"Maiden beloved, and Delegate of Heaven! (To her the tutelary Spirit said) Soon shall the morning struggle into day, Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven! In will, in deed, impulse of All to All! And first a landscape rose More wild and waste and desolate than where WHEN I have borne in memory what has tamed Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. WORDSWORTH. Τὸ μέλλον ἥξει. Καὶ σύ μ' ἐν τάχει παρὼν ARGUMENT. Eschyl. Agam. 1225. THE Ode commences with an address to the Divine Providence, that regulates into one vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some of them may appear to mortals. The second Strophe calls on men to suspend their private joys and sorrows, and devote them for a while to the cause of human nature in general. The first Epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1796; having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the Kings combined against France. The first and second Antistrophe describe the image of the Departing Year, &c. as in a vision. The second Epode prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of this country. SPI I. PIRIT who sweepest the wild harp of Time! Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear! This Ode was composed on the 24th, 25th, and 26th days of December, 1796: and was first published on the last day of that year. Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime, Then with no unholy madness, Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight, II. Hither, from the recent tomb, From the prison's direr gloom, From distemper's midnight anguish ; And thence, where poverty doth waste and languish! Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance! By Time's wild harp, and by the hand Raises its fateful strings from sleep, And each domestic hearth, Haste for one solemn hour; And with a loud and yet a louder voice, O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth, Weep and rejoice! Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of Hell: |