ODE ON ST CECILIA'S DAY, MDCCVIII. I. DESCEND, ye Nine! descend and sing; Let the warbling lute complain: The shrill echoes rebound; While in more lengthen'd notes and slow, Gently steal upon the ear; Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies: Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes, In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats; Till, by degrees, remote and small, The strains decay, And melt away, II. By music, minds an equal temper know, Or, when the soul is press'd with cares, Warriors she fires with animated sounds; Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds: Melancholy lifts her head, Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes, III. But when our country's cause provokes to arms, Descend from Pelion to the main. IV. But when, through all the infernal bounds O'er all the dreary coast! Dismal screams, Fires that glow, Shrieks of woe, Sullen moans, Hollow groans, And cries of tortured ghosts! But, hark! he strikes the golden lyre; Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still, And the pale spectres dance; The Furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their heads. V. By the streams that ever flow, Restore, restore Eurydice to life: He sung, and hell consented To hear the poet's prayer; A conquest how hard and how glorious! VI. But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes: How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move? No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love. Beside the falls of fountains, Or where Hebrus wanders, Rolling in meanders, Unheard, unknown, Amidst Rhodope's snows: See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' criesAh see, he dies! Yet even in death Eurydice he sung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue, Eurydice the woods, Eurydice the floods, Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung VII. Music the fiercest grief can charm, And fate's severest rage disarm; Music can soften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please: And antedate the bliss above. This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confined the sound. And angels lean from heaven to hear. Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell, TWO CHORUSES TO THE TRAGEDY OF BRUTUS. CHORUS OF ATHENIANS. STROPHE I. YE shades, where sacred truth is sought; In vain your guiltless laurels stood War, horrid war, your thoughtful walks invades, ANTISTROPHE I. O heaven-born sisters! source of art! Moral truth, and mystic song! To what new clime, what distant sky, Say, will ye bless the bleak Atlantic shore? STROPHE II. When Athens sinks by fates unjust, |