Oh! sweet-tongued oracle of Phœbus, say,
To aid th’ illustrious Thebans’ ancient shore,
Dost thou from golden Delphos bend thy way,
Where thousand altars daily incense pour?
God, we invoke thee by thy three-fold name,
Rack’d with suspence, and palpitating fear,
Whate’er thou now, or henceforth shalt proclaim,
We list in silence, and with reverence hear.
Child of Hope, immortal Fame,
Deign the dark decree to prove;10
Thy pow’r omnipotent we claim,
Pallas! progeny of Jove!
ANTISTROPHE.
To thee, we raise our suppliant hands,
Diana, queen of forests cold,
To where the stately forum stands,
Seated on thy throne of gold.
God of the distant-wounding bow,
Apollo, hear, avert our wo.
If e’er before ye gave us aid,
When burthen’d with the monster-maid,20
Averters of Misfortune’s band,
Oh! now assist our suff’ring land.
Alas! to you, we suppliant call,
And, crush’d with ills unnumber’d, fall,
Whilst all our people pine away with grief,
And vain each plan to bring the wish’d relief;
Our corn is wasted in the barren earth,
Our women sink beneath th’ untimely birth;
Corpse upon corpse promiscuously expire,
Flocking to gloomy Pluto’s dreary reign,30
As birds, who, swifter than th’ unwearied fire,
Fall in vast numbers o’er the azure main.
Unnumber’d deaths, alas! exhaust our land—
Unhonour’d corpses load the burning strand.
Mothers and wives, thy sacred altars round,
Emit one sad, one darkly-mournful sound;
Perpetual Pæans lengthen on the gale,
And dismal sighs and mournful groans prevail.
Oh! haste then, golden Pallas, heav’nly maid,
Deign, in all thy might to aid,40
And cause to fly this dreadful god,
Who smites us with his baleful rod;
And, sword and buckler laid aside,
Destroys us with o’erwhelming tide;
Drive him, banish’d, from our home,
Where th’ unbounded ocean’s foam—
Or where th’ Ægean waters roar
Around the barb’rous Thracian’s shore.
What night has spar’d awhile!—the day
Has unrelenting swept away.50
Oh, potent Jove! thy thunders bare,
Oh, bid thy lightnings pierce the air,
And wrap beneath the blazing storm,
The murd’rous fury’s raging form.
Oh, King of Lycia! now thy darts employ,
Beneath thy arms this god destroy.
Those weapons, oh, Diana? pour,
With which thou hunt’st the Lycian boar.
And thou, who lov’st the nymphs to lead,
With golden mitre round thy head,60
Guardian God of Theban shore,
Purple Bacchus, we implore,
Oh, rear thy blazing brand on high,
Against this monster of the sky,
And banish, madd’ning with the pain,
The god, most hated of the heav’nly train.
PARNASSUS[15];
A VISION.
Written at Fourteen Years and a Half.
Loves not thy soul, when sated with the crowd,
And all the trifles of the great and proud;—
Loves not thy soul, its wearied pow’rs to bless,
With the rich charms of pensive loneliness?—
To turn thine eye, in mem’ry’s fond survey,
To scenes and pleasures faded long away;
Till they fall on thee, like spring’s grateful rain,
And, in idea, thou liv’st them o’er again?
Or, if bright Hope extends her magic wand,
To the dark future’s cloud-encircled land;10
Dost thou not feel a secret wish to view
Th’ entangled vale, thou hast to wander through?
While Fancy loves to deck the scene with flow’rs,
Gather’d from Glory’s fields, or Pleasure’s roseate bow’rs;
Till, perhaps, some passing peasant’s laughter’s roll,
Breaks the soft spell that binds thy wand’ring soul.
Yes, thou hast felt it, at that grateful hour,
When eve excites the Muse’s heav’nly pow’r,—
When all is calm!—when nothing rude is near,
To bound the pensive eye, or wound the ear!20
When Zephyr, wakened by paternal spring,
Rimples the waters with his roseate wing;
And, like a lover, wooes them with a sigh,
Sweet, but soon over, as he wanders by.
’Twas such an eve as this, I lately stood
On the green banks that shade Brent’s humble flood,
And mus’d o’er pleasures past, o’er scenes to be,
The cheering lights of dim futurity;
Till softly o’er my mind began to creep
Th’ unearthly calm of visionary sleep.30
Methought, a spacious plain before me lay,
Ting’d with that light which gilds the dawn of day;
Beauteous in every charm that can impart
Aught to delight, or captivate the heart:
Like those bright realms[16], replete with ev’ry joy,
That Venus rear’d to please her fav’rite boy.
Far up the wide expanse, was clearly seen,
A mountain cover’d with eternal green:
There, wreath’d in flow’rs of heav’n’s own splendid hue,
This hallow’d word blaz’d on the distant view,40
“Parnassus!”——