Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Let not ambition mock our useful toil,
Our homely joys and destiny obscure,
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor:
Their names, their years spelt by the untaught Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply,
And many a holy text around she strews,
To teach the rustic moralist to die."
Nursery rhymes, old ballads, odes, sonnets, epigrams, travesties, fables, satires, and eclogues, and, most of all, songs, provide daily pleasure for us from our cradle to the grave. Every language has its nursery rhymes, which are a sort of Delphian lot, sung in enigma from 'King Pittacus of Mytilene' and 'Le bon Roi Dagobert,' to the lullaby of 'Four-and-twenty Blackbirds.' There is as much sarcasm in nursery rhymes as there is of pride and boast in the songs of bards at the feast of heroes, and as there is of humble confession in the funeral psalm. Song tends alike to evaporate exuberant spirits, and to soothe the soul in an affliction—as Desdemona informs us so sweetly in her misery:—
"My mother had a maid called Barbara;
She was in love: and he she loved proved mad,
And did forsake her. She had a song of willow,
An old thing 'twas; but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing it. That song to-night
Will not go from my mind: I have much to do,
But to go hang my head all of one side,
And sing it like poor Barbara."
Ophelia chanted as she floated down the brook, Arion tamed the flood, and Orpheus the trees and rocks. It is a marvellous power which soothes alike the babe in the arms and the hero at the feast, the lover and the forsaken maiden, which leads to battle and returns from conquest; therefore let us see the ode, in 'Eton Revisited':—
"Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless boyhood strayed
A stranger yet to pain.
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,
As waving fresh their gladsome wing
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.
Whilst some on earnest labour bent
Their business, murmuring, ply
'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint
To sweeten liberty;
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of the little reign
And unknown regions dare descry;
Still as they run they look behind,
And hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.
To each his sufferings, all are men
Condemned 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.'"