Sweet murmurer! may no rude storm
This hospitable scene deform,
Nor check thy gladsome toils;
may the buds unsullied spring,
Still showers and sunshine court thy wing
To these ambrosial spoils.
Nor shall my Muse hereafter fail
Her fellow labourer thee to hail;
And lucky be the strains!
For long ago did Nature frame
Your seasons and your arts the same,
Your pleasures and your pains.
Like thee, in lowly, sylvan scenes,
On river banks and flowery greens
My Muse delighted plays;
Nor through the desert of the air,
Though swans or eagles triumph there,
With fond ambition strays.
Nor where the boding raven chaunts,
Nor near the owl's unhallow'd haunts
Will she her cares employ;
But flies from ruins and from tombs,
From Superstition's horrid glooms,
To day-light and to joy.
Nor will she tempt the barren waste; Nor deigns the lurking strength to taste noxious thing;
But leaves with scorn to Envy's use
The insipid nightshade's baneful juice,
The nettle's sordid sting.
From all which Nature fairest knows,
The vernal blooms, the summer rose,
She draws her blameless wealth:
And, when the generous task is done,
She consecrates a double boon,
To Pleasure and to Health.
THE radiant ruler of the year
At length his wintry goal attains ;
Soon to reverse the long career,
And northward bend his steady reins.
Now, piercing half Potosi's height,
Prone rush the fiery floods of light
Ripening the mountain's silver stores:
While, in some cavern's horrid shade,
The panting Indian hides his head,
And oft the approach of eve implores.
But lo, on this deserted coast
How pale the sun! how thick the air!
Mustering his storms, a sordid host,
Lo, Winter desolates the year.
The fields resign their latest bloom;
No more the breezes waft perfume,
No more the streams in music roll:
But snows fall dark, or rains resound;
And, while great Nature mourns around,
Her griefs infect the human soul.
Hence the loud city's busy throngs
Urge the warm bowl and splendid fire:
Harmonious dances, festive songs,
Against the spiteful heaven conspire.
Meantime perhaps with tender fears
Some village dame the curfew hears,
While round the hearth her children play :
At morn their father went abroad;
The moon is sunk, and deep the road;
She sighs, and wonders at his stay.
1 Miss Seward considered this poem to be one of the most perfect Horatian odes in our language, and delighted to read it in dark winter weather. Her analysis is worth the trouble of quoting it :-"The ode opens with a fine description of the sun in his chariot, attaining his wintry goal, as to Europe, though he flames on Potosi in ardour intolerable. A winter landscape then rises in the stanzas. Next the poet beautifully adverts to the social pleasures which soften the atmospheric horrors, then contrasts those pleasures with the terrors excited in the village wife. To these pictures succeed some sublime philosophic and religious reflections, and the ode concludes with a gay prospect of spring, an enamoured invocation to May, which the presence of his Eudora is to gild."-W.
But thou, my lyre, awake, arise,
And hail the sun's returning force:
Even now he climbs the northern skies,
And health and hope attend his course.
Then louder howl the aërial waste,
Be earth with keener cold embrac'd,
Yet gentle hours advance their wing;
And Fancy, mocking Winter's might,
With flowers and dews and streaming light,
Already decks the new-born spring.
O fountain of the golden day,
Could mortal vows promote thy speed,
How soon before thy vernal ray
Should each unkindly damp recede!
How soon each hovering tempest fly,
Whose stores for mischief arm the sky,
Prompt on our heads to burst amain,
To rend the forest from the steep,
Or, thundering o'er the Baltic deep,
To whelm the merchant's hopes of gain!
But let not man's unequal views
Presume o'er Nature and her laws :
'Tis his with grateful joy to use
The indulgence of the Sov'reign Cause;
Secure that health and beauty springs
Through this majestic frame of things,
Beyond what he can reach to know;
And that Heaven's all-subduing will,
With good, the progeny of ill,
Attempereth every state below.
How pleasing wears the wintry night,
Spent with the old illustrious dead!
While, by the taper's trembling light,
I seem those awful scenes to tread
Where chiefs or legislators lie,
Whose triumphs move before my eye
In arms and antique pomp array'd;
While now I taste the Ionian song,
Now bend to Plato's godlike tongue
Resounding through the olive shade.
But should some cheerful, equal friend
Bid leave the studious page awhile,
Let mirth on wisdom then attend,
And social ease on learned toil.
Then while, at love's uncareful shrine,
Each dictates to the god of wine
Her name whom all his hopes obey,
What flattering dreams each bosom warm,
While absence, heightening every charm,
Invokes the slow-returning May!
May, thou delight of Heaven and earth,
When will thy genial star arise ?
The auspicious morn, which gives thee birth,
Shall bring Eudora to my eyes.
Within her sylvan haunt behold,
As in the happy garden old,
She moves like that primeval fair :
Thither, ye silver-sounding lyres,
Ye tender smiles, ye chaste desires,
Fond hope and mutual faith repair.
And if believing love can read
His better omens in her eye,
Then shall my fears O charming maid,
And every pain of absence die:
Then shall my jocund harp, attun'd
To thy true ear, with sweeter sound
Pursue the free Horatian song:
Old Tyne shall listen to my tale,
And Echo, down the bordering vale,
The liquid melody prolong.
FOR THE WINTER SOLSTICE, DECEMBER 11, 1740.
Now to the utmost southern goal
The sun has trac'd his annual way,
And backward now prepares to roll,
And bless the north with earlier day.
Prone on Potosi's lofty brow
Floods of sublimer splendour flow,
Ripening the latent seeds of gold,
Whilst, panting in the lonely shade,
Th' afflicted Indian hides his head,
Nor dares the blaze of noon behold.
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