As the parch’d lip the frequent draught obtains;
Indulgence feeds the never-quench’d desire,
That loaths the viand, and the goblet drains.
Nor could exhausted floods the thirst subdue
Till that dire Cause, which spreads the livid hue
O’er the pale form, with watry languor swell’d,
From the polluted veins, by medicine, be expell’d.
Virtue, whate’er the dazzled vulgar dream,
Denies Phraates, seated on thy throne,
Immortal Cyrus, Joy’s internal gleam,
And thus she checks the crowd’s mistaken tone;
“He, only he, who, calmly passing by,
“Not once shall turn the pure, unwishing eye
“On heaps of massy gold, that near him glare,
“My amaranthine wreath, my diadem shall wear.”
TO THE HONOURABLE
THOMAS ERSKINE.
HORACE, BOOK THE SECOND, ODE THE THIRD, IMITATED.
OCTOBER, 1796.
Conscious the mortal stamp is on thy breast,
O, ERSKINE! still an equal mind maintain,
That wild Ambition ne’er may goad thy rest,
Nor Fortune’s smile awake thy triumph vain,
Whether thro’ toilsome tho’ renowned years
’Tis thine to trace the law’s perplexing maze,
Or win the Sacred Seals, whose awful cares
To high decrees devote thy honour’d days.
Where silver’d poplars with the stately pines
Mix their thick branches in the summer sky,
And the cool stream, whose trembling surface shines,
Laboriously oblique, is hurrying by;
There let thy duteous train the banquet bring,
In whose bright cups the liquid ruby flows,
As life’s warm season, on expanded wing,
Presents her too, too transitory rose;
While every Muse and Grace auspicious wait,
As erst thy handmaids, when, with brow serene,
Gay thou didst rove where Buxton views elate
A golden palace deck her savage scene.[112]
At frequent periods woo th’ inspiring band
Before thy days their summer-course have run,
While, with closed shears, the Fatal Sisters stand,
Nor aim to cut the brilliant thread they spun.
Precarious tenant of that gay retreat,
Fann’d by pure gales on Hampstead’s airy downs,
Where filial troops for thee delighted wait,
And their fair mother’s smile thy banquet crowns!
Precarious tenant!--shortly thou may’st leave
These, and propitious Fortune’s golden hoard;
Then spare not thou the stores, that shall receive,
When set thy orb, a less illustrious lord.
What can it then avail thee that thy pleas
Charm’d every ear with TULLY’S periods bland?
Or that the subject passions they could seize,
And with the thunder of the Greek command?
What can it then avail thee that thy fame
Threw tenfold lustre on thy noble line?
Since neither birth, nor self-won glory, claim
One hour’s exemption from the sable shrine.
E’en now thy lot shakes in the urn, whence Fate
Throws her pale edicts in reverseless doom!
Each issues in its turn, or soon, or late,
And lo! the great man’s prize!--a silent Tomb!
TO
BARINE.
BOOK THE SECOND, ODE THE EIGHTH.
BARINE, to thy always broken vows
Were slightest punishment ordain’d;
Hadst thou less charming been
By one grey hair upon thy polish’d brows;
If but a single tooth were stain’d,
A nail discolour’d seen,
Then might I nurse the hope that, faithful grown,
The Future might, at length, the guilty Past atone.
But ah! no sooner on that perjur’d head,
With pomp, the votive wreaths are bound,
In mockery of truth,
Than lovelier grace thy faithless beauties shed;
Thou com’st, with new-born conquest crown’d,
The care of all our youth,
Their public care;--and murmur’d praises rise
Where’er the beams are shot of those resistless eyes.
Thy mother’s buried dust;--the midnight train
Of silent stars,--the rolling spheres,
Each God, that list’ning bows,
With thee it prospers, false-one! to profane.
The nymphs attend;--gay Venus hears,
And all deride thy vows;
And Cupid whets afresh his burning darts
On the stone, moist with blood, that dropt from wounded hearts.
For thee our rising youth to manhood grow,
Ordain’d thy powerful chains to wear;
Nor do thy former slaves
From the gay roof of their false mistress go,
Tho’ sworn no more to linger there;
Triumphant Beauty braves
The wise resolve;--and, ere they reach the door,
Fixes the faltering step to thy magnetic floor.
Thee the sage matron fears, intent to warn
Her stripling;--thee the miser dreads,
And, of thy power aware,
Brides from the Fane with anxious sighs return,
Lest the bright nets thy beauty spreads,
Their plighted lords ensnare,
Ere fades the marriage torch; nay even now,
While undispers’d the breath, that form’d the nuptial vow!
TO
TITUS VALGIUS.[113]
BOOK THE SECOND, ODE THE NINTH.
Not ceaseless falls the heavy shower
That drenches deep the furrow’d lea;
Nor do continual tempests pour
On the vex’d Caspian’s billowy sea;[114]
Nor yet the ice, in silent horror, stands
Thro’ all the passing months on pale Armenia’s lands.[115]
Fierce storms do not for ever bend
The mountain’s vast and labouring oak,
Nor from the ash its foliage rend,
With ruthless whirl, and widowing stroke;
But, VALGIUS, thou, with grief’s eternal lays
Mournest thy vanish’d joys in MYSTES’ shorten’d days.
When Vesper trembles in the west,[116]
Or flies before the orient sun,
Rise the lone sorrows of thy breast.--
Nor thus did aged Nestor shun
Consoling strains, nor always sought the tomb,
Where sunk his filial hopes, in life and glory’s bloom.[117]
Not thus, the lovely Troilus slain,
His parents wept the princely boy:
Nor thus his sisters mourn’d, in vain,
The blasted flower of sinking Troy;
Cease, then, thy fond complaints!--Augustus’ fame,
The new Cesarian wreaths, let thy lov’d voice proclaim!
So shall the listening world be told
Medus, and cold Niphates guide,[118]
With all their mighty realms controul’d,
Their late proud waves in narrower tide;
That in scant space their steeds the Scythians rein,[119]
Nor dare transgress the bounds our victor arms ordain.
TO
LICINIUS MURENA.[120]
BOOK THE SECOND, ODE THE TENTH.
Not always, dear Licinius, is it wise
On the main sea to ply the daring oar;
Nor is it safe, from dread of angry skies,
Closely to press on the insidious shore.
To no excess discerning spirits lean,
They feel the blessings of the golden mean;
They will not grovel in the squalid cell,
Nor seek in princely domes, with envied pomp to dwell.
They pine, that lifts so high her stately boughs,
Writhes in the storms, and bends beneath their might,
Innoxious while the loudest tempest blows
O’er trees, that boast a less-aspiring height.
As the wild fury of the whirlwind pours,
With direst ruin fall the loftiest towers;
And ’tis the mountain’s summit that, oblique,
From the dense, lurid clouds, the baleful lightnings strike.
A mind well disciplin’d, when sorrow lours,
Not sullenly excludes Hope’s smiling rays;
Nor, when soft Pleasure boasts of lasting powers,
With boundless trust the promiser surveys.
It is the same dread Jove, who thro’ the sky
Hurls the loud storms, that darken as they fly;
And whose benignant hand withdraws the gloom,
And spreads rekindling light in all its living bloom.
To-day the soul perceives a weight of woe;--
A brighter morrow shall gay thoughts inspire.
Does Phœbus always bend the vengeful bow?
Wakes he not often the harmonious lyre?[121]
Be thou, when danger scowls in every wave,
Watchful, collected, spirited, and brave;
But in the sunny sky, the flattering gales,
Contract, with steady hand, thy too expanded sails.
TO
MÆCENAS.[122]
BOOK THE SECOND, ODE THE TWELFTH.
MÆCENAS, I conjure thee cease
To wake my harp’s enamour’d strings
To tones, that fright recumbent Peace,
That Pleasure flies on rapid wings!
Slow conquest on Numantia’s plain,
Or Hannibal, that dauntless stood,
Tho’ thrice he saw Ausonia’s main
Redden with Carthaginian blood;
The Lapithæ’s remorseless pride,
Hylæus’ wild inebriate hours;
The Giants, who the Gods defied,
And shook old Saturn’s splendid towers;
These, dear MÆCENAS, thou should’st paint,
Each glory of thy CÆSAR’S reign,
In eloquence, that scorns restraint,
And sweeter than the poet’s strain;
Show captive kings, who from the fight
Drag at his wheels their galling chain,
And the pale lip indignant bite
With mutter’d vengeance, wild and vain.
Enraptur’d by LICINIA’S grace,
My Muse would these high themes decline,
Charm’d that the heart, the form, the face
Of matchless excellence is thine.
Ah, happy friend! for whom an eye,
Of splendid, and resistless fire,
Lays all its pointed arrows by,
For the mild gleams of soft desire!
With what gay spirit does she foil
The pedant’s meditated hit!
What happy archness in her smile!
What pointed meaning in her wit!
Her cheek how pure a crimson warms,
When with the Nymphs, in circling line,
Bending she twines her snowy arms,
And dances round Diana’s shrine![123]
MÆCENAS, would’st not thou exchange
The treasures gorgeous Persia pours,
The wealth of Phrygia’s fertile range,
Or warm Arabia’s spicy shores,
For one light ringlet of the hair,
Which shades thy sweet LICINIA’S face,
In that dear moment when the fair,
In flying from thy fond embrace,
Relenting turns her snowy neck,
To meet thy kisses half their way,
Or when her feign’d resentments check
The ardours thy warm lips convey?
While in her eyes the languid light
Betrays a yielding wish to prove,
Amid her coy, yet playful flight,
The pleasing force of fervent love;
Or when, in gaily-frolic guise,
She snatches her fair self the kiss,
E’en at the instant she denies
Her lover the requested bliss?
TO
POSTHUMUS.
BOOK THE SECOND, ODE THE FOURTEENTH.
Alas! my POSTHUMUS, the years
Unpausing glide away;
Nor suppliant hands, nor fervent prayers,
Their fleeting pace delay;
Nor smooth the brow, when furrowing lines descend,
Nor from the stoop of age the faltering frame defend.
Time goads us on, relentless sire!
On to the shadowy shape, that stands
Terrific on the funeral pyre,
Waving the already kindled brands.--
Thou canst not slacken his reluctant speed,
Tho’ still on Pluto’s shrine thy Hecatomb should bleed.
Beyond the dim lake’s mournful flood,
That skirts the verge of mortal light,
He chains the forms, on earth that stood
Proud, and gigantic in their might;
That gloomy lake, o’er whose oblivious tide
Kings, Consuls, Pontiffs, Slaves, in ghastly silence glide.
In vain the bleeding field we shun,
In vain the loud and whelming wave;
And, as autumnal winds come on,
And wither’d leaves bestrew the cave,
Against their noxious blast, their sullen roar,
In vain we pile the hearth, in vain we close the door.
The universal lot ordains
We seek the black Cocytus’ stream,
That languid strays thro’ dreary plains,
Where cheerless fires perpetual gleam;
Where the fell brides their fruitless toil bemoan,
And Sisyphus uprolls the still-returning stone.
Thy tender wife, thy large domain,
Soon shalt thou quit, at Fate’s command;
And of those various trees, that gain
Their culture from thy fost’ring hand,
The Cypress only shall await thy doom,
Follow its short-liv’d Lord, and shade his lonely tomb!
TO
LYCE,
ON HER REFUSING TO ADMIT HIS VISITS.
BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE TENTH.
Now had you drank cold Tanais’ wave,
Whose streams the drear vale slowly lave,
A barbarous Scythian’s bride;
Yet, Lyce, might you grieve to hear
Your lover braves the winds severe,
That pierce his aching side.
O listen to the howling groves,
That labour o’er your proud alcoves,
And hear the jarring door!
Mark how the star, at eve that rose,
Has brightly glaz’d the settled snows,
While every leaf is hoar!
Gay Venus hates this cold disdain;--
Cease then its rigours to maintain,
That sprightly joys impede,
Lest the strain’d cord, with which you bind
The freedom of my amorous mind,
In rapid whirl recede!
Born of a jocund Tuscan sire,
Did he transmit his ardent fire,
That, like Ulysses’ Queen,
His beauteous daughter still should prove
Relentless to the sighs of love,
With frozen heart and mien?--
If nor blue cheek of shivering swain,
Nor yet his richest gifts obtain
Your smile, and soft’ning brow;
Nor if a faithless husband’s rage
For a gay Syren of the stage,
And broken nuptial vow;
If weak e’en Jealousy should prove
To bend your heart to truer love,
Yet pity these my pains,
O Nymph, than oaks more hard, and fierce
As snakes, that Afric’s thickets pierce,
Those terrors of the plains!
When heavy falls the pattering shower,
And streaming spouts their torrents pour
Upon my shrinking head,
Not always shall wild Love command
These limbs obsequiously to stand
Beneath your dropping shed.
TO THE
FOUNTAIN OF BLANDUSIA.[124]
BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE THIRTEENTH.
Nymph of the stream, whose source perpetual pours
The living waters thro’ the sparkling sand,
Cups of bright wine, enwreath’d with summer flowers,
For rich libation, round thy brink shall stand,
When on the morrow, at thy Bard’s decree,
A young and spotless kid is sacrificed to thee.
He, while his brows the primal antlers swell,
Conscious of strength, and gay of heart, prepares
To meet the female, and the foe repel.--
In vain he wishes, and in vain he dares!
His ardent blood thy pebbly bed shall stain,
Till each translucent wave flows crimson to the plain.
In vain shall Sirius shake his fiery hairs
O’er thy pure flood, with waving poplars veil’d,
For thou, when most his sultry influence glares,
Refreshing shade, and cooling draughts shalt yield
To all the flocks, that thro’ the valley stray,
And to the wearied steers, unyok’d at closing day.
Now dear to Fame, sweet fountain, shalt thou flow,
Since to my lyre those breathing shades I sing
That crown the hollow rock’s incumbent brow,
From which thy soft loquacious waters spring.
To vie with streams Aonian be thy pride,
As thro’ Blandusia’s Vale thy silver currents glide!
TO
TELEPHUS.[125]
BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE NINETEENTH.
The number of the vanish’d years
That mark each famous Grecian reign,
This night, my TELEPHUS, appears
Thy solemn pleasure to explain;
Or else assiduously to dwell,
In conscious eloquence elate,
On those who conquer’d, those who fell
At sacred Troy’s devoted gate.
But at what price the cask, so rare,
Of luscious Chian may be ours,
Who shall the tepid baths prepare,
And who shall strew the blooming flowers;
Beneath what roof we next salute,
And when shall smile these gloomy skies,
Thy wondrous eloquence is mute,
Nor here may graver topics rise.--
Fill a bright bumper to the moon!
She’s new!--auspicious be her birth!
One to the midnight!--’tis our noon
Of jocund thought, and festal mirth!
And one to him, for whom the feasts
This night are held with poignant gust,[126]
MURENA, whom his Rome invests
With solemn honours, sacred trust!
Kind omens shall his voice convey,
That may each rising care beguile;
Propitious fled the birds to-day?
Will Love be ours, and Fortune smile?--
Arrange the cups of various size,
The least containing bumpers three,
And nine the rest.--Come, no disguise!
Nor yet constraint, the choice is free!
All but the Bard’s--the bowl of nine
He is, in duty, bound to fill;
The Muses number to decline
Were treason at Aonia’s hill.
For here the Sisters shall preside,
So they allow us leave to laugh;
Unzoned the Graces round us glide,
While we the liquid ruby quaff.
Yet they, in kind and guardian care,
Dreading lest wild inebriate glee
With broils disturb our light career,
Would stint us to their number, three.
Away, ye prudes!--the caution wise
Becomes not this convivial hour,
That every dull restraint defies,
And laughs at all their frigid power.--
Thou say’st I rave;--and true thou say’st,
Nor must thou check the flowing vein,
For sprightly nonsense suits him best
Whom grave reflection leads to pain.
Why mute the pipe’s enlivening note?
Why sleeps the charming lyre so long?
O! let their strains around us float,
Mix’d with the sweet and jocund song!
And lavish be the roses strewn!
Ye flutes, ye lyres, exulting breathe!
The festal hour disdains to own
The mournful note, the niggard wreath.
Old Lycon, with the venal fair,
Who courts yet hates his vile embrace,
Our lively strains shall muttering hear,
While Envy pales each sullen face:
Thou, with thy dark luxuriant hair,
Thou, TELEPHUS, as Hesper bright,
Thou art accomplish’d Chloe’s care,
Whose glance is love’s delicious light.
Thy utmost wish the fair-one crowns,
And thy calm’d heart may well pursue
The paths of knowledge;--Lyce frowns,
And I, distasteful, shun their view.
From themes, that wake the powers of mind,
The wounded spirit sickening turns;
To those be then this hour consign’d,
That Mirth approves, tho’ Wisdom spurns.
They shall disarm my LYCE’S frown,
The frolic jest, the lively strain,
In flowing bowls, shall gaily drown
The memory of her cold disdain.
TO
PHYLLIS.
EXHORTING HER TO BE CONTENT WITH A FRUGAL SACRIFICE.
BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE TWENTY-THIRD.
My PHIDYLE, retired in shady wild,
If thou thy virgin hands shalt suppliant raise,
If primal fruits are on thy altars pil’d,
And incense pure thy duteous care conveys,
To sooth the Lares, when the moon adorns,
With their first modest light, her taper horns;
And if we pierce the throat of infant swine,
A frugal victim, not the baleful breath
Of the moist South shall blast our tender vine;
Nor shall the lambs sink in untimely death,
When the unwholesome gales of Autumn blow,
And shake the ripe fruit from the bending bough.
Let snowy Algidum’s wide valleys feed,
Beneath their stately holme, and spreading oak,
Or the rich herbage of Albania’s mead,
The steer, whose blood on lofty shrines shall smoke!
Red may it stain the Priest’s uplifted knife,
And glut the higher powers with costly life!
The rosemary and myrtle’s simple crown
Thou on our household Gods, with decent care,
Art gently placing; and they will not frown;
No stern demand is theirs, that we prepare
Rich flocks, and herds, at duty’s solemn call,
And, in the pomp of slaughter, bid them fall.
O! if an innocent hand approach the shrine,
The little votive cake it humbly lays,
The crackling salt, that makes the altar shine,
Flung on the cheerful sacrificial blaze,
To the mild Lares shall be grateful found
As the proud steer, with all his garlands crown’d.
TO
MELPOMENE.
BOOK THE FOURTH, ODE THE THIRD.
Not he, O Muse! whom thy auspicious eyes
In his primeval hour beheld,
Shall victor in the Isthmian contest rise;
Nor o’er the long-resounding field
Impetuous steeds his kindling wheels shall roll,
Gay in th’ Olympic race, and foremost at the goal.
Nor in the Capitol, triumphant shown,
The victor-laurel on his brow,
For cities storm’d, and vaunting kings o’erthrown;--
But Tibur’s streams, that warbling flow,
And groves of fragrant gloom, resound his strains,
Whose sweet Æolian grace high celebration gains.
Now that his name, her noblest Bards among,
Th’ imperial city loudly hails,
That proud distinction guards his rising song,
When Envy’s carping tongue assails;
In sullen silence now she hears his praise,
Nor sheds her canker’d spots upon his springing bays.
O Muse! who rulest each melodious lay
That floats along the gilded shell,
Who the mute tenant of the watry way
Canst teach, at pleasure, to excel
The softest note harmonious sorrow brings,
When the expiring swan her own sad requiem sings,--
Thine be the praise, that pointing Romans guide
The Stranger’s eye with proud desire
That well he note the man, whom crowds decide
Should boldly string the Latian lyre.--
Ah! when I charm, if still to charm be mine,
Nymph of the warbling shell, be all the glory Thine!
TO
WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.
BOOK THE FOURTH, ODE THE SEVENTH, IMITATED.
The snows dissolve, the rains no more pollute,
Green are the sloping fields, and uplands wide,
And green the trees luxuriant tresses shoot,
And, in their daisied banks, the shrinking riven glide.
Beauty and Love the blissful change have hail’d,
While, in smooth mazes, o’er the painted mead,
Aglaia ventures, with her limbs unveil’d,[127]
Light thro’ the dance each Sister-Grace to lead.
But O! reflect, that sport, and beauty, wing
Th’ unpausing hour!--if Winter, cold and pale,
Flies from the soft, and violet-mantled Spring,
Summer, with sultry breath, absorbs the vernal gale.
Reflect, that Summer-glories pass away
When mellow Autumn shakes her golden sheaves;
While she, as Winter reassumes his sway,
Speeds, with disorder’d vest, thro’ rustling leaves.
But a short space the moon illumes the skies;
Yet she repairs her wanings, and again
Silvers the vault of night;--- but no supplies,
To feed their wasting fires, the lamps of life obtain.
When our pale forms shall pensive vigils keep
Where COLLINS, AKENSIDE, and SHENSTONE roam,
Or quiet with the Despot, JOHNSON, sleep,
In that murk cell, the body’s final home,
To senseless dust, and to a fleeting shade
Changes the life-warm being!--Ah! who knows
If the next dawn our eye-lids may pervade?
Darken’d and seal’d, perchance, in long, and last repose.
When vivid thought’s unceasing force assails,
It shakes, from life’s frail glass, the ebbing sands;
Their course run out, ah! what to us avails
Our fame’s high note, tho’ swelling it expands!
Reflect, that each convivial joy we share
Amid encircling Friends, with grace benign,
Escapes the grasp of our rapacious heir;--
Pile then the steaming board, and quaff the rosy wine!
Illustrious HAYLEY!--in that cruel hour,
When o’er thee Fate the sable flag shall wave,
Not thy keen wit, thy fancy’s splendid power,
Knowledge, or worth, shall snatch thee from the grave.
Not to his MASON’S grief, from Death’s dim plains
Was honour’d GRAY’S departed form resign’d;
No tears dissolve the cold Lethean chains,
That, far from busy life, the mortal semblance bind.
Then, for the bright creations of the brain,
O! do not thou from health’s gay leisure turn,
Lest we, like tuneful MASON, sigh in vain,
And grasp a timeless, tho’ a Laurel’d Urn!
TO
LIGURIA.
BOOK THE FOURTH, ODE THE TENTH.
O thou! exulting in the charms,
Nature, with lavish bounty, showers,
When youth no more thy spirit warms,
And stealing age thy pride alarms,
For fleeting graces, and for waning powers;
When all the shining locks, that now
Adown those ivory shoulders bound,
With deaden’d colour shade thy brow,
And fall as from th’ autumnal bough
Leaves, that rude winds have scatter’d on the ground;
And on that cheek the tints, that shame
May’s orient light and Summer’s rose,
Dim as yon taper’s sullen flame,
Shall, in a dusky red, proclaim
That not one hue in wonted lustre glows;
When wrinkles o’er LIGURIA’S face
Their daily strengthening furrows lead;
When faithful mirrors cease to place
In her charm’d sight each blooming grace,
And will no more her heart’s proud triumph feed;
Then the chang’d maid, with secret shame,
Shall thus the past, and present chide;
O! why, amid the loud acclaim,
That gave my rising charms to fame,
Swell’d this coy bosom with disdainful pride?
Or why, since now the wish to yield
Steals pensive thro’ each melting vein,
The ice dissolv’d, that scorn congeal’d,
And every tender thought reveal’d,
Why, vanish’d Beauty, com’st not thou again?
TO
PHYLLIS.
INVITING HER TO CELEBRATE THE BIRTH-DAY OF MÆCENAS.
BOOK THE FOURTH, ODE THE ELEVENTH.
Sweet PHYLLIS, leave thy quiet home,
For lo! the ides of April come!
Then hasten to my bower;
A cask of rich Albanian wine,
In nine years mellowness, is mine,
To glad the festal hour.
My garden-herbs, in fragrance warm,
Our various chaplets wait to form;
My tender ivies grow,
That, twining in thy amber hair,
Add jocund spirit to thine air,
And whiteness to thy brow.
My walls with silver vessels shine;
Chaste vervin decks the modest shrine,
That longs with crimson stains
To see its foliage sprinkled o’er,
When the devoted lamb shall pour
The treasure of his veins.
The household girls, and menial boy,
From room to room assiduous fly,
And busy hands extend;
Our numerous fires are quivering bright,
And, rolling from their pointed height,
The dusky wreaths ascend.[128]
Convivial rites, in mystic state,
Thou, lovely nymph, shalt celebrate,
And give the day to mirth
That this love-chosen month divides;[129]
Since honour’d rose its blooming ides
By dear MÆCENAS’ birth.
O! not to me my natal star
So sacred seems;--then, Nymph, prepare
To grace its smiling dawn!
A wealthier maid, in pleasing chains,
Illustrious TELEPHUS detains,[130]
From humble Thee withdrawn.
When pride would daring hopes create,
Of Phaeton recall the fate,
Consumed in his career!
Let rash Bellerophon, who tried
The fiery Pegasus to guide,
Awake thy prudent fear!