O THOU, ODE TO PITY. the friend of man assign'd, With balmy hands his wounds to bind, And charm his frantic woe: When first Distress, with dagger keen, Broke forth to waste his destin'd scene, By Pella's' bard, a magic name, By all the griefs his thought could frame, Receive my humble rite: Thy sky-worn robes of tend'rest blue, And eyes of dewy light! But wherefore need I wander wide To old Illissus' distant side, 1 Euripides, of whom Aristotle pronounces, on a comparison of him with Sophocles, that he was the greater master of the tender passions, ην τραγικώτερος. Deserted stream, and mute? Wild Arun' too has heard thy strains, There first the wren thy myrtles shed And while he sung the female heart, Thy turtles mix'd their own. Come, Pity, come, by Fancy's aid, Thy temple's pride design: Its southern site, its truth complete, There Picture's toils shall well relate, 2 The river Arun runs by the village in Sussex, where Otway had his birth. C O'er mortal bliss prevail : The buskin'd Muse shall near her stand, And sighing prompt her tender hand, There let me oft, retir'd by day, Allow'd with thee to dwell: There waste the mournful lamp of night, Till, Virgin, thou again delight To hear a British shell! ODE TO FEAR. THOU, to whom the world unknown, I see, I see thee near. I know thy hurried step; thy haggard eye! Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, EPODE. In earliest Greece, to thee, with partial choice, The grief-full Muse addrest her infant tongue; The maids and matrons, on her awful voice, Silent and pale, in wild amazement hung. Yet he, the bard' who first invok'd thy name, But who is he whom later garlands grace; Alluding to the Kuvas aqunts of Sophocles. See the ELECTRA. 2 Æschylus. |