ANTISTROPHE.

Yes-tho not yet arrive the destin'd season
Of public praise ;-

Tho Fame, as yet, from her sonorous trumpet
Withhold the breath, that, thro the nation's echoing,
Proclaims each virtuous name ;-

Yet shall the Muse, in heart-expressive whispers,
To choicer ears,

Convey the strain of generous gratulation:
Yet sow the seed-the living seed,
That, in the soil its wintery season slumbering,
Shall wait the destin'd hour,—and, late expanding,
Nurture in souls elect, the generous pride
That prompts to virtuous deeds:

To virtuous deeds

That never but from Independence spring!

EPODE.

Among the few to such renown predestin'd,
Permit an humble Muse,

Untrain'd in arts of courtly adulation,

To rank her Paley's name:

Which, on a Sybil's leaf tho here inscribing,

Shall find, hereafter,

A sharper stylus, and a firmer field: For not alone the Esculapian temple

Thy praise shall echo;-

But Honour's mansion, and the Muses' grove.

This and the preceding Ode may be regarded as Metrical experiments:―attempts to free the English Pindaric from the fetters of Rhyme.

How far commendable or censurable they may be, in this point of view, this is not the proper place to contend:-as exercises in recitation, calculated to train and modulate the voice to the practical rhythmus of our Language, they will, at least, be found useful to those who are initiated in the system they are intended to illustrate.

TWO PASSAGES

FROM THE

FIRST BOOK OF VIRGIL.

THE following fragments were translated to refute a prejudice, most strangely propagated, and superstitiously fostered,— that the English language is inferior, in point of conciseness and energetic compression, to that of ancient Rome. A strict attention has, therefore, been paid to literal exactness. With the single exception of the exclamation

"Quæ te tam læta tulerunt

Sæcula? qui tanti talem genuere parentes!"

which is, perhaps, too freely rendered by the single line,

"Blest age! blest parents! who such virtues bore!"

every thought, it is presumed, will be found faithfully rendered, without abridgment or omission; and yet (the different lengths of the lines in English and Latin heroics duly compared) both the blank-verse, and the rhyme translation, are shorter than the originals; and it may fairly be questioned, whether there is any passage of equal length, in the whole Æneid, that might not, with equal facility, be faithfully rendered with the same advantage of conciseness.

En. I. v. 81. Hæc. ubi dicta, &c.

THIS said, into the mountain's echoing side

He drove the whirring spear; when from the cleft
Wide yawning (like embattled legions) rush
Scouring the earth in whirlwinds, the fierce blasts
Impetuous; and, incumbent o'er the sea,
Up-plough its lowest bed. Eurus, at once,
And Notus, and the storm-fomenting rage
Of Africus, the foaming billows vast

Roll to the shore. Loud shriek the mariners.

5

The cordage cracks. At once, from Trojan eyes, 10
Day and the heavens are snatch'd. Involv'd in clouds,
Black night sits brooding on the sea.
The poles
Thunder; and Æther, with fierce-darting fires
Glows frequent. Death on every side appears.

t

15

Cold fear bedews Æneas' shuddering limbs.
He groans; and, lifting to the stars his hands,
Suppliant exclaims "Oh! thrice, and more than thrice,
Heaven favour'd they, who, in their parents' sight,
Beneath the lofty walls of Troy, were doom'd
To perish! Wherefore, in the Ilian camp,
Tydides bravest of the Grecian race!"

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