O THOU! Who sitt'st a smiling bride
By Valour's arm'd and awful side,
Gentlest of sky-born forms, and best ador'd:
Who oft, with songs, divine to hear,

Winn'st from his fatal grasp the spear,

And hid'st in wreaths of flowers his bloodless sword!

Thou who, amidst the deathful field,

By godlike chiefs alone beheld,

Oft with thy bosom bare art found,

Pleading for him, the youth who sinks to ground:

See, Mercy, see! with pure and loaded hands, Before thy shrine my country's Genius stands, And decks thy altar still, though pierc'd with many a wound!

ANTISTROPHE.

When he whom e'en our joys provoke,
The fiend of Nature, join'd his yoke,

And rush'd in wrath to make our isle his prey:
Thy form, from out thy sweet abode,

O'ertook him on his blasted road,

And stopp'd his wheels, and look'd his rage away.

I see recoil his sable steeds,

That bore him swift to savage deeds,

Thy tender melting eyes they own;

O maid! for all thy love to Britain shewn,
Where Justice bars her iron tower,

To thee we build a roseate bower,

Thou, thou shalt rule our queen, and share our monarch's throne!

ODE TO EVENING.

Ir aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales;

O nymph reserv'd, while now the bright-hair'd Sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O'erhang his wavy bed:

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat,
With short shrill shriek flits on by leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum :
Now teach me, maid compos'd,

To breathe some soften'd strain,

Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale, May not unseemly with its stillness suit,

As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial lov'd return!

For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant hours, and elves

Who slept in buds the day,

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the freshening dew, and lovelier still,

The pensive pleasures sweet

Prepare thy shadowy car.

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod

By thy religious gleams.

Or if chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That from the mountain's side
Views wilds and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires,
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw

The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!
While Summer loves to sport
Beneath thy lingering light:

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves,
Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train,

And rudely rends thy robes:

So long, regardful of thy quiet rule,

Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace,
Thy gentlest influence own,

And love thy favourite name!

DIRGE IN CYMBELINE.

To fair Fidele's grassy tomb

Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet, of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing Spring.
No wailing ghost shall dare appear
To vex with shrieks this quiet grove,
But shepherd lads assemble here,

And melting virgins own their love.
No wither'd witch shall here be seen,
No goblins lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew.
The red-breast oft at evening hours
Shall kindly lend his little aid,
With hoary moss, and gather'd flowers,
To deck the ground where thou art laid.
When howling winds, and beating rain,
In tempests shake thy sylvan cell;
Or 'midst the chase on every plain,
The tender thought on thee shall dwell.
Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Belov'd, till life can charm no more;
And mourn'd, till Pity's self be dead.

TO SIMPLICITY.

O THOU, by Nature taught

To breathe her genuine thought,

In numbers warmly pure, and sweetly strong:

Who first on mountains wild,

In Fancy, loveliest child,

Thy babe, and Pleasure's, nursed the powers of song!

Thou, who with hermit heart

Disdain'st the wealth of art,

And gauds, and pageant weeds, and trailing pall:

But com'st a decent maid,

In Attic robe array'd,

O chaste, unboastful nymph! to thee I call!

By all the honey'd store

On Hybla's thymy shore,

By all her blooms, and mingled murmurs dear, By her whose love-lorn woe,

In evening musings slow,

Soothed, sweetly sad, Electra's poet's ear:

By old Cephisus' deep,

Who spread his wavy sweep

In warbled wanderings round thy green retreat, On whose enamell'd side,

When holy Freedom died,

No equal haunt allur'd thy future feet.

O sister meek of Truth,

To my admiring youth

Thy sober aid and native charms infuse!
The flowers that sweetest breathe,
Though beauty cull'd the wreath,

Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues.

While Rome could none esteem

But virtue's patriot theme,

You loved her hills, and led her laureate band; But staid to sing alone

To one distinguish'd throne,

And turn'd thy face, and fled her alter'd land. No more, in hall or bower,

The passions own thy power,

Love, only Love, her forceless numbers mean; For thou hast left her shrine,

Nor olive more, nor vine,

Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene.
Though taste, though genius, bless

To some divine excess,

Faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole What each, what all supply,

May court, may charm our eye,

Thou only thou canst raise the meeting soul!

Of these let others ask,

To aid some mighty task,

I only seek to find thy temperate vale:
Where oft my reed might sound

To maids and shepherds round,

And all thy sons, O Nature! learn my tale.