Waft, waft, ye winds, his story,
And you, ye waters, roll,
Till, like a sea of glory,

It spreads from pole to pole;
Till o'er our ransomed nature,
The lamb for sinners slain,
Redeemer, King, Creator,
In bliss returns to reign!

AN INTROIT

TO BE SUNG BETWEEN THE LITANY AND COMMUNION SERVICE.

Oн most merciful!

Oh most bountiful!
God the Father Almighty!
By the Redeemer's
Sweet intercession

Hear us, help us when we cry!

BEFORE THE SACRAMENT. BREAD of the world, in mercy broken!

Wine of the soul in mercy shed!
By whom the words of life were spoken,
And in whose death our sins are dead!

Look on the heart by sorrow broken,
Look on the tears by sinners shed,
And be thy feast to us the token
That by thy grace our souls are fed!

AT A FUNERAL.

BENEATH Our feet and o'er our head

Is equal warning given;
Beneath us lie the countless dead,
Above us is the heaven!

Their names are graven on the stone,
Their bones are in the clay;
And ere another day is done,
Ourselves may be as they.

Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower;
Each season has its own disease,
Its peril every hour!

Our eyes have seen the rosy light
Of youth's soft cheek decay,
And Fate descend in sudden night
On manhood's middle day.

Our eyes have seen the steps of age
Halt feebly towards the tomb,
And yet shall earth our hearts engage,
And dreams of days to come?

THE FIRST OLYMPIC ODE.

TO HIERO OF SYRACUSE, VICTOR IN THE HORSE

RACE.

CAN earth, or fire, or liquid air, With water's sacred stream compare? Can aught that wealthy tyrants hold Surpass the lordly blaze of gold?— Or lives there one, whose restless eye Would seek along the empty sky, Beneath the sun's meridian ray, A warmer star, a purer day?— O thou, my soul, whose choral song, Would tell of contests sharp and strong, Extol not other lists above The circus of Olympian Jove; Whence borne on many a tuneful tongue, So Saturn's seed the anthem sung, With harp, and flute, and trumpet's call, Hath sped to Hiero's festival.

Over sheep-clad Sicily

Who the righteous sceptre beareth,
Every flower of virtue's tree

Wove in various wreath he weareth.

But the bud of poesy

Is the fairest flower of all;

Which the bards, in social glee,

Strew round Hiero's wealthy hall.—

The harp on yonder pin suspended,

Seize it, boy, for Pisa's sake;

Can honour give to actions ill,
And faith to deeds incredible;—
And bitter blame, and praises high,
Fall truest from posterity.—

But, if we dare the deeds rehearse
Of those that aye endure,

'T were meet that in such dangerous verse
Our every word were pure.—
Then, son of Tantalus, receive

A plain unvarnished lay!-
My song shall elder fables leave,
And of thy parent say,

That, when in heaven a favoured guest,
He called the gods in turns to feast
On Sipylus, his mountain home:-
The sovereign of the ocean foam,
-Can mortal from such favour prove?
Rapt thee on golden car above
To highest house of mighty Jove;
To which, in after day,
Came golden-haired Ganymede,
As bard in ancient story read,

The dark-winged eagle's prey.

And when no earthly tongue could tell

The fate of thee, invisible;

Nor friends, who sought thee wide in vain, To soothe thy weeping mother's pain,

A joy with anxious fondness blended:

No sounding lash his sleek side rended ;

By Alpheus' brink, with feet of flame,

Self-driven, to the goal he tended:

And earned the olive wreath of fame

For that dear lord, whose righteous name
The sons of Syracusa tell :-
Who loves the generous courser well:
Beloved himself by all who dwell
In Pelop's Lydian colony.—
-Of earth-embracing Neptune, he
The darling, when, in days of yore,
All lovely from the caldron red
By Clotho's spell delivered,
The youth an ivory shoulder bore.-

-Well!-these are tales of mystery!-
And many a darkly-woven lie
With men will easy credence gain;

While truth, calm truth, may speak in vain;
For eloquence, whose honeyed sway
Our frailer mortal wits obey,

Some envious neighbour's spleen, In distant hints, and darkly, said, That in the caldron hissing red, And on the god's great table spread, Thy mangled limbs were seen.But who shall tax, I dare not, I, The blessed gods with gluttony?— Full oft the sland'rous tongue has felt By their high wrath the thunder dealt;— And sure, if ever mortal head Heaven's holy watchers honoured,

That head was Lydia's lord.— Yet, could not mortal heart digest The wonders of that heavenly feast; Elate with pride, a thought unblest Above his nature soared.And now, condemned to endless dread,(Such is the righteous doom of fate,) He eyes, above his guilty head, The shadowy rocks' impending weight:The fourth, with that tormented three(1) In horrible society!

Nor called in vain, through cloud and storm Half-seen, a huge and shadowy form,

The god of waters came.—

He came, whom thus the youth addressed— "Oh thou, if that immortal breast

Have felt a lover's flame,

A lover's prayer in pity hear,
Repel the tyrant's brazen spear

That guards my lovely dame!—
And grant a car whose rolling speed
May help a lover at his need;
Condemned by Pisa's hand to bleed
Unless I win the envied meed
In Elis' field of fame!—

Beheld a stock of warriors spring,
Six valiant sons, as legends sing.-
And now, with fame and virtue crowned,
Where Alpheus' stream in wat'ry ring,
Encircles half his turfy mound,
He sleeps beneath the piled ground;(3)
Near that blest spot where strangers move
In many a long procession round

The altar of protecting Jove.--
Yet chief, in yonder lists of fame,
Survives the noble Pelop's name;
Where strength of hands and nimble feet
In stern and dubious contest meet;
And high renown and honeyed praise,
And following length of honoured days,
To victor's weary toil repays.-

But what are past or future joys?
The present is our own!

And he is wise who best employs

The passing hour alone.

To crown with knightly wreath the king,
(A grateful task,) be mine;
And on the smooth Eolian string

To praise his ancient line!

For ne'er shall wandering minstrel find
A chief so just,-a friend so kind;
With every grace of fortune blest;
The mightiest, wisest, bravest, best!—

God, who beholdeth thee and all thy deeds,(4)
Have thee in charge, king Hiero!—so again
The bard may sing thy horny-hoofed steeds
In frequent triumph o'er the Olympian plain;
Nor shall the Bard awake a lowly strain,
His wild notes flinging o'er the Cronian steep
Whose ready muse, and not invoked in vain,
For such high mark her strongest shaft shall keep.

Each hath his proper eminence!
To kings indulgent, Providence
(No farther search the will of Heaven)
The glories of the earth hath given.—
Still may'st thou reign! enough for me
To dwell with heroes like to thee,
Myself the chief of Grecian minstrelsy.—

II.

TO THERON OF AGRAGAS, VICTOR
IN THE CHARIOT RACE.

O SONG! whose voice the harp obeys,
Accordant aye with answering string;
What god, what hero wilt thou praise,
What man of godlike prowess sing?—
Lo, Jove himself is Pisa's king;
And Jove's strong son the first to raise
The barriers of th' Olympic ring.-
And now, victorious on the wing

Of sounding wheels, our bards proclaim
The stranger Theron's honoured name,
The flower of no ignoble race,(5)
And prop of ancient Agragas!-

His patient sires, for many a year,
Where that blue river rolls its flood,
Mid fruitless war and civil blood

Essayed their sacred home to rear,— Till time assigned, in fatal hour, Their native virtues, wealth and power; And made them from their low degree, The eye of warlike Sicily.

And, may that power of ancient birth,
From Saturn sprung, and parent Earth,
Of tall Olympus' lord,

Who sees with still benignant eye
The games' long splendour sweeping by
His Alpheus' holy ford :-
Appeased with anthems chanted high,
To Theron's late posterity

A happier doom accord!

Or good or ill, the past is gone,
Nor time himself, the parent one,
Can make the former deeds undone

But who would these recall,When happier days would fain efface The memory of each past disgrace, And, from the gods, on Theron's race

Unbounded blessings fall?—

Example meet for such a song,
The sister queens of Laius' blood;
Who sorrow's edge endured long,
Made keener by remembered good!-
Yet now, she breathes the air of Heaven
.(On earth by smouldering thunder riven.)
Long-haired Semele :-

To Pallas dear is she;-
Dear to the sire of gods, and dear
To him, her son, in dreadful glee
Who shakes the ivy-wreathed spear.—

And thus, they tell that deep below
The sounding ocean's ebb and flow,
Amid the daughters of the sea,
A sister nymph must Ino be,
And dwell in bliss eternally:-

But, ignorant and blind,
We little know the coming hour;
Or if the latter day shall lower;
Or if to nature's kindly power

Our life in peace resigned,
Shall sink like fall of summer eve,
And on the face of darkness leave
A ruddy smile behind.—
For grief and joy with fitful gale
Our crazy bark by turns assail,

And, whence our blessings flow,

That same tremendous Providence
Will oft a varying doom dispense,
And lay the mighty low.-

To Theban Laius that befell,

Whose son, with murder dyed,
Fulfilled the former oracle,

Unconscious parricide!—
Unconscious!-yet avenging hell
Pursued th' offender's stealthy pace,
And heavy, sure, and hard it fell,
The curse of blood, on all his race!-
Spared from their kindred strife,
The young Thersander's life,
Stern Polynices' heir, was left alone:
In every martial game,

And in the field of fame,

For early force and matchless prowess known:Was left, the pride and prop to be

Of good Adrastus' pedigree.

And hence, through loins of ancient kings,
The warrior blood of Theron springs;

Exalted name! to whom belong

The minstrel's harp, the poet's song,

In fair Olympia crowned;

And where, mid Pythia's olives blue,
An equal lot his brother drew:
And where his twice-twain coursers flew

The isthmus twelve times round.-
Such honour, earned by toil and care,
May best his ancient wrongs repair,

And wealth, unstained by pride,
May laugh at fortune's fickle power,
And blameless in the tempting hour
Of syren ease abide:-

Led by that star of heavenly ray,
Which best may keep our darkling way
O'er life's unsteady tide!—

For, whoso holds in righteousness the throne,
He in his heart hath known

How the foul spirits of the guilty dead,
In chambers dark and dread,
Of nether earth abide, and penal flame
Where he, whom none may name,(6)
Lays bare the soul by stern necessity;
Seated in judgment high;

The minister of God whose arm is there,
In heaven alike and hell, almighty every where!

But, ever bright, by day, by night,
Exulting in excess of light;
From labour free and long distress,
The good enjoy their happiness.—

No more the stubborn soil they cleave,

Nor stem for scanty food the wave;

But with the venerable gods they dwell:-
No tear bedims their thankful eye,

Nor mars their long tranquillity;

While those accursed howl in pangs unspeakable.