They come, they come! I seem through fields to rove,
Sacred to woe, where Sorrow, sable shade!
Looks pensive to the uncomfortable ground.
On the soft breezes die the doleful notes,
And swell the soul with doleful harmony.
O life how many are thy sons? how few
Pursue the paths of happiness, though here
The goddess reigns acceptable to all?
Enraptured in the solemn maze of thought,
My soul is all attention; Fancy reigns,
And spreads before my view the flower-like race
Of mortals; folly, pride, and luxury,
Enwrap them round, till Death, impartial, shall
Deal the sure stroke, and seize the gasping prey.
High from an iron car, the gloomy king
Outstretches o'er the world his hagard eye.
His jaws, wide parting, open to the fill
Of sad oblivion-sable mantled shade!
At the dark chink the undistinguish'd throng
Enter, of maids, gay youths, and tottering age.
In gloomy pomp, array'd before their king,
Fear, grisly Terror, shivering Dismay,
And cloud-envelop'd Horror, gloomy stand.
When far before, by sable Fate empowered,
With wanton glee, and fool-insnaring grace,
A soft deluding fair disarms the strong,
And throws the brave into the jaws of death.
with the same imagery, and even with the same machinery, under another The progressive improvement of Macpherson's poetry may be tra ced from his poem upon Death, a juvenile imitation of Blair's Grave, to his more finished productions, the Night-piece and the Cave; of which last, we may observe with Dr Blair, that "whatever genius could produce that poem, must be judged fully equal to any performance contained in Mr Macpherson's Ossian." Appendix to BLAIR's Dissertation.
The sons of pride, her Happiness, but men
Call her Intemp'rance, daughter of this age,
Got on Prosperity, born on the banks
Of ill-used Liberty, and nursed up
By Plenty, Indolence, and Gallantry,
By Looks lascivious, by luxurious Ease.
Behind her comes Consumption-meagre ghost!
With slow, weak, languid pace, and self-devour'd;
Born drooping on a tedious flux of time,
With pain deep loaden, sluggish flowing down:
Then ulcers, swellings, apoplectic fits,
Convulsive trances, fever scorching hot,
The sage Physician-all a gloomy train!
Their general parent follow; while grim Death,
Wide-wasting Terror! shuts the dismal scene.
Already from the noise of life remov'd,
Does Damon seek the solitary shade,
Woe's gloomy haunts? does Contemplation please
The youthful soul, and love imbibing heart?
Ah, no! far other cares the soul invade,
Whelm the sad breast, and melt the tearful eyes.
Still sighing youth! how languid, pale, and wan,
Unsanguine, meagre, lifeless, loveless, sad?
Here, through the desolated streets, the crowds,
Half-naked, fly from home; and born in streams
The young Doricles left his joy behind,
The blooming Daphne! memory starts up
Of former love, and now defenceless charms.
He starts, he views, he flies; no dangers fright
But those of Daphne: her he shivering found,
Rock'd in the tottering hall; her azure eyes,
Like two fair fountains, watered the plain
Of roses on her cheek. He clasp'd her round,
And bore, through death, the lovely prize away.
Death, death might pity, could but death relent:
The field appears, and joy begins to dawn;
When from a tottering roof a fragment falls,
And crush'd the lovely Daphne in his arms!
How did Doricles stand aghast! How beat,
With broken sighs, his sorrow-wounded breast!
Still, still he grasps the dying innocent;
Yet sweet in death, and lovely in decay.
Death once felt pity, stretched his sable hand,
Shook the high tow'r, and sunk him with the blow.
Thus, when the younger bears the parent stork,
On wearied pinions through the fluid air,
Some greedy fowler wings the deathful shaft,
And brings them lifeless, fluttering to the ground.
A horrid form, in hell's deep track enchained
By the Almighty hand, till wickedness
Broke the firm cords, and loos'd the grisly fiend,
With sounding pinions, riding on the air,
Death's sable sister, withering Pestilence,
Clang'd her black wings o'er earth. The nations die :
The rich, the poor, the feeble, and the great,
Promiscuous throng: here, in the hall of state,
The wither'd monarch drops the wand of power:
There drops the easy-blasted plume of pride;
And wit, half-uttered, dies upon the tongue.
The uplifted tool drops from the tradesman's hand:
Himself out-stretched in death: his youthful spouse
Cries, save us Heaven! It was the last she said,
And drop'd, disfigured, in the jaws of death.
Breathless the mother lies, while on her breast
O'er the dispeopled earth, and Wealth and Power,
Pomp, Pleasure, Pageantry, the sister train
Of Vanity, become the slaves of Death.
2 Drear solitude he loves; while Memory, Officious recorder! brings to view The pleasing phantom of preterite joy:
But Pain and Sorrow, sister twins, start up,
And shew how weak, how feeble now! how chang'd
From what he was: Death takes the hint, and comes;
Ah! now he nods; eternal sleep o'erwhelms
His eyes; his breath, short-panting, scarcely heaves
His breast. But, hark! that sigh! the soul is fled;
The mournful form sinks pale into the grave.
Ah! what avail these sable flowing locks,
The air of pride; the folly-moving tongue,
That gaudy shell, and these deluding eyes,
The graceful form, and fair ensnaring port ?
In vain sweet Delia rends her flowing locks,
Or heaves her breast, or melts her azure eyes;
In vain! relentless Death is never mov'd.
No more that youthful blood shall circling rise,
And, love-creative, warm that pallid corse;
No more that wit will cheer the unthinking heart;
And that shut eye will roll its airs no more.
Now sad remembrance calls to Delia's view,
These plays, these concerts, nightly masquerades;
That love, that wit, these dear deluding smiles,
Where Damon was, that cheer'd the raptur'd soul:
But now no more! these fleeting joys are fled.
Fond memory mourns, crush'd by a load of woe.
Is Damon gone, and Delia left behind?
Is Damon dead, and Delia feed on air?
2 This and the preceding passage concerning Damon, line 50 to 57, were apparently meant to have been united.
Dear hapless youth, thy Delia seems unkind,
And hugs her life and you enwrapt in fate.
Come, sable Death! thou ever gentle shade,
Come, woe's kind soother, still the sting of grief,
Enwrap the mournful mind, and triumph o'er,
Or what is sweet on earth, or what can love,
She said; grew pale, the blooming roses dy'd
On her wan cheek; and now her shivering limbs
Felt Death's chill hand. Involved in a cloud
Of spicy breath, the soul, complaining, fled.
Thus, in the valley, a sweet-smelling flower
Exults, the blooming daughter of the spring,
Till, blasted with the breath of the north, it bows,
Droops, withers, dies, press'd in the jaws of death 3.
O life-destroying, cannot beauty please,
Imprint compassion on the rigid brow,
And blunt the edge of fate? Ah! no; in vain
Rolls the soft eye, forth-darting all its love;
In vain shall tears bedew the rosy cheek,
Or the world-firing snowy bosom heave:
Pity, soft pity! dreads thy awful reign,
And far from thee melts on the field of life.
O Temperance divine, neglected fair!
O ever-loving mate of happiness,
Sweet nurse of virtue, mother of long days,
Why fled? O mildness, from these iron times,
Return, return, and save a sinking age;
Sinew the arm effeminate, repulse
Death in thy absence, until Nature, tir'd,
Shall stoop the hoary head, and wish for sleep.
Scarce from this doleful scene I turn my eye,
When o'er the wounded mind new horrors rise.
Disease and pain, these sable scouts of death,
For ever sting the unhappy race of men.
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