I. 2

  Oh sovereign of the willing soul,
  Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
  Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares
  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
  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.

  I. 3

  Thee the voice, the dance, obey,
  Tempered to thy warbled lay. 
  O’er Idalia’s velvet-green
  The rosy-crowned Loves are seen,
  On Cytherea’s day,
  With antic Sports and blue-eyed Pleasures
  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.

  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
  The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

  II. 1

  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! 
  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,
  He gives to range the dreary sky;
  Till down the eastern cliffs afar
  Hyperion’s march they spy, and glittering shafts of war,

  II. 2

  In climes beyond the solar road,
  Where shaggy forms o’er ice-built mountains roam,
  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,
  In loose numbers wildly sweet,
  Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves. 
  Her track, where’er the goddess roves,
  Glory pursue, and generous Shame,
  Th’ unconquerable Mind, and Freedom’s holy flame.

  II. 3

  Woods that wave o’er Delphi’s steep,
  Isles that crown th’ Aegean deep,
  Fields that cool Ilissus laves,
  Or where Maeander’s amber waves
  In lingering labyrinths creep,
  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
  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. 
  When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,
  They sought, O Albion! next, thy sea-encircled coast.