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Though taste, though genius, bless, To some divine excess, Faints 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.

'Tis not the enfeebled thrill, or warbled shake,

The heart can strengthen, or the soul awake!

But where the force of energy is found,

When the sense rises on the wings of sound;

When reason, with the charms of music twined,

Through the enraptured ear informs the mind;

Bids generous love or soft compassion glow, And forms a tuneful Paradise below!

ODE TO THE BRAVE.

How sleep the brave, who sink to

rest,

By all their country's wishes blessed!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould.

She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their
clay;

And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there!

THE PASSIONS.

AN ODE FOR MUSIC.

WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was

young,

While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's painting:
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Till once, 'tis said, when all were
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined:
fired,

Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of
sound:

And, as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each (for Madness ruled the hour)

ON TRUE AND FALSE TASTE IN Would prove his own expressive

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Revenge impatient rose; He threw his blood-stained sword, in thunder, down;

And with a withering look,
The war-denouncing trumpet took,
And blew a blast so loud and dread,
Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full
of woe!

And, ever and anon, he beat
The doubling drum, with furious
heat;

And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,

Dejected Pity, at his side,

Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien,

While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head.

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed;

Sad proof of thy distressful state; Of differing themes the veering song was mixed;

And now it courted Love, now raving called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sate retired;
And, from her wild sequestered seat,
In notes by distance made more
sweet,

Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul:

And, dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels joined the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measures stole,

Or, o'er some haunted stream, with fond delay,

Round an holy calm diffusing, Love of Peace, and lonely musing, In hollow murmurs died away.

But O! how altered was its spright

lier tone,

When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,

Her bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,

The hunter's call, to Faun and
Dryad known!

The oak-crowned Sisters, and their chaste-eyed Queen,

Satyrs and sylvan boys were seen, Peeping from forth their alleys green:

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear; And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:
He, with viny crown advancing.
First to the lively pipe his hand
addrest;

But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol,

Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best; They would have thought who heard the strain

They saw, in Tempe's vale, her

native maids,

Amidst the festal sounding shades, To some unwearied minstrel dancing, While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,

Love framed with Mirth a gay fan

tastic round; Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound;

And he, amidst his frolic play, As if he would the charming air repay,

Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

O Music! sphere-descended maid, Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid! Why, goddess! why, to us denied, Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside? As, in that loved Athenian bower, You

learned an all-commanding
power,

Thy mimic soul, O Nymph endeared,
Can well recall what then it heard;
Where is thy native simple heart,
Devote to Virtue, Fancy, Art?
Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime!
Thy wonders, in that godlike age,
Fill thy recording sister's page-
'Tis said, and I believe the tale,
Thy humblest reed could more pre-
vail,

Had more of strength, diviner rage, Than all which charms this laggard age;

E'en all at once together found,
Cecilia's mingled world of sound-
O bid our vain endeavors cease;
Revive the just designs of Greece:
Return in all thy simple state!
Confirm the tales her sons relate!

ODE TO EVENING.

IF aught of oaten stop or pastoral song,

May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,

Like thy own brawling springs,
Thy springs and dying gales;

O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun

Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,

With brede ethereal wove
O'erhang his wavy bed:

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat

With short shrill shriek flits by on 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 composed,
To breathe some softened strain,

Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale,

May not unseemly with its stillness suit;

As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved 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-discovered spires;

And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all

Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.

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