What though no friends in sable weeds appear; 55 To midnight dances and the public show? 60 What though no sacred earth allow thee room, So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name, What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. How loved, how honor'd once, avails thee not, 71 To whom related, or by whom begot: A heap of dust alone remains of thee; Poets themselves must fall like those they sung, Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue: 59 What though no weeping Loves. Dennis had made the sufficiently vexatious, because perfectly true remark on those lines, that they were trifling. The strong reality of the images in the preceding lines, By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, &c. obviously throws them into common-place. Warburton, in his office of vindicating at all risks, pronounces them to be peculiarly natural and pathetic;' adding, that the poet's last wish might well be, to commit his writings to the candor of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic.' This is a curious instance of adopted panegyric: the sensible and reflecting judge' was Warburton himself. Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays, Shall shortly want the generous tear he pays: Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part, And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart; Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er; The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more! 81 77 Ev'n he, whose soul now melts. In this poem, and in the Epistle of Eloisa,' Pope has given the chief, if not the sole proofs, of his pathetic power. Nothing can be more natural than the images, deeper than the feeling, or richer, freer, or more forcible than the language. With the single exception of the frivolities of the weeping Loves,' and the silverwinged angels,' as a poem, it is inimitable. Spence gives a letter from Hume, describing its effect on a sensitive mind:- I repeated to him (Blacklock the poet, who was blind from six months old) Pope's Elegy on the Death of an unfortunate Lady,' which I happened to have by heart; and although I am a very bad reciter, I saw it affected him extremely his eyes, indeed, the great index of the mind, could express no passion, but his whole body was thrown into agitation. That poem was equally qualified to touch the delicacy of his taste and the tenderness of his feelings.'-Spence, Anecdotes. : O DE S. POPE, after his triumphs in the didactic, the descriptive, and the pathetic, attempted a new one, in the brilliancy, abruptness, and variety of the ode. If he failed, his failure is only by comparison; for his odes contain singular poetic beauties. They are pale only by the side of Dryden's 'Alexander's Feast.' This extraordinary work alone excepted, they are probably equal to any efforts of the same style in any language of modern Europe. Warton narrates, that Bolingbroke, happening to pay a morning visit to Dryden, found the old man in an unusual agitation of spirits, even to trembling. I have been up all night,' said he 'my musical friends made me promise to write them an ode for their feast of St. Cecilia; and I have been so struck with the subject which occurred to me, that I could not leave it till I had 'completed it: here it is, finished at one sitting.' With these words, he showed him this finest of all lyrics; which, Warton farther says, was never afterwards reconsidered, retouched, or corrected! ODE FOR MUSIC ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY, 1708. I. DESCEND, ye Nine! descend and sing; Let the warbling lute complain : The shrill echoes rebound: While in more lengthen'd notes and slow, 10 Gently steal upon the ear; Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies: Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes; 16 In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats ; Till, by degrees, remote and small, The strains decay, And melt away, In a dying, dying fall. 20 II. By Music, minds an equal temper know, Or, when the soul is press'd with cares, Warriors she fires with animated sounds; Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds: 25 30 35 35 Dr. Greene set this Ode to music in 1730, as an exercise for his doctor's degree at Cambridge; on which occasion Pope made considerable alterations in it, and added the following stanza in this place : Amphion thus bade wild dissension cease, And soften'd mortals learn'd the arts of peace. From various discords, to create That strike the subject's answering heart, And he made another alteration at the same time, in stanza 51, and wrote it thus: iv, v. Sad Orpheus sought his consort lost : The adamantine gates were barr'd; And naught was seen and naught was heard, But dreadful gleams, &c.-Warton. |