With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating,

Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare:
Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime, that float upon the air,

In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

II. I.

Man's feeble race what ills await!

Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,

Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of fate! The fond complaint, my song, disprove,

And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?

Night and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary sky;

Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they

spy, and glittering shafts of war.

II. 2.

In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.

And oft, beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,

In loose numbers wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.

Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

The unconquerable Mind, and freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles, that crown th' Ægean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Mæander's amber waves
In lingering labyrinths creep,

How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of anguish!
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathed around;
Every shade and hallowed fountain
Murmured deep a solemn sound:

Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,
And coward Vice, that revels in her chains.
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, oh Albion ! next thy sea-encircled coast.

III. I.

Far from the sun and summer-gale,

In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,

To him the mighty mother did unveil

Her awful face: the dauntless child

Stretch'd forth his little arms and smiled.

'This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear

Richly paint the vernal year :

Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!

This can unlock the gates of joy!

Of horror that, and thrilling fears,

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.'

III. 2.

Nor second He, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,

The secrets of the abyss to spy.

He passed the flaming bounds of place and time :

The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.

Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,

Wide o'er the fields of glory bear

Two coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.

III. 3.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!

Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er,

Scatters from her pictured urn

Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

But ah! 'tis heard no more

Oh lyre divine, what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? Tho' he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban eagle bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion
Thro' the azure deep of air :

Yet oft before his infant eyes would run

Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray,

With orient hues, unborrowed of the sun:

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way

Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,

Beneath the Good how far-but far above the Great.

THE BARD.

I. I.

'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait;
Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.

Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!'
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side

He wound with toilsome march his long array. Stout Gloster stood aghast in speechless trance: 'To arms!' cried Mortimer, and couched his quivering lance.

I. 2.

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air)
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 wave,
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.

1. 3.

'Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,

That hushed 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-topt head.
On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail;
The famished eagle 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— 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.

II. I.

'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, thro' Berkley's roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king!

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,

That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs
The scourge of heaven. What terrors round him wait!
Amazement in his van, with flight combined,

And sorrow's faded form, and solitude behind.

11. 2.

'Mighty victor, mighty lord! Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford

A tear to grace his obsequies.

Is the sable warrior fled?

Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.

The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.