ODE TO MISS SARAH FOWLER.
Toutesfois vous demeurant en ce lieu, mes tenebreuses ét tristes parolles n'en pourroient chasser les Graces, desquels vous me semblez estre l'unique simulachre, et moins les Muses qui vous recognoissent pour leur Minerve.
WHEN first Aurora's gorgeous car Springs from night's dreary vault releas'd, And beauty's consecrated star,
Retires behind the blushing east,
Can Titian's orient beams dispense A more propitious influence To animate th' exulting earth,
Than sheds bright Fancy o'er the mind, When, from Care's grosser dregs refin'd; It gives the fruits of genius birth.
Not in the solitary gloom,
By the dim taper's sickly ray,
Sunk in the rust of Greece and Rome Does Genius point the doubtful way, While in abstracted thought the Sage Revolves the stern Socratic page; Or by the tedious rules of art In melancholy search pursues, Yet finds the gay, the bashful Muse Unseen and unattain'd depart.
Where Poesy erects her seat,
The myrtle's fragrant branches twine. Beneath the Pleasures' nimble feet Upstarts the new-born columbine. Methinks I see the jocund band Of Loves and Graces hand in hand Their artless symphony inspire; The Muses catch the dulcet sound, They waft the sportive echoes round, And wake the sympathetic lyre.
The rose's aromatic bloom Adorns their wild fantastic grove, And o'er the violet's perfume Angelic forms delighted rove; Fair Sappho in Elysian bowers Beguiles the gently stealing hours, And sooths entranc'd Despair to rest, Her strains so feelingly express The force of elegant distress, Implanted in a female breast.
Carelessly tripping o'er the green The sprightly Deshoulieres appears With winning air and brow serene, Unclouded by the frown of years; Around the Nymph in graceful state, A thousand smiling Cupids, wait, And each performs his destin'd part; Some give the cheeks a livelier glow, Some tune the lyre, some twang the bow To pierce the most obdurate heart,
The plaintive Rowe, whose warbling breath Dispers'd the melancholy gloom Which at her dear Alexis' death O'erhung the sickening vales of Frome, To the soft Cyprian lute recites The fears, the hopes, the fond delights, The tender blandishments of love, Their mutual happiness completing, Where Innocence and Pleasure meeting, Have fixed them in the realms above;
Beside them Cytherea stands In Virtue's snowy garb array'd, And reunites their social hands Sever'd by Death's remorseless blade: The Loves with elegiac verse, Meanwhile adorn the sable hearse In which their mortal ashes lye, And in due chaplet Phoebus weaves, The laurel's never-fading leaves, The pledge of immortality.
Yet not from these romantick shades, Whene'er I wake the Teian string, Will I invoke th' harmonious Maids Tunlock Castalia's vaunted spring: The palms of Genius thinly spread Where cypress glooms o'er-arch the dead Let others glean:-My raptur'd ear Has caught the soul-enchanting strains, That on Salopia's happy plains The bright Sabrina joys to hear:
She, blameless Nymph, whose piteous doom Poetic Annalists relate,
Immers'd in Severn's watery tomb By Guendoline's remorseless hate O'er the smooth current still presides, And bids the spring-flowers on its sides Diversify the broider'd green, Where to the spheres' aerial sound The light Fays trip their antic round By meditating Shepherds seen:
If worn Tradition's specious tales, In Fiction's gaudy mantle drest, Were wont to celebrate her vales With Nature's bounteous treasures blest; Fame hiding more than half her blaze Reserved to crown these later days Her greatest, her most envied pride, That while her banks thy numbers grace, The Goddess sees thy fairer face Reflected in her glassy tide.
Ask we on what terrestrial plain The Graces condescend to dwell When Thou, the loveliest of their train, So aptly strik'st the chorded shell? Whether from Bacchus' mighty race, Or the dread Thunderer's stol'n embrace Euphrosyne derived her birth
Regards not us:-Our dazzled sight Struck with ineffable delight Has found her parallel on earth.
INSCRIPTION ON A ROOT-HOUSE.
O, STRANGER! speed not on thy onward way, But let this ivied shed thy step delay:
Lo! here the wand'ring sun-beam feebly falls, And streaks with soften'd day the mossy walls; Sweet here t gaze the blue expanse of noon, Or placid watch the Summer's cloudless moon With rays of snowy light ascending glide
'Midst the dark elms and o'er the mountain side, Nor yet repine, if in tempestuous hour, The rain slant rushing in a wintry show'r, Or snow-blast keen thy rapid feet compel To the rude covert of this rustic cell: Pleasant it were to muse, as o'er the steep The tall trees rock with stormy murm'rings deep; And hear the, rush of rain, the strife of hail Unfelt commingle in the o'er-passing gale,- In this abstracted melancholy mood A solemn joy shall bless thy solitude: Thoughts of the beautiful, the good, and great, Thy lifted soul with influence pure dilate; And if the Muses own thee for their child, The Muses here shall weave their visions wild!,
« AnteriorContinuar » |