While labouring oxen, spent with toil and heat, While curling smokes from village-tops are seen, Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strain! Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful strains! I'll fly from shepherds, flocks, and flowery plains. From shepherds, flocks, and plains, I may remove, Forsake mankind, and all the world, but love! I know thee, Love! on foreign mountains bred, Wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed; Thou wert from Etna's burning entrails torn, Got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born! Resound, ye hills, resound my mournful lay! Farewell, ye woods, adieu the light of day! One leap from yonder cliff shall end my pains; No more, ye hills, no more resound my strains! Thus sang the shepherds till th' approach of night, The skies yet blushing with departed light, When falling dews with spangles deck the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd every shade. WINTER. THE FOURTH PASTORAL; OR DAPHNE. To the Memory of Mrs. Tempest. LYCIDAS. THYRSIS, the music of that murmuring spring THYRSIS. Behold the groves that shine with silver frost, Their beauty wither'd, and their verdure lost. Here shall I try the sweet Alexis' strain, That call'd the listening Dryads to the plain? Thames heard the numbers as he flow'd along, And bade his willows learn the moving song. LYCIDAS. So may kind rains their vital moisture yield, And swell the future harvest of the field. Begin; this charge the dying Daphne gave, And said, 'Ye shepherds, sing around my grave!' Sing, while beside the shaded tomb I mourn, And with fresh bays her rural shrine adorn. THYRSIS. Ye gentle muses, leave your crystal spring, Let nymphs and sylvans cypress garlands bring; Ye weeping loves, the stream with myrtles hide, And break your bows as when Adonis died; And with your golden darts, now useless grown, 'Let nature change, let heaven and earth deplore; In notes more sad then when they sing their own; Silent, or only to her name replies; Her name with pleasure once she taught the shore, Or, hush'd with wonder, hearken from the sprays : Her fate is whisper'd by the gentle breeze, The silver flood, so lately calm, appears Swell'd with new passion, and o'erflows with tears; The winds, and trees, and floods, her death deplore, Daphne our grief, our glory now no more! But see! where Daphne wondering mounts on high, Above the clouds, above the starry sky! Eternal beauties grace the shining scene, Fields ever fresh, and groves for ever green ! There while you rest in Amaranthine bowers, Or from those meads select unfading flowers, Behold us kindly, who your name implore, Daphne, our goddess, and our grief no more! LYCIDAS. How all things listen, while thy muse complains! Such silence waits on Philomela's strains, In some still evening, when the whispering breeze THYRSIS. But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews; Arise, the pines a noxious shade diffuse; Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay, Time conquers all, and we must Time obey. Adieu, ye vales, ye mountains, streams, and groves; Adieu, ye shepherds' rural lays and loves; Adieu, my flocks; farewell, ye sylvan crew; Daphne, farewell! and all the world, adieu! MESSIAH. A sacred Eclogue, in Imitation of Virgil's Pollio. ADVERTISEMENT. In reading several passages of the prophet Isaiah, which foretel the coming of Christ, and the felicities attending it, I could not but observe a remarkable parity between many of the thoughts, and those in the Pollio of Virgil. This will not seem surprising, when we reflect, that the eclogue was taken from a Sibylline prophecy on the same subject. One may judge that Virgil did not copy it line for line; but selected such ideas as best agreed with the nature of pastoral poetry, and disposed them in that manner which served most. to beautify his piece. I have endeavoured the same in this imitation of him, though without admitting any thing of my own; since it was written with this particular view, that the reader, by comparing the several thoughts, might see how far the images and descriptions of the prophet are superior to those of the poet. But as I fear I have prejudiced them by my management, I shall subjoin the passages of Isaiah, and those of Virgil, under the same disadvantage of a literal translation. YE nymphs of Solyma! begin the song: To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. |