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ODE TO HORROR.

O THOU, who, with incessant gloom,
Courtest the recess of midnight tomb!
Admit me of thy mournful throng,
The scattered woods and wilds among.
If e'er thy discontented ear
The voice of sympathy can cheer,
My melancholy bosom's sigh

Shall to your mournful plaint reply:
There to the fear-foreboding owl
The angry furies hiss and howl;

Or near the mountain's pendant brow,
Where rush-clad streams in cadent murmurs

flow.

EPODE.

Who's he, that, with imploring eye,
Salutes the rosy dawning sky?
The cock proclaims the morn in vain,
His sprite to drive to its domain;
For morning light can but return,
To bid the wretched wail and mourn.

Not the bright dawning's purple eye
Can cause the frightful vapours fly;
Nor sultry Sol's meridian throne
Can bid surrounding fears begone.
The gloom of night will still preside,
While angry conscience stares on either side.

STROPHE.

To ease his sore distempered head,
Sometimes upon the rocky bed
Reclined he lies, to list the sound
Of whispering reed in vale profound.
Happy, if Morpheus visits there,
A while to lull his woe and care;
Send sweeter fancies to his aid,
And teach him to be undismay'd;
Yet wretched still; for when no more
The gods their opiate balsam pour,
Behold! he starts, and views again
The Lybian monster prance along the plain.
Now from the oozing caves he flies,
And to the city's tumults hies,
Thinking to frolic life away,

Be ever cheerful, ever gay:

But, tho' enwrapped in noise and smoke, They ne'er can heal his peace, when broke.

His fears arise, he sighs again

For solitude on rural plain ;

Even there his wishes all convene
To bear him to his noise again.

Thus tortur'd, rack'd, and sore opprest,
He constant hunts, but never finds his rest.

ANTISTROPHE.

O Exercise! thou healing power,
The toiling rustic's chiefest dower;
Be thou with heav'n-born virtue joined,
To quell the tumults of the mind;
Then, man as much of joy can share
From ruffian Winter, bleakly bare,
As from the pure ethereal blaze
That wantons in the Summer rays.
The humble cottage then can bring
Content, the comfort of a king;
And gloomy mortals wish no more
For wealth and idleness to make them

poor.

ODE TO DISAPPOINTMENT.

THOU joyless fiend! life's constant foe;
Malignant source of care and woe,

Pleasure's abhorred controul;

Her gayest haunts for ever nigh;
Stern mistress of the secret sigh,

That swells the murmuring soul.

Why hauntest thou me thro' deserts drear?
With grief-swoln sounds why woundest my ear,
Denied to Pity's aid?

Thy visage wan did e'er I woo?
Or at thy feet in homage bow ?

Or court thy sullen shade ?

Even now, enchanted scenes abound,
Elysian glories strew the ground,

To lure th' astonished eyes;

Now horrors, hell, and furies reign,
And desolate the fairy scene
Of all its gay disguise.

The Passions, at thy urgent call,
Our Reason and our Sense enthral

In Frenzy's fetters strong.

And now Despair, with lurid
Doth meagre Poverty descry,

eye,

Subdued by famine long.

The lover flies the haunts of day,
In gloomy woods and wilds to stray :
There shuns his Jessy's scorn.

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Sad sisters of the sighing grove
Attune their lyres to hapless love,
Dejected and forlorn.

Yet Hope, undaunted, wears thy chain,
And smiles amidst the growing pain,
Nor fears thy sad dismay;

Unaw'd by Power, her fancy flies
From earth's dim orb to purer skies,
To realms of endless day.

SONG.

WHERE winding Forth adorns the vale,
Fond Strephon, once a shepherd gay,
Did to the rocks his lot bewail,

And thus addressed his plaintive lay: "O Julia! more than lily fair,

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More blooming than the budding rose, "How can thy breast, relentless, bear "A heart more cold than Winter's snows.

"Yet nipping Winter's keenest sway,
"But for a short-liv'd space prevails :

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Spring soon returns, and cheers each spray, Scented with Flora's fragrant gales.

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