Lo, in the vale of years beneath

A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their queen:

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo, Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,

The unfeeling for his own.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate!
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their Paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

Τὸν φρονεῖν βροϊὰς ὁδιο -
σανία, το πάθει μαθών
Θελα κυρίως ἔχειν.

Eschylus, in Agamemnonc.

DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied, and alone.

When first thy sire to send on Earth
Virtue, his darling child, design'd,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse; thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,

And from her own she learn'd to melt at others woe.

Scar'd at thy frown terrific, fly

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer friend, the flattering foe;
By vain Prosperity receiv'd,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believ'd.

Wisdom, in sable garb array'd,

Immers'd in rapturous thought profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend :
Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!

Not in thy gorgon terrour's clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band,

(As by the impious thou art seen)
With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horrour's funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, oh, goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there

To soften, not to wound, my heart.
The generous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.

ELEGY

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCU-YARD.

THE Curfew tolls' the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the Moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke?

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour,

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The peeling anthem swells the note of praise.

"RUIN seize thee, ruthless king!
Confusion on thy banners wait,

Though, fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state
Helio, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail

Stout Glo'sters stood aghast in speechless trance: To arms! cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quivering lance.

On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Rob'd in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood;
(Loose his beard 7, and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air 8)
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.

"Hark, how each giant-oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!
O'er thee, oh king! their hundred arms they weave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day,

To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.

"Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,
That hush'd the stormy main ;

Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed :
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-top'd head.
On dreary Arvon's shore 9 they lie,
Sinear'd with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail :

The famish'd eagle 19 screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear, as the ruddy drops that warm my heart",
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries-

5 Gilbert de Clare, surnamed the Red, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, son-in-law to king Edward.

6 Edmond de Mortimer, lord of Wigmore. They both were lords-marchers, whose lands lay on the borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the king in his expedition.

The image was taken from the well-known picture of Raphael, representing the Suprer Being in the vision of Ezekiel: there are two of these paintings, (both believed original) one at Florence, the other at Paris.

8 Shone, like a meteor, streaming to the wind. Milton's Paradise Lost. 9 The shores of Caernarvonshire opposite to the isle of Anglesey.

10 Camden and others observe, that eagles used annually to build their acrie among the rocks of Snowdon, which from thence (as some think) were named by the Welsh Craigian-eryri, or the crags of the eagles. At this day (I am told) the highest point of Snowdon is called The Eagle's Nest. That bird is certainly no stranger to this island, as the Scots, and the people of Cumberland, Westmoreland, &c. can testify: it even has built its nest in the Peak of Derbyshire. See Willoughby's Ornithol. Published by Ray.

"As dear to me as are the ruddy drops,

That visit my sad heart, Shaksp. Jul. Cæs.

No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a griesly band,

I see them sit, they linger yet,

Avengers of their native land:

With me in dreadful harmony they join, And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line 12.

II.

"Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward's race.
Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of Hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, through Berkley's roofs that
Shrieks of an agonizing king;
[ring 13;

She-wolf of France 14, with unrelenting fangs,
That tears the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven 15. What terrours round him

wait!

Amazement in his van, with Flight combin'd ; And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.

"Mighty Victor, mighty Lord,

Low on his funeral couch he lies 16!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford

A tear to grace his obsequies.

Is the sable warrior 17 fled?

Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm, that in the noon-tide beam were born;
Gone to salute the rising Morn.

Fair laughs the Morn 18, and soft the Zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes ;
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind's sway,
That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening-

prey.

"Fill high the sparkling bowl, The rich repast prepare:

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast 19: Close by the regal chair

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.

12 See the Norwegian Ode, that follows. 13 Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkley castle.

14 Isabel of France, Edward the Second's adulterous queen.

15 Triumphs of Edward the Third in France.

16 Death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even robbed in his last moments by his courtiers and his mistress.

17 Edward the Black Prince, dead sometime before his father.

18 Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign. See Froissard, and other contemporary writers.

19 Richard the Second (as we are told by archbishop Scroop and the con, derate lords in their manifesto, by Thomas of Walsingham, and al' the older writers) was starved to death. The story of his assassination by Sir Piers of Exon, is of much later date.