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How would the sons of Troy, in arms renowned, And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,

Attaint the lustre of my former name,

Should Hector basely quit the field of fame ?
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains :
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories, and my own.
Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates :
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)
The day when thou, imperial Troy, must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end—
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam's hoary hairs defiled with gore,
Not all my brothers gasping on the shore,
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread;
I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led,
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes, of which so large a part was thine!
To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring
The weight of waters from Hyperia's spring.
There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry, Behold the mighty Hector's wife!
Some haughty Greek, who loves thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes, by naming me.

The thoughts of glory past, and present shame,
A thousand griefs shall waken at the name!
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Press'd with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep.
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
Stretch'd his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hastened to relieve his child;
The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground.

Then kissed the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferred a father's prayer :—

O thou, whose glory fills the ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers, protect my son !
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!

POPE'S HOMer.

THE PASSIONS.

WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell;
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's painting.
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of sound,
And, as they oft had heard apart,
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each (for madness ruled the hour,)
Would prove his own expressive power.

First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid,
And back recoiled, he knew not why,
E'en at the sound himself had made.

Next Anger rushed: his eyes on fire,
In lightnings owned his secret stings;
In one rude clash he struck the lyre,
And swept with hurried hand the strings.

With woeful measures wan Despair-
Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled;
A solemn, strange, and mingled air,
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild.

But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whispered promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail!
Still would her touch the strain prolong,

And from the rocks, the woods, the vale,
She called on Echo still through all the song;

And when her sweetest theme she chose.

A soft responsive voice was heard at every close, And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair.

And longer had she sung-but, with a frown,
Revenge impatient rose:

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down,
And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,
And blew a blast so loud and dread,
Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe.

And ever and anon he beat

The doubling drum with furious heat;

And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,
Dejected Pity at his side

Her soul-subduing voice applied,

Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien,

While each strained ball of sight seem'd bursting from his head.

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed,

Sad proof of thy distressful state,

Of differing themes the veering song was mixed,

And now it courted Love, now raving called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,

Pale Melancholy sat retired,

And from her wild sequestered seat,

In notes by distance made more sweet,

Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul:

And dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels joined the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole.

Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay,
Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died away.

But, oh! how altered was its sprightlier tone,
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung,
Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,
The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known:

The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen, Satyrs and sylvan boys were seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green;

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear,

And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial;

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addrest, But soon he saw the brisk awaking viol,

Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best;
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids
Amidst the festal-sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing,
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round,
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,
And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,

Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

COLLINS.

THE PLAINS OF MARATHON.

WHERE'ER we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground!
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould!
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,

F

Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares grey Marathon.

The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same,
Unchanged in all, except its foreign lord,
Preserves alike its bounds, and boundless fame,
The Battle-field where Persia's victim-horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword;
As on the morn to distant Glory dear,

When Marathon became a magic word,

Which uttered-to the hearer's eye appear,
The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.

The flying Mede-his shaftless broken bow!
The fiery Greek-his red pursuing spear!
Mountains above-Earth's-Ocean's plain below;
Death in the front-Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene: what now remaineth here?
What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground,
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?
The rifled urn, the violated mound,

The dust-thy courser's hoof, rude stranger-spurns around.

Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past,
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng;
Long shall the voyager, with the Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue,
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore:
Boast of the aged, lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate, and bards adore,
As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

The parted bosom clings to wonted home,
If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth:
He that is lonely, hither let him roam,

And gaze complacent on congenial earth.

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