Who's he that with imploring eye
Salutes the rosy dawning sky?
The cock proclaims the morn in vain,
His sp'rit 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.
To ease his sore distemper'd 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 Libyan monster prance along the plain.
Now from the oozing caves he flies,
And to the city's tumult hies,
Thinking to frolic life away;
Be ever cheerful, ever gay;
But though enwrapp'd 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 tortured, rack'd, and sore opprest,
He constant hunts, but never finds his rest.
O exercise! thou healing power,
The toiling rustic's chiefest dower;
Be thou with heaven-born virtue join'd,
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.
THOU joyless fiend, life's constant foe,
Sad source of care, and spring of woe,
Soft pleasure's hard control;
Her gayest haunts for ever nigh,
Stern mistress of the secret sigh
That swells the murmuring soul.
Why haunt'st thou me through deserts drear?
With grief-swoln sounds why wound 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 the astonish'd 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 eye,
Doth meagre poverty descry,
Subdued by famine long.
The lover flies the haunts of day,
In gloomy woods and wilds to stray,
There shuns his Jessy's scorn;
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;
Unawed by power, her fancy flies
From earth's dim orb to purer skies,
In realms of endless day.
THE waving yew or cypress wreath
In vain bequeath the mighty tear;
In vain the awful pomp of death
Attends the sable-shrouded bier.
Since Strephon's virtue's sunk to rest, Nor pity's sigh, nor sorrow's strain, Nor magic tongue, have e'er confest Our wounded bosom's secret pain.
The just, the good, more honours share In what the conscious heart bestows, Than vice adorn'd with sculptor's care, In all the venal pomp of woes.
A sad-eyed mourner at his tomb,
Thou, Friendship! pay thy rights divine,
And echo through the midnight gloom
That Strephon's early fall was thine.
SONGS FROM ARTAXERXES." *
FROM ACT II., SCENE 2.
Tune-" Braes of Balandine."
ARBACES (sings).
By Heav'n's displeasure the wretch thus is thrown,
With tempests harsh-sounding, on seas yet unknown;
In vain, thus surrounded, he struggles with death,
When toss'd by huge billows, and panting for breath;
Even hope, too, forsakes him, no pity he craves;
He's left, without mercy, the sport of the waves.
FROM ACT II., SCENE 6.
Tune-"Roslin Castle."
MANDANE (sings).
WHAT doubts oppress my wounded heart!
My soul at every breath doth start!
*These verses are of little or no literary value, and have been seldom printed; yet, seeing they were sung in the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, on the production of the English opera of "Artaxerxes,' for which they were written, in 1769, when our poet was only nineteen years old, they should not be omitted from any representative edition of his poems. Further, seeing they were in all likelihood made to order, and that the Opera was advertised as "Music composed by Tho. Aug. Arne, Mus. Doc., with the addition of Three Favourite Scotch Airs. The words by Mr. R. Fergusson,' they call for notice, as Stenhouse observes, in proof of their author's early celebrity.
The performers in "Artaxerxes," on the occasion above noted, were:-Artaxerxes, Mr. Ross; Artabanes, Mr. Phillips; Arbaces, Mr. Tenducci; Rimenes, Mrs. Woodman; Mandane, Madame Tenducci; Semira, Miss Brown.
Fain would my gloomy thoughts retire,
Nor fill my stormy breast with ire;
Yet cares torment my tortur'd mind,
Leaving their rugged tracts behind;
And still my soul they hold in pain,
Their cruel empire to maintain.
FROM ACT III., SCENE 7.
Tune-"Lochaber no more."
ARBACES (sings).
O WHERE shall I wander my lover to find,
And with sweet discourses indulge my fond mind?
Once more I must view her before I depart,
And with mild embraces enliven my heart.
Perchance she's approaching that smooth-gliding
stream,
Where I first espy'd and discovered my flame:
Farewell then my sorrows, I'll leave you a while,
And steal from my true love one ravishing smile.
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,
More blooming than the op'ning rose,
How can thy breast, relentless, wear
A heart more cold than winter's snows?
*This song appears in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, set to the old air of "Cumbernauld House.'
|