O'er all the dreary coasts! Dreadful gleams, Dismal screams Fires that glow, Shrieks of woe, Sullen moans, Hollow groans, And cries of tortur'd ghosts; But hark! he strikes the golden lyre; Thy stone, O Sysiphus, stands still, And the pale spectros dance! The furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurl'd hang list'ning round their heads. By the streams that ever flow, By those happy souls who dwell He sung, To hear the Poet's prayer: Stern Proserpine relented, And gave him back the fair: O'er death and o'er hell, A conquest how hard, and how glorious! With Styx nine times round her But soon, too soon the lover turns his eyes: Unbeard, unknown, Amidst Rhodope's snows. See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Hamus resounds with the Bacchanal's cries Yet even in death Eurydice he sung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue, Eurydice Eurydice the woods, Eurydice the floods, Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung. Music the fiercest grief can charm, And fate's severest rage disarm : And make despair and madness please : And antedate the bliss above. This the divine Cecilia found, And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. 0 ALEXANDER'. FEAST. "TWAS WAS at the royal feast, for Persia won, Aloft in awful state The god-like hero sate On his imperial throne : His valiant peers were plac'd around; Their brows with roses and with myrtle bound So should desert in arms be crown'd. The lovely Thais by his side Sat, like a blooming eastern bride, None but the brave, None but the brave descrves the fair, Timotheus plac'd on high Amid the tuneful quire, With flying fingers touch'd the lyre: The song began from Jove; Who left his blissful seats above, Sublime on radiant spheres he rode, When he to fair Olympia press'd, And stamp'd an image of himself, a sov'reign of the world.— The list'ning crowd admire the lofty sound; The monarch hears, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres. The praise of Bacchus then, the sweet musician sung: The jolly god in triumph comes; Sound the trumpets, beat the drums; He shews his honest. face. Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes! Bacchus ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ordain: Drinking is the soldier's pleasure. Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain. Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain; Fought all his battles o'er again; And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain. 0 2 + and while he thought her snowy bre then round het onder waist he curle |