70

V,
By the streams that ever flow,
By the fragrant winds that blow

O’er th'Elysian flow'rs;
By those happy fouls who dwell
In yellow meads of Afphodel,

Or Amaranthine bow'rs;
By the hero's armed shades,
Glitt'ring thro? the gloomy glades;
By the youths that dy'd for love,

Wand'ring in the myrtle grove,
Restore, restore Eurydice to life:
Oh take the husband, or return the wife!

75

80

85

He sung, and hell consented

To hear the Poet's prayer:
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.

Thus fong could prevail

O'er death, and o'er hell,
A conqueft how hard and how glorious ?

Tho' fate had faft bound her

With Styx nine times round her, Yet music and love were victorious.

90 VI.

But soon, too soon, the lover turns his

eyes:
Again the falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal fifters move?
No crime was thine, if ’tis no crime to love. 95

Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in Mæanders,
All alone,
Unheard, unknown,
He makes his moan;

And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever lost!
Now with Furies surrounded,

105
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,

Amidst Rhodope's snows:
See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;
Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals cries--

Ah see, he dies! III
Yet ev’n in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,

10

Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,

I15 Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung.

I 20

VII.
Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's feverest

rage

disarm:
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please :
Our joys below it can improve,

And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker's praise confind the sound. 125
When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,

Th’immortal pow’rs incline their ear; Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire, While solemn airs improve the facred fire ;

And Angels lean from heav'n to hear. 130 Of Orpheus now no more let Poets tell, To bright Cecilia greater power

is giv'n; His numbers rais'd a shade from hell,

Hers lift the soul to heav'n.

YE

STROFHE I.
E shades, where sacred truth is fought;

Groves, where immortal Sages taught:
Where heav'nly vifions Plato fir’d,
And Epicurus lay inspir’d !
In vain your guiltless laurels stood 5

Unspotted long with human blood.
War, horrid war, your thoughtful walks invades,
And steel now glitters in the Mufes shades.

REMARKS. THESE two Chorus's were composed to enrich a very poor Play ; but they had the usual effect of ill-adjusted Ornaments, only to make its meanness the more confpicuous.

* Altered from Shakespear by the Duke of Buckingham, at whose desire these two Chorus’s were composed to supply as many, wanting in his play. They were fet many years afterwards by the famous Bononcini, and perforined at Buckinghamhouse. P.

VER. 3. Where heavenly Visions Plato fir'd, And Epicurus, lay inspir'd!] The propriety of these lines arises from hence, that Brutus, one of the Heroes of this Play, was of the Old Academy; and Casrus, the other, was an Epicurean; but this had not been enough to justify the Poet's choice, had not Plato's fyftem of Divinity, and Epicurus's system of Morals, been the most rational amongst the various sects of Greek Philosophy.

ANTISTROPHE I.
Oh heav'n-born fifters! fource of art!
Who charm the senfe, or mend the heart ;
Who lead fair Virtue's train along,

II
Moral Truth, and mystic Song !
To what new clime, what distant sky,

Forsaken, friendless, shall ye fly?
Say, will ye bless the bleak Atlantic shore?

15 Or bid the furious Gaul be rude no more?

STROPHE II.
When Athens sinks by fates unjust,
When wild Barbarians spurn her duft;
Perhaps ev'n Britain's utmost shore
Shall cease to blush with stranger's gore,
See Arts her savage fons controul,

And Athens rising near the pole!
'Till some new Tyrant lifts his purple hand,
And civil madnefs tears them from the land.

20

REMARKS.

Ver. 12. Moral truth and mystic song.) He had expressed himself better had he said,

" Moral truth in mystic song! In the Antistrophe he turns from Philofophy to Mythology ; and Mythology is nothing but moral truth in mystic song.