more extended imitation produced by the interchange and position of different measures in his poetry; by the harmony and correspondence of the different parts; by the variety of melody in arrangement and succession; and by the movements of the metre, rather than the sound of the words."1

HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

DAUGHTER of Jove,3 relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants5 vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied, and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,6
And bade thee form her infant mind.
Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore;

What sorrow was, thou badest her know,

And from her own, she learned to melt at others' woe.

1 Mitford.

66 'Essay on the Poetry of Gray," in his edition of Gray's works, vol. ii, p. 15.

3 The "sweet uses" of Adversity (to employ Shakspere's phraseology) are displayed with admirable dignity, strength, and beauty in the above poem.

3 Daughter of Jove-This poetic parentage is originally due to Homer, and finely suggests the fundamental idea of the whole poem.

Iron scourge, &c.-The phraseology here is borrowed from Milton's "Paradise Lost," ii, 95:

"When the scourge

Inexorably, and the torturing hour,
Calls us to penance."

5 Purple tyrants—i. e. tyrants clad in purple robes-the classical insignia of kingly power.

Heavenly birth-i. e. the child born in heaven. The conception of Adversity as the nurse of Virtue is very fine.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,

Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer friend, the flattering foe!
By vain Prosperity received,

To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom,1 in sable garb arrayed,

Immersed in rapturous thought profound,

And Melancholy, silent maid,

With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend;

Warm Charity, the general friend,

With Justice, to herself severe,

And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

Oh! gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening2 hand!
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,

Nor circled with the vengeful band,4

(As by the impious thou art seen)

With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror's funeral cry,

Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, oh Goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart;

Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound my heart.

Wisdom, &c.- This costume is derived from Milton, who, in "Il Penseroso," (see p. 311,) speaks of Melancholy's face as "O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue."

2

Chastening-Chasten and punish may be thus distinguished; we chasten an offender for his own good; we punish him for the good of society, and to satisfy the claims of justice.

3 Gorgon terrors-" What single epithet," says Mr. Mitford, "what attribute could the poet have given to terror, which could have produced an effect equal to that of this image;" and hence he infers that the occasional insertion of classical allusions confers grace and beauty on a poem.

4 The vengeful band-i. e. the furies who were represented in the Greek mythology as the ministers of divine wrath against crime.

5 Thy philosophic train-i. e. the train of virtues which the philosophic or contemplative mind may derive from adversity.

The generous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love, and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are1 to feel, and know myself a man.

THE PROGRESS OF POETRY.2

A PINDARIC ODE.

I. 1.

AWAKE, Æolian3 lyre, awake,

And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's+ harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers that round them blow,
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of Music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,

Through verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain,

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour;

The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.

What others are, &c.-Sometimes erroneously printed "what others' are," that is, others' defects. The meaning is-teach me to feel what others are, and by this sympathy with men to become fully conscious that I also belong to the family of man.

2 Dr. Johnson in reference to this and the following ode says, slightingly, that at their first publication, "many were contented to be shown beauties that they could not see." The general estimate of these poems, is, however, now, very high, in spite of the obscurity of some particular parts. The writer has indeed, in both poems, employed nearly all the resources of the poetic art, and frequently, with distinguished success.

3 Eolian-Grecian or more specially Pindaric, which style the poet is about to imitate.

4 From Helicon's &c.-Poetry is here represented as a stream sometimes quietly fertilising its shores, at other times rolling impetuously onward, a grand and awful spectacle; implying that poetry deals equally with the beautiful and the sublime.

1

I. 2.

Oh! Sovereign1 of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares

And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War
Has curbed the fury of his car,

And dropt his thirsty lance, at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand

Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feathered king
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing:
Quenched in dark clouds of slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightning of his eye.

I. 3.

Thee the voice,2 the dance, obey,

Tempered to thy warbled lay.

O'er Idalia's velvet green3

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen,
On Cytherea's day,

With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
Frisking light in frolic measures;

Now pursuing, now retreating,

Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating,
Glance their many-twinkling feet.

Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare :
Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay:

With arms sublime, that float upon the air,

In gliding state she wins her easy way:

O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move

The bloom of young desire, and purple+ light of Love.

Oh, sovereign, &c.-" Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar:" Gray. In Pindar the image of Mars is followed by that of Jove's eagle, but Gray has inverted this order and proportionately injured the effect.

2 Thee the voice, &c.-" Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body:" Gray.

3 Velvet green-Dr. Johnson lays down, in reference to these words, the following canon. "An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature." If, however, this rule be allowed to be generally correct, the exceptions to it are very numerous. The truth is perhaps, that it is the manner in which epithets are introduced from either source that ennobles or degrades the subject, rather than any intrinsic superiority of Nature over Art.

4 Purple-i. e. in the classical sense, beautiful. See note 2, p. 71.

II. 1.

Man's feeble race1 what ills await!
Labour and Penury, the racks of Pain,
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate!
The fond complaint, my song, disprove,

And justify the laws of Jove.

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse?
Night and all her sickly dews,

Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry,

He gives to range the dreary sky;

Till down the eastern cliffs afar

Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of war.

II. 2.

In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.

And oft, beneath the odorous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,

In loose numbers, wildly sweet,

Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursues, and generous Shame,

The unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.

II. 3.

Woods that wave5 o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles that crown the Egean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,

Or where Meander's amber waves
In lingering labyrinths creep,

1 Man's feeble race, &c.-"To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same providence that sends the day, by its cheerful presence to dispel the gloom and terrors of the night:" Gray.

2 Till-i.e. only until the sun appears and then they vanish; and so poetry scatters cares and anxieties.

3 Hyperion-" the one that goes or moves above," an epithet of the sun.

4 In climes beyond, &c.-" Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations: its connection with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it: "Gray.

5 Woods that wave, &c.-"Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England :" Gray.