In a sadly pleasing strain Let the warbling lute complain; The shrill echoes rebound; While in more lengthen'd notes and slow Gently steal upon the ear; Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies: And melt away In a dying, dying fall. By music minds an equal temper know, Warriors she fires with animated sounds; Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds: Melancholy lifts her head, Morpheus rouses from his bed, Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes, Listening Envy drops her snakes; Intestine war no more our passions wage, But when our country's cause provokes to arms, So when the first bold vessel dar'd the seas, But when through all th' infernal bounds, O'er all the dreary coasts! Dismal screams, Fires that glow, Shrieks of woe, Sullen moans, Hollow groans, And cries of tortur'd ghosts! But hark! he strikes the golden lyre Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still, And the pale spectres dance; The Furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their heads. By the streams that ever flow, By those happy souls who dwell By the heroes' armed shades, Restore, restore Eurydice to life; Oh, take the husband, or return the wife: To hear the poet's prayer : O'er death and o'er hell, A conquest how hard and how glorious! Though fate had fast bound her, But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes; Beside the falls of fountains, Or where Hebrus wanders, Rolling in meanders, All alone, Unheard, unknown, He trembles, he glows, Amidst Rhodope's snows: See, wild as the winds o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries Ah see, he dies! Yet e'en in death Eurydice he sung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue; Eurydice the woods, Eurydice the floods, Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung. Music the fiercest grief can charm, And make despair and madness please: And antedate the bliss above. This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. ODE ON SOLITUDE. WRITTEN WHEN THE AUTHOR WAS ABOUT TWELVE YEARS OLD. HAPPY the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground. |