CLVII The Progress of Poesy
A Pindaric Ode
Awake, Æolian 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, 5
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, 10
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:
The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.
O Sovereign of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares 15
And frantic Passions hear thy soft control:
On Thracia’s hills the Lord of War
Has curbed the fury of his car,
And dropped his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand 20
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 lightnings of his eye.
Thee the voice, the dance, obey, 25
Tempered to thy warbled lay;
O’er Idalia’s velvet-green
The rosy-crownèd Loves are seen
On Cytherea’s day,
With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures, 30
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. 35
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 40
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.
Man’s feeble race 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! 45
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, 50
He gives to range the dreary sky;
Till down the eastern cliffs afar
Hyperion’s march they spy, and glittering shafts of war.
In climes beyond the solar road,
Where shaggy forms o’er ice-built mountains roam, 55
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, 60
In loose numbers wildly sweet,
Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves.
Her track, where’er the Goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and generous Shame,
The unconquerable Mind, and Freedom’s holy flame. 65
Woods that wave o’er Delphi’s steep,
Isles that crown the Ægean deep,
Fields that cool Ilissus laves,
Or where Mæander’s amber waves
In lingering labyrinths creep, 70
How do your tuneful echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of anguish?
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breathed around;
Every shade and hallowed fountain 75
Murmured deep a solemn sound:
Till the sad Nine, in Greece’s evil hour,
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,
And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 80
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,
They sought, O Albion, next thy sea-encircled coast.
Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature’s darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed, 85
To him the mighty Mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless Child
Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled.
‘This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year: 90
Thine, too, these golden keys, immortal Boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;
Of horror that, and thrilling fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.’
Nor second he, that rode sublime 95
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
The secrets of the abyss to spy.
He passed the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze, 100
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
Behold, where Dryden’s less presumptuous car,
Wide o’er the fields of glory bear
Two coursers of ethereal race, 105
With necks in thunder clothed, and long resounding pace.
Hark, his hands the lyre explore!
Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o’er,
Scatters from her pictured urn
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. 110
But ah! ’tis heard no more—
O lyre divine, what daring spirit
Wakes thee now? Though he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban Eagle bear, 115
Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air:
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
Such forms as glitter in the Muse’s ray
With orient hues, unborrowed of the sun: 120
Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
Beneath the good how far!—but far above the great.
Thomas Gray.