O'er the fresh morning's vapours, lustrate then
The fountain, and inform the rising 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 fecrets oft reveal: oft my rais'd ear
In flumber felt their mufic: oft at noon
Or hour of funfet, by fome lonely stream,
In field or fhady grove, they taught me words
power from death and envy to preferve
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 fong,
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 evils, with immortal rest from cares ;
Affuage the terrors of the throne of Jove;
And quench the formidable thunderbolt
Of unrelenting fire. With flacken'd wings,
While now 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 whatfoc'er
He loves not, o'er the peopled earth and o'er
The interminated ocean, he beholds
Curs'd with abhorrence by his doom severe,
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 tempeftuous clamours ftrive
To drown the heavenly ftrains; 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 convulfions wild
Toffing their limbs, and brandishing in air
The ivy-mantled thyrfus, or the torch
Through black finoke 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 breast
With verfe; let him, fit votarist, 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 majefty of Jove,
To mortals he reveal; or teach his lyre
The unenvied guerdon of the patriot's toils,
In thofe unfading islands of the bless'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 expreffly filed the eldest of all the gods. Yet Ariftophanes, in The Birds, affirms, that "Chaos, and "Night, and Erebus, and Tartarus, were first ; and "that Love was produced from an egg, which the "fable-winged night deposited in the immenfe bofom "of Erebus." But it must be observed, that the Love defigned by this comic poet was always distinguished from the other, from that original and felf-existent 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 those
|