O'er the fresh morning's vapours, luftrate then The fountain, and inform the rifing wave.
My lyre fhall pay your bounty. Scorn not ye That humble tribute. Though a mortal hand Excite the ftrings to utterance, yet for themes Not unregarded of cœleftial powers,
I frame their language; and the Mufes deign To guide the pious tenor of my lay. The Mufes (facred by their gifts divine) In early days did to my wondering fenfe Their secrets oft reveal: oft my rais'd ear In flumber felt their mufic: oft at noon Or hour of funfet, by fomne lonely ftream,
In field or fhady grove, they taught me words
power from death and envy to preserve
The good man's name. Whence yet with grateful mind, And offerings unprofan'd by ruder eye,
My vows I fend, my homage, to the feats Of rocky Cirrha, where with you they dwell: Where you their chafte companions they admit Through all the hallow'd fcene: where oft intent, And leaning o'er Caftalia's moffy verge, They mark the cadence of your confluent urns, How tuneful, yielding gratefullest repofe To their conforted meafure: till again, With emulation all the founding choir, And bright Apollo, leader of the song, Their voices through the liquid air exalt,
And fweep their lofty ftrings: thofe powerful ftrings
That charm the mind of gods: that fill the courts Of wide Olympus with oblivion sweet Of evil's, with immortal reft from cares; Affuage the terrors of the throne of Jove; And quench the formidable thunderbolt Of unrelenting fire. With flacken'd wings, While row the folemn concert breathes around, Incumbent o'er the fceptre of his lord
Sleeps the ftern eagle; by the number'd notes, Poffefs'd; and fatiate with the melting tone: Sovereign of birds. The furious god of war, His darts forgetting, and the winged wheels. That bear him vengeful o'er the embattled plain, Relents, and fooths his own fierce heart to ease, Moft welcome eafe. The fire of gods and men, In that great moment of divine delight, Looks down on all that live; and whatsoe'er He loves not, o'er the peopled earth and o'er The interminated ocean, he beholds Curs'd with abhorrence by his doom fevere, And troubled at the found. Ye, Naiads, ye With ravish'd ears the melody attend Worthy of facred filence. But the flaves. Of Bacchus with tempestuous clamours strive To drown the heavenly strains;, of highest Jove Irreverent, and by mad prefumption fir'd Their own difcordant raptures to advance With hoftile emulation. Down they rush From Nyfa's vine-impurpled cliff, the dames
Of Thrace, the Satyrs, and the unruly Fauns, With old Silenus, reeling through the crowd Which gambols round him, in convulsions wild Toffing their limbs, and brandishing in air The ivy-mantled thyrfus, or the torch
Through black smoke flaming, to the Phrygian pipe's Shrill voice, and to the clashing cymbals, mix'd With fhrieks and frantic uproar. May the gods From every unpolluted ear avert
Their orgies! If within the feats of men, Within the walls, the gates, where Pallas holds The guardian key, if haply there be found. Who loves to mingle with the revel-band And hearken to their accents; who afpires From fuch inftructors to inform his breaft With verfe; let him, fit votarift, implore Their infpiration. He perchance the gifts Of young Lyæus, and the dread exploits, May fing in apteft numbers: he the fate Of fober Pentheus, he the Paphian rites, And naked Mars with Cytherea chain'd, And ftrong Alcides in the fpinfter's robes, May celebrate, applauded. But with you, O Naiads, far from that unhallow'd rout, Muft dwell the man whoe'er to praised themes Invokes the immortal Mufe. The immortal Mufe Το your calm habitations, to the cave
Corycian or the Delphic mount, will guide His footsteps; and with your unfullied ftreams
His lips will bathe: whether the eternal lore Of Themis, or the majesty of Jove,
To mortals he reveal; or teach his lyre The unenvied guerdon of the patriot's toils, In those unfading islands of the blefs'd, Where facred Bards abide. Hail, honor'd Nymphs; Thrice hail. For you the Cyrenaïc shell Behold, I touch, revering. To my fongs Be present ye with favorable feet,
And all profaner audience far remove..
Elder than Chaos.] Hefiod, in his Theogony, gives a different account, and makes Chaos the eldest of beings; though he affigns to Love neither father nor fuperior: which circumftance is particularly mentioned by Phædrus, in Plato's Banquet, as being obfervable not only in Hefiod, but in all other writers both of verfe and profe: and on the fame occafion he cites a line from Parmenides, in which Love is exprefly stiled the eldest of all the gods. Yet Ariftophanes, in The Birds, affirms, that "Chaos, and "Night, and Erebus, and Tartarus, were firft; and "that Love was produced from an egg, which the "fable-winged night depofited in the immenfe bofom "of Erebus." But it must be obferved, that the Love defigned by this comic poet was always distinguished from the other, from that original and felf-exiftent being the TO ON or ATA ON of Plato, and meant only the ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΟΣ or fecond perfon of the old Grecian trinity; to whom is infcribed an hymn among thofe
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