Now led by playful Fancy's hand
O'er the white surge he treads with printless feet, To magic shores he flies, and fairy land,
Imagination's blest retreat.
Here roses paint the crimson way,
No setting sun, eternal May,
Wild as the Priestess of the Thracian fane,
When Bacchus leads the maddening train,
His bosom glowing with celestial fire,
To harmony he struck the golden lyre;
To harmony each hill and valley rung!
The bird of Jove, as when Apollo sung,
To melting bliss resigned his furious soul,
With milder rage his eyes began to roll,
The heaving down his thrilling joys confest,
Till by a mortal's hand subdued he sunk to rest.
O, guardian angel of our early day,
Henry, thy darling plant must bloom no more! By thee attended, pensive would he stray,
Where Thames soft murmuring laves his winding shore.
Thou badest him raise the moralizing song,
Through life's new seas the little bark to steer; The winds are rude and high, the sailor young; Thoughtless, he spies no furious tempest near,
The Progress of Poesy, a Pindaric Ode.
d Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College.
Till to the Poet's hand the helm you gave,
From hidden rocks an infant crew to save!
Ye fiends who rankle in the human heart,
Delight in woe, and triumph in our tears,
Resume again
Prepare the iron scourge, prepare the venomed dart, Adversity no more with lenient air appears:
The snakes that twine about her head
Again their frothy poison shed;
For who can now her whirlwind flight control,
Her threatening rage beguile?
He who could still the tempest of her soul,
And force her livid lips to smile,
To happier seats is fled!
Now seated by his Thracian sire,
At the full feast of mighty Jove,
To heavenly themes attunes his lyre,
And fills with harmony the realms above!
EXTRACTED FROM THE THIRD BOOK OF
MASON'S "ENGLISH GARDEN."
CLOSED is that curious ear, by death's cold hand,
That marked each error of my careless strain
With kind severity; to whom my Muse
Still loved to whisper, what she meant to sing
In louder accent; to whose taste supreme
She first and last appealed, nor wished for praise,
Save when his smile was herald to her fame.
Yes, thou art gone; yet friendship's faltering tongue
Invokes thee still; and still, by fancy soothed,
Fain would she hope her Gray attends the call.
Why then, alas! in this my favourite haunt,
Place I the urn, the bust, the sculptured lyre",
a Mr. Gray died July 31st, 1771. This book was begun a few months after. The three following lines allude to a rustic alcove the Author was then building in his garden, in which he placed a medallion of his friend, and an urn; a lyre over the
Or fix this votive tablet, fair inscribed
With numbers worthy thee, for they are thine?
Why, if thou hearest me still, these symbols sad
Of fond memorial? Ah! my pensive soul!
He hears me not, nor ever more shall hear
The theme his candour, not his taste approved.
Oft, "smiling as in scorn," oft would he cry,
"Why waste thy numbers on a trivial art,
That ill can mimic even the humblest charms
Of all-majestic nature?" at the word
His eye would glisten, and his accents glow
With all the poet's frenzy, " Sovereign queen!
Behold, and tremble, while thou viewest her state
Throned on the heights of Skiddaw: call thy art
To build her such a throne; that art will feel
How vain her best pretensions. Trace her march
Amid the purple crags of Borrowdale;
And try like those to pile thy range of rock
In rude tumultuous chaos. See! she mounts
Her naiad car, and, down Lodore's dread cliff
Falls many a fathom, like the headlong Bard
My fabling fancy plunged in Conway's flood;
entrance with the motto from Pindar, which Mr. Gray had prefixed to his Odes, ΦΩΝΑΝΤΑ ΣΥΝΕΤΟΙΣΙ : and under it, on a tablet, this stanza, taken from the first edition of his Elegy written in a Country Churchyard:
Here scattered oft, the loveliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble here,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.
Yet not like him to sink in endless night:
For, on its boiling bosom, still she guides
Her buoyant shell, and leads the wave along;
Or spreads it broad, a river, or a lake,
As suits her pleasure; will thy boldest song
E'er brace the sinews of enervate art
To such dread daring? will it even direct
Her hand to emulate those softer charms
That deck the banks of Dove, or call to birth
The bare romantic crags, and copses green,
That sidelong grace her circuit, whence the rills,
Bright in their crystal purity, descend
To meet their sparkling queen? around each fount The hawthorns crowd, and knit their blossomed
To keep their sources sacred. Here, even here,
Thy art, each active sinew stretched in vain,
Would perish in its pride. Far rather thou
Confess her scanty power, correct, control,
Tell her how far, nor farther, she may go;
And rein with reason's curb fantastic taste."
Yes, I will hear thee, dear lamented shade,
And hold each dictate sacred. What remains
Unsung shall so each leading rule select
As if still guided by thy judgment sage;
While, as still modelled to thy curious ear,
Flow my melodious numbers; so shall praise,
If aught of praise the verse I weave may claim,
From just posterity reward my song.
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