In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war-much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on Would be old Goethe's-(see what says De. In Italy he'd ape the Trecentisti ; ' * [Staël); In Greece he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t'ye; The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece! The Scian † and the Teian ‡ muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, I dream'd that Greece might still be free; A king sat on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; And men in nations ;-all were his ! The heroic bosom beats no more! Even as I sing, suffuse my face; • The poets of the fourteenth century, Dante, &c. Homer. Anacreon. $ The νήσοι μακαρων of the Greek poets were supposed to have been the Cape de Verd islands or the Canaries. Deep were the groans of Xerxes, when he saw What, silent still? and silent all? Ah, no ;-the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall, And answer, 'Let one living head, But one, arise-we come, we come!' 'Tis but the living who are dumb. In vain-in vain strike other chords: Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble call,— How answers each bold Bacchanal ! You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet, Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Of two such lessons, why forget The nobler and the manlier one? You have the letters Cadmus gaveThink ye he meant them for a slave? Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! We will not think of themes like these It made Anacreon's song divine: He served but served PolycratesA tyrant; but our masters then Were still, at least, our countrymen. The tyrant of the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades! Oh, that the present hour would lend Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Such as the Doric mothers bore: Trust not for freedom to the Franks- Where nothing, save the waves and I. Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts, They do not much contribute to his glory. All are not moralists, like Southey, when Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath). XCIV. Such names at present cut a convict figure, The very Botany Bay in moral geography; Their loyal treason, renegado vigour, Are good manure for their more bare biography. Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigget Than any since the birthday of typography; A drowsy, frowzy poem call'd The Excursion, Writ in a manner which is my aversion. XCV. He there builds up a formidable dyke Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like The public mind-so few are the elect; XCVI. But let me to my story: I must own, While I soliloquize beyond expression; XCVII. I know that what our neighbours call 'longueurs' (We've not so good a word, but have the thing, In that complete perfection which ensures An epic from Bob Southey every spring-) Form not the true temptation which allures The reader; but 'twould not be hard to bring Some fine examples of the épopée To prove its grand ingredient is ennui. XCVIII. We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps ;' [wakes, We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes But set those persons down with me to pray, And you shall see who has the properest notion Of getting into heaven the shortest way: My altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars-all that springs from the great Whole, Who hath produced, and will receive the scal. CV. Sweet hour of twilight !-in the solitude Of the pine forest, and the silent shore Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, Rooted where once the Adrian wave fcwd o'er, To where the last Cæsarean fortress stood, Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore How have I loved the twilight hour and thee! And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, CVI. The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless sorg. Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and me And vesper bells that rose the boughs along . The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, His hell-dogs and their chase, and the fair throng, Which learn'd from this example not to fly From a true lover-shadow'd my mind's eye.* CVII. O Hesperus! thou bringest all good things+ CVIII. Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are for apart; Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way As the far bell of vesper niakes him start, Seeming to weep the dying day's decay: Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? Ah! surely nothing dies but something morns! • See Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. †' Έσπερε παντα φέρεις, Φέρεις οίνον φέρεις αιγα, Φέρεις ματέρι παιδα.' Fragment of Sapphu Era gia l'ora che volge 1 disio, A' naviganti, e 'ntenerisce il cacre, Lo di ch' han detto a' dolci amici a do; E che lo nuovo peregrin' d'amore Punge, se ode Squilla di lontano, Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si more. DANTE'S Purgatory, canto r This last line is the first of Gray's Elegy, taken y ha wana acknowledgment?? |