Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of Joy;

With antic sports and blue-ey'd pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating
Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow-melting strains their queen's approach declare:
Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay,
With arts sublime, that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
The oom of young Desire, and purple light of Love.

II.

Man's feeble race what ills await, Labor and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate!
The fond complaint, my song, disprove,
And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,
He gives to range the dreary sky:
Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Of Horror that, and thrilling fears,

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears."

Nor second he,t 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 bare

Two coursers of ethereal race,‡

With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
Bright-ey'd Fancy, hovering o'er,
Scatters from her pictur'd urn

Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
But ah! 'tis heard no more-

Oh! lyre divine, what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? though he inherit

war.

In climes beyond the solar road,

That the Theban eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion

The Muse has broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode. And oft, beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,

In loose numbers wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs, and dusky loves.
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and generous Shame,

Th' unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles, that crown th' gean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,
Or where Mæander's amber waves
In lingering labyrinths creep,

How do your tuneful Echoes languish
Mute, but to the voice of Anguish?
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breath'd around:
Every shade and hallow'd fountain

Murmur'd deep a solemn sound:
Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour,
Left their Parnassus, for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant-power,

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains.
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,

They sought, oh Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.

III.

Far from the Sun and summer-gale,

In thy green lap was Nature's darling* laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,

To him the mighty mother did unveil

Her awful face: the dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil'd.

"This pencil take," she said, "whose colors clear Richly paint the vernal year:

* Shakspeare.

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.

ODE ON THE SPRING.

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours,
Fair Venus' train appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of Spring: While, whispering pleasure as they fly, Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade;
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think

(At ease reclin'd in rustic state)
How vain the ardor of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care :

The panting herds repose:

Yet hark, how through the peopled air

The busy murmur glows!

† Milton.

Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes.

The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,

And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim,
Quick-glancing to the Sun.

To Contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of man:

And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.

Alike the busy and the gay
But flutter through life's little day,

In Fortune's varying colors drest:
Brush'd by the hand of rough Mischance;
Or chill'd by Age, their airy dance
They leave in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear in accents low

The sportive kind reply;

"Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly!

Thy joys no glittering female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown:
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone
We frolic while 'tis May."

ODE FOR MUSIC.

PERFORMED IN THE SENATE-HOUSE AT CAMBRIDGE, JULY 1, 1769, AT THE INSTALLATION OF HIS GRACE AUGUSTUS-HENRY FITZROY, DUKE OF GRAF

TON, CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY.

But hark! the portals sound, and pacing forth
With solemn steps and slow,

High potentates and dames of royal birth,
And mitred fathers, in long order go:
Great Edward,* with the lilies on his brow,
From haughty Gallia torn,

And sad Chatillon,t on her bridal morn

That wept her bleeding love, and princely Clare,t
And Anjou's heroine, and the paler rose,
The rival of her crown and of her woes,
And either Henry¶ there,

The murder'd saint, and the majestic lord,
That broke the bonds of Rome.
(Their tears, their little triumphs o'er,
Their human passions now no more,
Save Charity, that glows beyond the tomb,)
All that on Granta's fruitful plain
Rich streams of regal bounty pour'd,
And bade these awful fanes and turrets rise,
To hail their Fitzroy's festal morning come;
And thus they speak in soft accord
The liquid language of the skies.

"What is grandeur, what is power?
Heavier toil, superior pain.
What the bright reward we gain?
The grateful memory of the good.
Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
The bee's collected treasure's sweet,
Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet
The still small voice of Gratitude."

* Edward the Third; who added the fleur-de-lis of France to the arms of England. He founded Trinity College.

† Mary de Valentia, Countess of Pembroke, daughter

Nor Envy base, nor creeping Gain,
Dare the Muse's walk to stain,

While bright-ey'd Science watches round:
Hence, away, 'tis holy ground!"

From yonder realms of empyrean day
Bursts on my ear th' indignant lay:

There sit the sainted sage, the bard divine,
The few, whom genius gave to shine

Through every unborn age and undiscover'd clime.
Rapt in celestial transport they,

Yet hither oft a glance from high
They send of tender sympathy

To bless the place, where on their opening soul
First the genuine ardor stole.

"Twas Milton struck the deep-ton'd shell,
And, as the choral warblings round him swell,

whom tradition says, that her husband, Audemar de Valentia, Earl of Pembroke, was slain at a tournament on the day of his nuptials. She was the foundress of Pembroke College or Hall, under the name of Aula Mariæ de Valentia.

Elizabeth de Burg, Countess of Clare, was wife of John de Burg, son and heir of the Earl of Ulster, and daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, by Joan of Acres, daughter of Edward the First. Hence the poet gives her the epithet of princely. She founded Clare-Hall

§ Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry the Sixth, found ress of Queen's College. The poet had celebrated her con jugal fidelity in a former ode.

Elizabeth Widville, wife of Edward the Fourth (hence called the paler rose, as being of the house of York.) She added to the foundation of Margaret of Anjou.

¶ Henry the Sixth and Eighth. The former the founder

Her conscious tail her joy declar'd; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws,

Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,

She saw; and purr'd applause.

Still had she gaz'd; but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The Genii of the stream:
Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betray'd a golden gleam.

* Countess of Richmond and Derby; the mother of Henry the Seventh, foundress of St. John's and Christ's Colleges.

The Countess was a Beaufort, and married to a Tudor; hence the application of this line to the Duke of Grafton, who claims descent from both these families.

↑ Lord-treasurer Burleigh was chancellor of the Uni versity in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

84

ODE

ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLÈGE *Ανθρωπος· ἱκανὴ πρόφασις εἰς τὸ δυσυχεῖν.

YE distant spires, ye antique towers,

Menander.

That crown the wat'ry glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way.

Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade,

Ah, fields belov'd in vain,

Where once my careless childhood stray'd,

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.

Say, father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green

The paths of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?

The captive linnet which enthral ?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?

§ King Henry the Sixth, founder of the college. 3 F 2