In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves, For ever fam'd for pure and happy loves: In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair,
Their eyes blue languish, and their golden hair! Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief must send; Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend.
Ye Georgian swains, that piteous learn from far
Circassia's ruin, and the waste of war;
Some weightier arms than crooks and staffs prepare,
To shield your harvest, and defend your fair:
The Turk and Tartar like designs pursue,
Fix'd to destroy, and steadfast to undo.
Wild as his land, in native deserts bred,
By lust incited, or by malice led,
The villain Arab, as he prowls for prey,
Oft marks with blood and wasting flames the way.
Yet none so cruel as the Tartar foe,
To death inur'd, and nurs'd in scenes of wo.
He said; when loud along the vale was heard A shriller shriek; and nearer fires appear'd: The affrighted shepherds, through the dews of night, Wide o'er the moonlight hills renew'd their flight.
THOU, the friend of man, assign'd
With balmy hands his wounds to bind
And charm his frantic wo:
When first Distress, with dagger keen,
Broke forth to waste his destin'd scene,
His wild unsated foe!
By Pella's* bard, a magic name,
By all the griefs his thought could frame,
Receive my humble rite:
Long, Pity, let the nations view
Thy sky-worn robes of tend'rest blue,
And eyes of dewy light!
But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Illissus' distant side,
Deserted stream, and mute?
Wild Arunt too has heard thy strains,
And Echo, midst thy native plains,
Been sooth'd by Pity's lute.
*Euripides, of whom Aristotle pronounces, on a comparison of him with Sophocles, that he was the greater master of the tender passions, ην τραγικωτερος.
The river Arun runs by the village in Sussex, where Otway had his birth.
There first the wren in myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head,
To him thy cell was shewn;
And while he sung the female heart,
With youth's soft notes unspoil'd by art,
Thy turtles mix'd their own.
Come, Pity, come, by Fancy's aid,
E'en now my thoughts, relenting maid,
Thy temple's pride design:
Its southern site, its truth complete,
Shall raise a wild enthusiast heat
In all who view the shrine.
There Picture's toils shall well relate,
How chance, or hard involving fate,
O'er mortal bliss prevail:
The buskin'd Muse shall near her stand,
And sighing prompt her tender hand,
With each disastrous tale.
There let me oft, retir'd by day,
In dreams of passion melt away,
Allow'd with thee to dwell:
There waste the mournful lamp of night,
Till, Virgin, thou again delight
To hear a British shell!
THOU, to whom the world unknown,
With all its shadowy shapes, is shewn;
Who seest, appall'd, the unreal scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between:
Ah Fear! ah frantic Fear!
I know thy hurried step; thy haggard eye!
Like thee I start; like thee disorder'd fly.
For lo, what monsters in thy train appear!
Danger, whose limbs of giant mould
What mortal eye can fix'd behold?
Who stalks his round, an hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm;
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep :
And with him thousand phantoms join'd,
Who prompt to deeds accurs'd the mind:
And those, the fiends, who near allied,
O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks preside;
Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air,
Lifts her red arm, expos'd and bare:
On whom that ravening* brood of Fate
Who lap the blood of sorrow wait:
Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see,
And look not madly wild, like thee?
In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice,
The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue;
The maids and matrons, on her awful voice,
Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung.
Yet he, the bardt who first invok'd thy name,
Disdain'd in Marathon its power to feel:
For not alone he nurs'd the poet's flame,
But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot's steel.
But who is he whom later garlands grace;
Who left a while o'er Hybla's dews to rove,
With trembling eyes thy dreary steps to trace,
Where thou and furies shar'd the baleful grove!
Alluding to the Kuvas apuxтas of Sophocles. See the Electra.
Wrapt in thy cloudy veil, th' incestuous* queen Sigh'd the sad call† her son and husband heard, When once alone it broke the silent scene,
And he the wretch of Thebes no more appear'd.
O Fear, I know thee by my throbbing heart:
Thy withering power inspir'd each mournful line:
Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part,
Yet all the thunders of the scene are thine!
Thou who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad Nymph, at last?
Say, wilt thou shroud in haunted cell,
Where gloomy Rape and Murder dwell?
Or, in some hollow'd seat,
'Gainst which the big waves beat,"
Hear drowning seamen's cries, in tempests brought? Dark power, with shudd'ring meek submitted thought.
Be mine to read the visions old
Which thy awakening bards have told:
And, lest thou meet my blasted view,
Hold each strange tale devoutly true;
Ne'er be I found, by thee o'eraw'd,
In that thrice-hallow'd eve, abroad,
When ghosts, as cottage-maids believe,
Their pebbled beds permitted leave;
And goblins haunt, from fire, or fen,
Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!
Ην μεν Σιωπη; φθεγμα δ' εξαίφνης τινος
Θαυξεν αυτον, ωστε πανίας όρθιας
Στήσαι φοβωδεισανίας εξαίφνης Τρίκας.
See the dip. Colon. of Sophocles.
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