And everywhere huge covered tables stood,
With wines high flavoured and rich viands crowned;
Whatever sprightly juice, or tasteful food,
On the green bosom of this earth are found,
And all old ocean genders' in his round;
Some hand, unseen, these silently displayed,
E'en undemanded by a sign or sound;
You need but wish, and instantly obeyed,
Fair ranged the dishes rose, and thick the glasses played.
The rooms with costly tapestry were hung,
Where was enwoven many a gentle tale;
Such as of old the rural poets sung,
Or of Arcadian" or Sicilian vale;
Reclining lovers in the lonely dale,
Poured forth at large the sweetly-tortured heart;
Or, sighing tender passion, swelled the gale,
And taught charmed echo to resound their smart,
While flocks, woods, streams around, repose and peace impart.
Those pleased the most, where by a cunning hand,
Depainted was the patriarchal age;
What time Dan Abraham left the Chaldee land,
And pastured on from verdant stage to stage,
Where fields and fountains fresh could best engage.
Toil was not then. Of nothing took they heed,
But with wild beasts the sylvan war to wage,
And o'er vast plains their herds and flocks to feed ;
Blest sons of nature they! true golden age indeed!
Sometimes the pencil in cool airy halls,
Bade the gay bloom of vernal landscapes rise,
Or autumn's varied shades embrown the walls;
Now the black tempest strikes the astonished eyes,
Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies;
The trembling sun now plays o'er ocean blue,
And now rude mountains frown amid the skies:
Whate'er Lorraine1s light touched with softening hue,
Or savage Rosa1o dashed, or learned Poussin drew.
Each sound, too, here, to languishment inclined,
Lulled the weak bosom, and induced ease.
Aërial music in the warbling wind,
At distance rising, oft by small degrees,
16 genders, produces, 17 Arcadian; district in southern Greece.
Salvator Rosa, an Italian
Arcadia was a pastoral painter, remarkable for his delineations of wild and savage scenery.
18 Lorraine, Claude Lorraine, a celebrated landscape painter.
20 Poussin; Nicholas Poussin, a French painter.
Nearer and nearer came, till o'er the trees
It hung, and breathed such soul-dissolving airs,
As did, alas! with soft perdition please;
Entangled deep in its enchanting snares,
The listening heart forgets all duties and all cares.
A certain music, never known before,
Here lulled the pensive melancholy mind;
Full easily obtained: behoves no more,
But sidelong to the gently waving wind,
To lay the well-tuned instrument reclined,
From which, with airy-flying fingers light,
Beyond each mortal touch the most refined,
The god of winds drew sounds of deep delight;
Whence, with just cause, the harp of Æolus it hightë1.
Ah me! what hand can touch the string so fine?
Who up
the lofty diapason22 roll
Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine,
Then let them down again into the soul?
Now rising love they fanned; now pleasing dole
They breathed in tender musings, through the heart;
And now a graver, sacred strain they stole,
As when seraphic hands an hymn impart;
Wild-warbling nature all, above the reach of art.
Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran
Soft-tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell,
And sobbing breezes sighed, and oft began
(So worked the wizard) wintry storms to swell,
As heaven and earth they would together mell!
At doors and windows, threatening seemed to call
The demons of the tempest growling fell,
Yet the least entrance found they none at all,
Whence sweeter grew our sleep, secure in massy hall.
And hither Morpheus" sent his kindest dreams,
Raising a world of gayer tint and grace;
O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian25 gleams,
That played in waving lights from place to place,
And shed a roseate smile on Nature's face.
Not Titian's26 pencil e'er could so array,
So fleece with clouds the pure ethereal space;
Ne could it e'er such melting forms display,
As loose on flowery beds all languishingly lay.
21 hight, called, named.
22 diapason, a soud from all the strings.
23 dole, melancholy.
24 Morpheus, the god of sleep.
25 Elysian, heavenly; the heathens called the place whither the souls of the blessed went, Elysium.
26 Titian, a celebrated painter.
WILLIAM COLLINS, one of the finest lyric poets in our language, was born at Chichester, A. D. 1720; he was educated at Winchester, whence he removed to Oxford. He came to London as a literary adventurer, at a time when the public taste for poetry, especially of the abstract kind, was nearly extinct. Disappointment produced a painful effect on his mind, which was increased by his mad indulgence in the poison of intoxication. He terminated his brief and melancholy career in 1756.
The odes of Collins are generally regarded as the best productions of the kind that have appeared in England; they unite vigour of conception, bold and varied imagery, with great warmth of feeling; sometimes, however, his abstractions are carried too far, and become so obscure as to be understood with difficulty, and so remote as to lose the power of exciting interest.
THOU, to whom the world unknown,
With all its shadowy shapes, is shown;
Who seest appalled the unreal scene,
While fancy lifts the veil between:
Ah, Fear! ah, frantic Fear!
I see, I see thee near.
I know thy hurried step, thy haggard eye;
Like thee I start, like thee disordered fly,
For, lo, what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fixed behold?
Who stalks his round, an hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm,
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep;
And with him thousand phantoms joined,
Who prompt to deeds accursed the mind,
And those, the fiends, who, near allied,
O'er nature's wounds and wrecks preside;
While Vengeance, in the lurid air,
Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare;
On whom that ravening brood of Fate,
Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait,
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee?
In earliest Greece, to thee with partial choice,
The grief-full Muse addressed her infant song,
The maids and matrons, on her awful voice,
Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung.
Yet he, the bard' who first invoked thy name,
Disdained in Marathon its power to feel:
For not alone he nursed the poet's flame,
But reached from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel.
But who is he3, whom later garlands grace,
Who left awhile o'er Hybla's+ dews to rove,
With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,
Where thou and furies shared the baleful grove?
Wrapt in thy cloudy veil the incestuous queens
Sighed the sad call her son and husband heard,
When once alone it broke the silent scene,
And he, the wretch" of Thebes, no more appeared.
O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart,
Thy withering power inspired each mournful line,
Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part,
Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine.
Thou who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad nymph, at last?
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell,
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or in some hollowed seat,
'Gainst which the big waves beat,
Hear drowning seamen's cries in tempests brought!
Dark power, with shuddering meek submitted thought,
Be miné, to read the visions old
Which thy awakening bards have told.
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true;
Ne'er be I found, by thee o'erawed,
In that thrice hallowed eve7 abroad,
When ghosts, as cottage-maids believe,
Their pebbled beds permitted leave,
And goblins haunt, from fire or fen,
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!
1 the bard; the tragic Greek poet Eschylus.
2 Marathon, the scene of a celebrated battle between the Athenians and Persians. Eschylus had a personal share in the engagement.
3 he; Sophocles, a tragic poet of Athens, who excelled in the pathetic style.
mous for its honey; a village near Athens bears the same name.
queen; Jocasta, whose history forms the subject of one of Sophocles' tragedies.
6 wretch; Edipus; Sophocles wrote three tragedies on the misfortunes of this monarch and his family.
7 eve; he alludes to the old superstiHybla; a mountain in Sicily, fa- tions connected with All Hallows' Eve.
O thou, whose spirit most possest
The sacred seat of Shakspeare's breast!
By all that from thy prophet broke,
In thy divine emotions spoke!
Hither again thy fury deal,
Teach me but once like him to feel;
His cypress wreath my meed decree,
And I, O Fear, will dwell with thee!
WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell;
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's painting.
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of sound,
And as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each (for madness ruled the hour)
Would prove his own expressive power.
First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid,
And back recoiled, he knew not why,
Even at the sound himself had made.
Next Anger rushed: his eyes on fire,
In lightnings owned his secret stings;
In one rude clash he struck the lyre,
And swept with hurried hand the strings.
With woeful measures wan Despair-
Low sullen sounds, his grief beguiled;
A solemn, strange, and mingled air,
"Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild.
But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whispered promised pleasure,
|