And cease those charming eyes to throw
On youths of high degree!
Come then, of all my loves the last,
For, every other passion past,
I only burn for thee!
Come, and with tuneful voice rehearse
The measures of thy Poet’s verse
And charm the list’ning throng!
Believe me, fairest, all our cares
Will soften at the melting airs
That deck the lyric song.
ON THE
PLEASURES OF RURAL LIFE.[131]
BOOK THE FIFTH, EPODE THE SECOND.
I.
Thrice happy he, whose life restores
The pleasures pure of early times;
That ne’er, with anxious heart, explores
The rugged heights ambition climbs;
Exempt from all the din, the toil, the care,
That cities for their busy sons prepare;
Fatigue, beneath the name of pleasure,
Contentious law, usurious treasure,
A tedious mean attendance on the great,
And emulation vain of all their pomp and state.
II.
Not his sound and balmy sleep
The trumpet’s martial warning breaks;
Nor the loud billows of the angry deep,
When thro’ the straining cords the tempest shrieks;
But the morning’s choral lay,
Chanted wild from every spray.
Swift at the summons flies the wilder’d dream,
And up he springs alert, to meet the orient beam.
I.
The vine-clad hill he lightly scales,[B]
Where tall the frequent poplars rise,
From branch to branch assiduous trails
The pendent clusters rich supplies;
And cautious prunes the weak, the useless shoot,
Engrafting healthier boughs, that promise fruit.--
Then his arms serenely folding,
And the smiling scene beholding,
Marks, as the fertile valley winds away,
His flocks and lowing herds, in ample numbers stray.
II.
Then to the warm bank below,
Yellow with the morning-ray,
And sees his shelter’d hives in even row,
And hears their hum mix with the linnet’s lay.
Recent from the crystal springs
Many a vessel pure he brings,
In them, from all the waxen cells to drain
The fragrant essence rich of flow’ry dale and plain.
I.
On the river’s shady side
White his gather’d flock appears,
And, plung’d into the flashing tide,
Their curl’d and snowy fleece he shears;
But when, ’mid laughing fields diffusive spread,
Majestic Autumn rears her placid head,
Wreath’d with wheaten garlands yellow,
Bearing various fruitage mellow,
How gladly from the trees, that loaded stand,
Shakes he the ripen’d pears, engrafted by his hand;
II.
Or his swelling grapes, that vie
With the fleece of Tyrian stain!
Such precious gifts his grateful cares supply
To thee protector of his wide domain,
Bounteous Sylvanus!--and to thee,
The garden’s watchful Deity;[132]
Beneath your favouring power he little cares
Who wields the Lictor’s rod, or who the fasces bears.
I.
In sultry noon’s oppressive ray,
Beneath the holme, of ample shade,
His listless limbs he loves to lay
On herbage, matted in the glade;
Hears down the steeps the white rills dashing play,
Till under the long grass they purl away;
While, on wing of swift vibration,
Murmuring range the honied nation,
And the sweet stock-dove, the thick boughs among,
His dewy slumber courts with her complaining song.
II.
Loud when wintry winds arise,
And the feeble race appal,
While o’er the earth, from dim and thicken’d skies,
The flaky snows in white profusion fall,
Then the sylvan chace he seeks;--
Lo! furious from the thicket breaks
The gnashing boar!--Flies he, or stands at bay,
Into the circling toils the staunch dogs drive the prey.
I.
When thro’ the clear, and sparkling air,
Fleet the pointed darts of frost,
The filmy nets, now here, now there,
For thievish birds, are lightly toss’d;
Or, plac’d with silent heed, the wily snares,
To lure the stranger-cranes, and timid hares.
Rich viands they, whose pleasing flavour
Crown his board, reward his labour.
In those convivial hours the heart forgets
Its vain tumultuous hopes, and all its fond regrets.
II.
These the pleasures unalloy’d,
That brighten oft the rural scene;
But, if yet dearer joys supply the void,
That, even there, will sometimes intervene
When days are cold, and nights are long,
And business goes a little wrong,
Should an endearing faithful Wife be seen,
With the warm light of love she chases gloomy spleen.
I.
As the Sabine matron chaste,
Active as th’ Apulian wife,
See she assumes, with cheerful haste,
The pleasing cares of wedded life;
Draws the clean vestment o’er the little limbs,
And, when the tearful eye of passion swims,
With mild authority commanding,
Repressing ill, and good expanding,
Anxious she weeds the infant heart betimes,
Ere ill propension thrive, and ripen into crimes.
II.
Dusky grows the winter-eve,
In hurdled cotes the flocks are penn’d;
Her vessels pure the frothing milk receive,
As from swell’d udders its full streams descend.
Bright the crackling faggots blaze,
While she strains the eager gaze,
O’er the dim vale to see her husband come,
With tir’d, yet willing step, to his warm, happy home.
I.
Her beating heart, and gladden’d eyes
Perceive him ope the wicker gate;
And swift her busy hand supplies
The flowing bowl, the steaming plate;
Her sparkling wine from their own vintage press’d,
From their own stores her grateful viand dress’d;
Less welcome far the proud collation,
Cull’d with painful preparation,
When earth, and air, and seas, have been explor’d
For those expensive meats, that pile the Consul’s board.
II.
Not the shell-fish, pampering food!
Of Lucrine’s azure lake the boast;
Nor luscious product of the eastern flood,
Driven by the stormy winds upon our coast;
Nor costly birds, that hither rove
Natives of Ionian grove,
Can with more poignant zest his senses meet
Than the love-kneaded cates, of this unpurchas’d treat.
I.
To his border’s guardian power[133]
When he spreads the vernal feast,
Then bleeds the kid, in lucky hour,
From the hungry wolf releas’d;[134]
Then round the primal lamb’s sweet flesh is seen
The crisp salubrious herbage of the green;
And, from loaded boughs descending,
Unctuous olives richly blending;
These form the dainties of his festal day,
When every heart expands, and every face is gay.
II.
Circled by a jocund train,
With joy the new-shorn flock he hears
Come bleating homeward o’er the russet plain;
While slow, with languid neck, the weary steers
The inverted ploughshare drag along,
Mindless of the shepherd’s song;
Then, round his smiling Household-Gods, surveys
A numerous, menial group, the proof of prosperous days.
I.
’Twas thus, amidst his ill-got wealth,
The Roman usurer justly thought,
Resolv’d to purchase peace and health,
And live, at length, as Nature taught;
No more with subtle avarice to lend,
Oppressive foe beneath the name of friend!
Now grasping views, for once, rejected,
He on the Ides his sums collected,[135]
But on the Calends, lo! with anxious pain,[136]
On the same interest vast, he sends them forth again.
II.
Thus can lust of gold controul,
Tho’ the heart urge a wiser choice,
By force of habit lord it o’er the soul,
And stifle e’en Conviction’s powerful voice.
See, with sighs the miser yield
The promis’d joys of wood, and field;
Against experienc’d disappointment, try
With gold to purchase that, which gold can never buy!
TO
NEAERA.
BOOK THE FIFTH, EPODE THE FIFTEENTH.
’Twas night--the moon, upon her sapphire throne,
High o’er the waning stars serenely shone,
When thou, false Nymph, determin’d to prophane
Them, and each power that rules the earth, and main.
As thy soft, snowy arms about me twin’d
Close as round oaks the clasping ivies wind,
Swore, while the gaunt wolf shall infest the lea,
And red Orion vex the wintry sea,
While gales shall fan Apollo’s floating locks,
That shed their golden light o’er hills and rocks,
So long thy breast should burn with purest fires,
With mutual hopes, and with unchang’d desires.
Perjur’d NEAERA! thou shalt one day prove
The worth, the vengeance of my slighted love;
For O! if manhood steels, if honour warms,
Horace shall fly, shall scorn thy faithless charms;
Seek some bright maid, whose soul for him shall glow,
Nor art, nor pride, nor wandering wishes know.
Then should’st thou languish, sigh, and weep once more,
And with new vows his injur’d heart implore,
Nor sighs, nor vows, nor tears shall he regard,
Cold as the snow and as the marble hard.
And Thou, triumphant youth, so gay, so vain,
Proud of my fate, exulting in my pain,
Tho’ on thy hills the plenteous herd should feed,
And rich Pactolus roll along thy mead;
For thee tho’ Science ope the varied store,
And Beauty on thy form its graces pour,
Ere long shalt thou, while wrongs like these degrade,
Droop with my woes, and with my rage upbraid;
See on a rival’s brow thy garlands worn,
And, with her falsehood, bear my jocund scorn.
TO THE
ROMAN PEOPLE,
ON THEIR RENEWING THE CIVIL WARS.
BOOK THE FIFTH, ODE THE SEVENTH.
Where do ye rush, ye impious trains,
Why gleams afar the late-sheath’d sword?
Is it believ’d that Roman veins
Their crimson tides have sparely pour’d?
Is not our scorn of safety, health, and ease,
Shewn by devasted climes, and blood-stain’d seas?
Those scowling brows, those lifted spears,
Bend they against the threat’ning towers
Proud Carthage emulously rears?
Or Britain’s still unconquer’d shores?
That her fierce sons, yet free from hostile sway,
May pass in chains along our Sacred Way?
No!--but that warring Parthia’s curse
May quickly blast these far-fam’d walls;
Accomplish’d when, with direful force,
By her own strength the city falls;
When foes no more her might resistless feel,
But Roman bosoms bleed by Roman steel.
O! worse than wolves, or lions fierce,
Who ne’er, like you, assault their kind!
By what wild phrenzy would ye pierce
Each other’s breast in fury blind?--
Silent and pale, ye stand with conscious sighs,
Your struck soul louring in your down-cast eyes!
The blood our rising walls that stain’d,
Shed by the ruthless fratricide,[137]
High Heaven’s avenging power ordain’d
Should spread the rage of discord wide,
Bid kindred blood in dread profusion flow
Thro’ darken’d years of expiatory woe.
PROEM.
I am conscious that the presenting again to my readers, in a
different form, a story which was long since beautifully told,
demands apology. I intreat them to suffer my avowed inducements to
form that apology.
The fine touches of pathos, of horror, and of vivid picture, which,
more than half a century back, the late Vincent Bourne added in his
Latin Paraphrase of WILLIAM and MARGARET, constitute those
inducements.
Every poet, of genius equal to that of him whose compositions he is
paraphrasing in another language, will, if he scorn the pedant
chains of attempted literality, improve upon his original, at
least, as often as, from certain verbal and intransfusible
felicities, he may be found inferior.
The Latin Paraphrase is, perhaps, in this instance, a better, and
certainly a grander poem, than that on which it was built; and it
has also a different complexion. Simplicity and mournful tenderness
form the character of the Ballad; more of sublime and thrilling
horror is mingled with the pathos of the Latin version. Sublimity
so intrinsic, from its not depending upon any particular verbal
arrangement, but resulting from the idea or the image entirely,
will not necessarily lose its spirit by passing into another
language.
Venturing to re-paraphrase this aweful vision, I think the fuller
sweep of verse in the ten feet elegiacs better suits its solemn
character than the shorter lines in which the English Ballad was
written. I am however, conscious, that WILLIAM and MARGARET, long
in possession of the public ear, will remain unrivalled with the
generality of readers; but I flatter myself that those who feel the
higher species of poetry will make a different choice, when they
find, in the following Poem, the grand additions of Vincent Bourne
given with that spirit which disdains the restraints of close
phraseology, and the servile scruple which would reject, even from
the author’s own stores, images congenial to the theme, tho’ they
may not be found in the sweet original, or in the sublimer Latin
Paraphrase. She has translated Bourne with the same freedom with
which he translated Mallet;--if, indeed, the whole Ballad be not,
as the first verse is known to be, more ancient than Mallet’s time.
Certainly it is in a very different style from any other
composition of his, and has an air of those earlier periods of
English poetry; a resemblance which is very prepossessing to many
readers.
GREVILLE AND JULIA.
Sleep is on man, and darkness all things hides,[138]
And night’s last hour the distant clocks repeat;
The doors unfold!--dead JULIA’S image glides,
Silent and slow,--and stands at GREVILLE’S feet!
Her face like April morns when winds are loud,
And wintry clouds deform the dubious day;
See, from her feet she lifts the folding shroud,[139]
With snow-pale hands, cold as the weltering clay!--
When youth is flown, and all that decks thee now,[140]
Ah! royal CIPARISSIS, such thy doom;
Then death shall strike the diadem from thy brow,
The shroud thy robe, the lightless tomb thy home.
Her form, while peace and hope were hers, was fair[141]
As rising flowers beneath the beams of May;
And her lips smiled and blush’d, and morn’s bright star
Stood in her eyes, as when it leads the day.
But slow disease that kindling blush consumed,
And grief eclips’d the gay and ready smile;
No more the naked lip or laugh’d, or bloom’d;--
Death call’d his worm, and gave th’ untimely spoil.
“Awake!--thy JULIA calls thee!--Fate severe
“Sends her pale corse to wander from the grave!
“At length, O! now at length, let pity hear[142]
“Whom changed and faithless, love refus’d to save.
“These dark, waste hours allow the restless ghost[143]
“To burst the cerements of the festering dead;
“Terror of Him, who once to pity lost,
“In vain remorse th’ avenging doom may dread!
“Thy oath!--thy pledge!--remember them, and fear!--
“Now, if thou canst, thy barbarous crime atone!
“Lo! thy too faithful maid, a spectre drear,
“Gives back thy vows--and sternly claims her own!
“This face, once gaz’d on with ecstatic eyes,
“Once prais’d so fondly, why did’st thou desert?
“Why, with thy tender looks, thy pleading sighs,
“Win, but to desolate my yielding heart?
“Thy promise, (ah! false promiser of joys!)[144]
“How could’st thou break, to crush my rising years?
“Why flatter (cruel flatterer!) these eyes,
“Yet leave them fading in unpitied tears?
“How could’st thou say my lips, in early bloom,
“Shamed the first crimson of the Summer’s rose!
“Why said’st thou so?--and why did I presume,
“Rash maid, to credit thy deluding vows!
“This alter’d face!--now does it bloom?--behold![145]
“This lip, this ghastly lip no blush retains!
“Death is in these sunk eyes!--and on this cold
“And livid cheek no lingering charm remains!
“The hungry worm my wasting form devours,[146]
“Feeds on these limbs, insatiate with her prey;--
“A cold,--a long,--a tedious night is ours,
“Till the late rising of the nightless day!
“Hark!--the cock crows!--the warning note he gave;
“Hark!--yet again!--A long--a last farewell!
“Come, perjur’d, view thy gift!--the deep, dark grave
“Where thy lost JULIA’S dismal relics dwell!”
Now sing the birds, and from the purpling east
The sun prepares to give the golden day!--
Pale GREVILLE, every horror in his breast,
Leaps from his couch, and frantic speeds away;
And to the tomb, the fatal tomb is flown,
Where cold in death his injured JULIA lay;--
A moment stands by the rais’d turf!--then down,
Headlong he falls on the dissolving clay.
Thrice calls he, “JULIA!” in a piercing sound,
Thrice does he weep, and thrice, with groans, complain;
Then, clasping wild the swell’d and hallow’d ground,
Nor weeps!--nor groans!--nor speaks!--nor moves again!
SONNET,
Laid in the drawer of the thatched shed by the brook at Plas Nwydd,
the Villa of the Right Hon. Lady ELEANOR BUTLER, and MISS PONSONBY,
in Llangollen Vale.
WRITTEN IN AUTUMN 1799.
Stranger, when o’er yon slant, warm field no cloud
Steals,--at its foot, the verge of a wild brook,
In tangled dell, where sun-beams never look,
Press this screen’d seat, and mark the waters crowd
Close to the cliff down their steep channel rude;
Leaping o’er rugged stones, that aye provoke
Foam and hoarse murmur; while the pendant oak
Frowns o’er the little, clamorous, lonely flood.--
Impetuous Deva’s honours yield to thine,
Dear brook, for O! thy scanty billows lave
Friendship and Fancy’s consecrated shrine;
And thou may’st tell the stream of mightier wave,
Here off they muse the noontide hours away,
Who gild thy vale with intellectual ray.
SPEECH
OF THE NYMPH OF THAT BROOK,
WHICH,
AFTER HEAVY RAIN, BECOMES A DEEP, VIOLENT, AND FORMIDABLE TORRENT.
Lo! down yon steep of vales proud Deva borne,
Rolls the hoarse treasures of her flashing urn!
Yet bears my stream, as o’er the rocks it raves,
Not tribute, but defiance to her waves.
SONNET.[147]
Gay trips my nymph along the green retreat,
With frolic airy steps; and where they go
Fresh florets rise in twice their wonted glow;
Yellower the sun-beams o’er the meadows fleet,
Or fancies fond possess me. Her light feet,
Glancing along, no other traces show;
They bend not the young grass, that springs to meet
The falling arch of April’s showery bow;
Nor bruise the emmet on her busy way;
And if the downy blow-ball flies its stalk,[148]
So would it fly beneath the gentlest play
Of western winds; when, with his tuneful talk,
Amid new leaves, each songster of the grove
Cheers on her mossy nest his listening love.
A MEDITATION.
In every season, every change of life,
To give that zest which she can only give,
Hope must preside incessant. Poverty,
With all her train of ills;--th’ unerring grasp
Of grief and sickness;--thy soul-wasting powers,
Pale-ey’d Captivity! without the aid,
Cordial and sweet, of that associate mild,
Who could support? Not e’en the happiest lot
Here, in these low abodes of sin and care,
Sustains her absence gladly.--Not the gifts
Shower’d in the year’s luxuriance; nor yet those
Shook on all sides from Fortune’s golden wheel,
Might satisfy the soul, did not young Hope
Stretch o’er the onward scene her potent wand,
And give them brighter colouring. Thus all
The vapid present yields, in its best mood,
Leaves the sick heart unsatisfied;--but thou,
Enchantress, blest of mission, canst sustain,
Canst animate, and on the vermeil dawn,
The white effulgent noon, and golden eve,
Of bloomy Summer, shed ideal light,
Which more than crowns their beauty. Thou canst lift
With rosy hand, the veils of time, and pledge
To youth the flowers of love;--to manhood point
The paths of wealth and glory;--to worn age
The downy couch, warm hearth, and social friend.
But far beyond all these, sustain’d by faith,
Thou canst extend the Heav’n-illumin’d torch
Gilding the grave; and, past its darksome bourne,
Disclosing the fair realms of joy and love
Where Night and Winter never come;--nor pain,
Nor dread of change;--but one celestial Morn
Purples th’ Immortal Year; and one bright Spring
Of gratitude and bliss exhaustless flows
Thro’ the redeem’d, emancipated soul.
PROEM
TO A COMPOSITION IN VERSE,
INTITLED,
“_The Terrestrial Year passing through the Signs of the Zodiac._”
At Lichfield, in the year 1800, Mr Lloyd, the astronomer, lectured
publicly with a large illuminated Orrery. It exhibited the Solar
System. There we saw the Earth whirling rapidly round on her axis,
with her attendant moons, and passing through the signs of the
Zodiac. Observe, said he, that the Earth enters _Aries_ in January,
with near two thirds of her surface dark;--that, as she passes
through _Taurus_ in February, more of her sphere becomes
enlightened. Entering _Gemini_ in March, you find, on her journey
through that sign, exactly half her globe luminous; hence equal day
and night. You now perceive her in _Cancer_, April, with a larger
portion of her surface light;--and now, in _Leo_, May, yet more of
it is in brightness. Now that she passes through _Virgo_, June, you
see that not so much as one third of her orb is opaque, the rest in
splendour.
Mr Lloyd traced her decreasing portion of light through the
remaining signs, till she became more than two thirds dark in the
December sign, _Pisces_.
When the Lecture was ended, I observed to Mr Lloyd, that I had
always understood Aries and Taurus, to be vernal signs; that Milton
says,
--------------“the bees
“In Spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,” &c.
And Thomson,
“At length from Aries rolls the bounteous Sun,
“And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
“The expansive atmosphere is crampt with cold,
“But full of life, and vivifying soul,
“Lifts the light clouds sublime.”
“Yet, Madam,” replied the astronomer, “the poets are right, and
your lecturer not mistaken. The Sun is in Aries, when the Earth is
in Gemini; he is in Taurus when she is in Cancer;--the Sun is
always in the third sign back from that through which the Earth
passes. I have not traced the Sun’s, but the Earth’s annual
progress through the signs of the Zodiac.”
The Romans, I knew, measured their year by the Sun’s signs, and
made March the first month, when he is in Aries; and that being the
first sign, they place it in the first month of their year; though,
according to Mr Lloyd’s system, the Earth is then in the third
sign, Gemini. Guthrie’s Grammar takes the Roman year, and the solar
signs, allotting the first sign, Aries, to March; but our year does
not begin with March, but with January.
Since Mr Lloyd left Lichfield, the Rev. Mr White of that place,
sent me an astronomical Tract, entitled _Hopton’s Concordancy of
Years_. It is printed in the black letter, _An. Dom._ 1611, and is
dedicated to the famous Sir Edward Coke.--That Tract maintains the
same theory with Mr Lloyd, respecting the Earth’s progress in the
Solar System. It appoints the same signs to the same months,
exactly as they were allotted in Lloyd’s Orrery, viz. Aries to
January, and so on, while the opposite page in the same Tract tells
us that the Sun enters Aquarius on the 10th of January.
A philosophical gentleman observed to me, that the Earth must be in
the sign opposite the Sun, that when he is in Capricorn she must be
in Cancer. If that gentleman was not grossly mistaken, the
above-mentioned Tract shews that Astronomical Professors held a
different theory in the 17th century. If they were wrong, Mr Lloyd
must have lectured upon an exploded system respecting the course of
the Sun’s and the Earth’s signs, as relative to each other. This
would be a strange disgrace to a Professor of Astronomy;--but
Poetry has a prescriptive right to follow new, or old systems as
they shall best suit her purpose. She does not resign, even on the
mandate of Sir Isaac Newton, her privilege of representing the Sun
as diurnally rising and setting;--and we still persist in commonly
speaking of the Sun as on his daily progress from the East to the
West, instead of adverting to the Earth’s revolutions, which
constitute day and night on that part of her surface which
alternately obtains and loses the lustre of the stationary Sun, in
the course of twenty-four hours.
While I attended to Mr Lloyd’s Lecture, the idea struck me that
poetical use might be made of the terrestrial year on its progress
through the signs, as in that Orrery represented;--thus, by
personifying the year as a nymph, and the months also, as nymphs
and swains;--some busied with their emblematic signs;--some paying
their compliments to the year as she passes through those signs in
her progressive course;--and others insulting her declining
progress; while, amid the fanciful imagery, some terrestrial
landscape-scenery might be presented, as in a bird’s-eye prospect
from the Zodiac.
Being asked why I did not rather chuse to take the Roman year, and
trace the Sun through his signs, I replied, that it would, in
comparison, be a common-place theme. Many of our poets have
described, or adverted to the solar signs, and left me nothing new
to say upon the subject. Dr Darwin’s volume on agriculture contains
some fine lines, (if they are not too fine for cabbage-culture,) in
which he beautifully alludes to the Sun’s passage through some of
the signs.