Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,
To him the mighty Mother did unveil
Her awful face. The dauntless Child
Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.
This pencil take (she said) whose colors 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.
Nor second he, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
The secrets of th' Abyss to spy,
He pass'd 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,
Clos'd 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 cloth'd, and long-resounding pace.
III3
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, unborrow'd 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.
(Gray: The Progress of Poesy. 1757.)
Gray's Progress of Poesy is probably to be regarded as the chief of all English odes of the regular Pindaric form. Mr. Lowell said, indeed, that it "overflies all other English lyrics like an eagle." The Bard is in precisely the same form, and shows the same skill in the wielding of the intricately varying melodies of the lines of different length.
B.—IRREGULAR (COWLEYAN)
Whom thunder's dismal noise,
And all that Prophets and Apostles louder spake,
And all the creatures' plain conspiring voice,
Could not, whilst they liv'd, awake,
This mightier sound shall make
When dead t' arise,
And open tombs, and open eyes,
To the long sluggards of five thousand years.
This mightier sound shall wake its hearers' ears.
Then shall the scatter'd atoms crowding come
Back to their ancient home.
Some from birds, from fishes some,
Some from earth, and some from seas,
Some from beasts, and some from trees.
Some descend from clouds on high,
Some from metals upwards fly,
And where th' attending soul naked and shivering stands,
Meet, salute, and join their hands,
As dispers'd soldiers at the trumpet's call
Haste to their colors all.
Unhappy most, like tortur'd men,
Their joints new set, to be new-rack'd again,
To mountains they for shelter pray;
The mountains shake, and run about no less confus'd than they.
Stop, stop, my Muse! allay thy vig'rous heat,
Kindled at a hint so great.
Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,
Which does to rage begin,
And this steep hill would gallop up with violent course;
'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse,
Fierce, and unbroken yet,
Impatient of the spur or bit;
Now prances stately, and anon flies o'er the place;
Disdains the servile law of any settled pace;
Conscious and proud of his own natural force,
'Twill no unskilful touch endure,
But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.