by Homer
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate, 95
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise!
No more; — where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise. 100
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Hymn to Adversity
Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain 5
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.
When first thy Sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, design’d, 10
To thee he gave the heavenly birth
And bade to form her infant mind.
Stern, rugged Nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore;
What sorrow was, thou bad’st her know, 15
And from her own she learn’d to melt at others’ woe.
Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly’s idle brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good. 20
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer Friend, the flattering Foe;
By vain Prosperity received,
To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.
Wisdom in sable garb array’d 25
Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid,
With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend:
Warm Charity, the general friend, 30
With Justice, to herself severe,
And Pity dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.
O! gently on thy suppliant’s head
Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, 35
Nor circled with the vengeful band
(As by the impious thou art seen)
With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror’s funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty; — 40
Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there
To soften, not to wound my heart.
The generous spark extinct revive, 45
Teach me to love and to forgive
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are to feel, and know myself a Man.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Ode on the Spring
Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
LO! where the rosy-bosom’d Hours,
Fair Venus’ train, appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat 5
Responsive to the cuckoo’s note,
The untaught harmony of Spring:
While, whispering pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs thro’ the clear blue sky
Their gather’d fragrance fling. 10
Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade,
Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech
O’er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water’s rushy brink 15
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclined in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the Crowd,
How low, how little are the Proud,
How indigent the Great! 20
Still is the toiling hand of Care;
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how thro’ the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing, 25
Eager to taste the honied spring
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o’er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun. 30
To Contemplation’s sober eye
Such is the race of Man:
And they that creep, and they that fly
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay 35
But flutter thro’ life’s little day,
In Fortune’s varying colours drest:
Brush’d by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chill’d by Age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest. 40
Methinks I hear in accents low
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glittering female meets, 45
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone —
We frolic while ’tis May. 50
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Progress of Poesy
A Pindaric Ode
Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
AWAKE, Aeolian 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 re-bellow 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 curb’d the fury of his car
And dropt his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the sceptred hand 20
Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather’d king
With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing:
Quench’d in dark clouds of slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.
Thee the voice, the dance, obey 25
Temper’d to thy warbled lay.
O’er Idalia’s velvet-green
The rosy-crownéd Loves are seen
On Cytherea’s day,
With antic Sport, 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,
Th’ unconquerable Mind, and Freedom’s holy flame. 65
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 lab’rinths 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 hallow’d fountain 75
Murmur’d 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 stray’d, 85
To him the mighty Mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless Child
Stretch’d 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 pass’d 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 —
Oh! Lyre divine, what daring Spirit
Wakes thee now! Tho’ he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban Eagle bear, 115
Sailing with supreme dominion
Thro’ 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, unborrow’d 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.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
The Bard
Pindaric Ode
Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
‘RUIN seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho’ fann’d by Conquest’s crimson wing
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk’s twisted mail 5
Nor e’en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria’s curse, from Cambria’s tears!’
— Such were the sounds that o’er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter’d wild dismay, 10
As down the steep of Snowdon’s shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array: —
Stout Glo’ster stood aghast in speechless trance;
‘To arms!’ cried Mortimer, and couch’d his quivering lance.
On a rock, whose haughty brow 15
Frowns o’er old Conway’s foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Stream’d like a meteor to the troubled air) 20
And with a master’s hand and prophet’s fire
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre:
‘Hark, how each giant-oak and desert-cave
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!
O’er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave 25
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria’s fatal day,
To high-born Hoel’s harp, or soft Llewellyn’s lay.
‘Cold is Cadwallo’s tongue,
That hush’d the stormy main: 30
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head.
On dreary Arvon’s shore they lie 35
Smear’d with gore and ghastly pale:
Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail;
The famish’d eagle screams, and passes by.
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, 40
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country’s cries —
No more I weep; They do not sleep;
On yonder cliffs, a griesly band,
I see them sit; They linger yet, 45
Avengers of their native land:
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.
Weave the warp and weave the woof
The winding sheet of Edward’s race: 50
Give ample room and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death thro’ Berkley’s roof that ring, 55
Shrieks of an agonizing king!
She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs
The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him wait 60
Amazement in his van, with Flight combined,
And Sorrow’s faded form, and Solitude behind.
‘Mighty victor, mighty lord,
Low on his funeral couch he lies!
No pitying heart, no eye, afford 65
A tear to grace his obsequies.
Is the sable warrior fled?
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.
The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born?
— Gone to salute the rising morn. 70
&nbs
p; Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows,
While proudly riding o’er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded Vessel goes:
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm:
Regardless of the sweeping Whirlwind’s sway, 75
That hush’d in grim repose expects his evening prey.
‘Fill high the sparkling bowl,
The rich repast prepare;
Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast:
Close by the regal chair 80
Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Heard ye the din of battle bray,
Lance to lance, and horse to horse?
Long years of havock urge their destined course, 85
And thro’ the kindred squadrons mow their way.
Ye towers of Julius, London’s lasting shame,
With many a foul and midnight murder fed,
Revere his Consort’s faith, his Father’s fame,
And spare the meek usurper’s holy head! 90
Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twined with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled boar in infant-gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.
Now, brothers, bending o’er the accurséd loom, 95
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom.
‘Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof; The thread is spun;)
Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove; The work is done.) 100
— Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn
Leave me unbless’d, unpitied, here to mourn:
In yon bright track that fires the western skies
They melt, they vanish from my eyes.
But O! what solemn scenes on Snowdon’s height 105
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight,
Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail: —
All hail, ye genuine kings! Britannia’s issue, hail! 110
‘Girt with many a baron bold
Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old
In bearded majesty, appear.