the sky,
To bless with a divine embrace

Some favorite of mortal race,

And there disclose the lustre of her eye,
And each ambrosial grace.

She calls me with a voice, that would excel
The Orphean, could the golden lyre
And charming tongue again conspire

To vindicate Euridice from Hell.

Lo! from this abject Earth she seems to bear
Me, through untrodden air.

Like Virgil's Fame, she flies

O'er tracts of sea, and spacious land
Where'er Nassovian arms command,

Her foot upon the ground, her head above the skies.
There views the desert aether round, a place
Where nothing lives, the blue, expanded space;
There sees the stars, which rule the night,
Which in the sky, like a republic, sway
With scatter'd and imperfect light,
Whose beams more happily unite

In the great monarch of the day.

Not all the rolling lamps above will dare

With the Phoebean to compare.

Nor can the united wit of man below,
With all his fondness and pretence
To business, management, and sense,
Such universal rays bestow

As the Nassovian influence.
Whether he leave his native seat
To warm us with his kindly heat,
Or if he please to lift the dart,
And take Religion's injur'd part,
Like that young God he flies, by Homer sung,
Descending from Olympus, to the aid

Of the wrong'd priest, and ravish'd maid,
When the vindictive quiver on his shoulders hung,
And from his silver bow the poison'd arrow rung.
Fond Agamemnon! to provoke
Apollo's pestilential stroke.

What heroes, through thy passion slain,
Of thee in Stygian groves complain!
Of thee, whose blinded lust could dare

The pious virgin to detain,

And combat against innocence and prayer!

Wrongs to revenge, and succour the distress'd, William was always nigh,

At the soft warning of a sigh,

To thousand ills expos'd his valiant breast.
Oppression trembled at his sight,

And sunk into the womb of night,
Too impotent to bear so great a light.

Soon as that hydra, Faction, rose,

She saw, and stagger'd at his dazzling shine, Nor durst her multiplying heads oppose

To virtue so divine.

For William, if his counsel fails,
Shakes but his thunder, and prevails.
If on the Gallic, or the Northern shore,
From oaken walls his cannons roar;
He frights the bold, presumptuous crew,
As ancient Jove is said to do,

When he hurl'd Typhon from th' affected skies
To bellow under Aetna, where,

Bruis'd with the marks of heavenly wrath, he fries
In rolling sulphur, and whene'er

He shifts his brawny side below,
Above he shakes th' eternal snow,

Still eager to renew his ancient war,

Still to retort new mountains at the Thunderer. In vain he tosses fire, in vain

He bites his adamantine chain,

Struggles with Heaven's decree, and everlasting pain: Just penance! for the wretch who dare

War against the Gods declare.

Though to the vulgar this a fable seem,
Or some poetic, idle dream;

Dorset, sagacious Halifax, and those
To whom the Muse her secrets does betray,
Whom she instructs in her mysterious way,

This dark enigma can disclose;