Tell me, ye bards, whose skill sublime First charmed the ear of youthful Time, With numbers wrapt in heavenly fire, Who bade delighted echo swell The trembling transports of the lyre, The murmur of the shell— Why to the burst of Joy alone Accords sweet Music’s soothing tone? Why can no bard, with magic strain, In slumbers steep the heart of pain? While varied tones obey your sweep, The mild, the plaintive, and the deep. Bends not despairing Grief to hear Your golden lute, with ravished ear? Oh! has your sweetest shell no power to bind The fiercer pangs that shake the mind, And lull the wrath at whose command Murder bares her gory hand? When flushed with joy, the rosy throng Weave the light dance, ye swell the song! Cease, ye vain warblers! cease to charm The breast with other raptures warm! Cease! till your hand with magic strain In slumbers steep the heart of pain! SPEECH OF THE CHORUS IN THE SAME TRAGEDY, TO DISSUADE MEDEA FROM HER PURPOSE OF PUTTING HER CHILDREN TO DEATH, AND FLYING FOR PROTECTION TO ATHENS. O haggard queen! to Athens dost thou guide Thy glowing chariot, steeped in kindred gore; Or seek to hide thy damnèd parricide Where Peace and Mercy dwell for evermore? The land where Truth, pure, precious, and sublime, Woos the deep silence of sequestered bowers, And warriors, matchless since the first of time, Rear their bright banners o’er unconquered towers! Where joyous youth, to Music’s mellow strain, Twines in the dance with nymphs for ever fair, While Spring eternal on the lilied plain, Waves amber radiance through the fields of air. The tuneful Nine (so sacred legends tell) First waked their heavenly lyre these scenes among; Still in your greenwood bowers they love to dwell, Still in your vales they swell the choral song! But there the tuneful, chaste, Pierian fair, The guardian nymphs of green Parnassus, now Sprung from Harmonia, while her graceful hair Waved in bright auburn o’er her polished brow! ANTISTROPHE I. Where silent vales, and glades of green array, The murmuring wreaths of cool Cephisus lave, There, as the muse hath sung, at noon of day, The Queen of Beauty bowed to taste the wave; And blest the stream, and breathed across the land The soft sweet gale that fans yon summer bowers; And there the sister Loves, a smiling band, Crowned with the fragrant wreaths of rosy flowers! “And go,” she cries, “in yonder valleys rove, With Beauty’s torch the solemn scenes illume; Wake in each eye the radiant light of Love, Breathe on each cheek young Passion’s tender bloom! “Entwine, with myrtle chains, your soft control, To sway the hearts of Freedom’s darling kind! With glowing charms enrapture Wisdom’s soul, And mould to grace ethereal Virtue’s mind.” STROPHE II.