Till Hope expires, and Peril and Dismay Immortal train! who guide the maze of song The varied pang of exquisite distress; If e'er with trembling hope I fondly strayed In life's fair Morn beneath your hallowed shade, To hear the sweetly-mournful lute complain And melt the heart with ecstasy of pain, Or listen to the enchanting voice of Love Of Wanderers shipwrecked on a leeward shore. Alas! neglected by the sacred Nine Their Suppliant feels no genial ray divine: "Twas his the vast and trackless Deep to rove, Smote by the freezing, or the scorching blast, But while he measured o'er the painful race In Fortune's wild illimitable chace, Adversity, companion of his way, Still o'er the Victim hung with iron sway, Marking each change of place with change of Woe: Or where pale Famine blasts the hopeful year, Or where, all-dreadful in th' embattled line, Th' expanding dawn of mental day obscured, And quenched the ardour kindling in his breast. Though jarring sounds the measured verse prolong, And lo! the Power that wakes th' eventful Song Hastes hither from LETHEAN banks along, She sweeps the gloom, and rushing on the sight Since first the circling hours their course began; She sails; and swifter than the course of light The fugitive ideas she restores, And calls the wandering thought from Lethe's shores; To things long past a second date she gives, And hoary Time from her fresh youth receives; She shares her power, and MEMORY is her name. By whom transmitted down in every clime The deeds of ages long elapsed are known, Say on what Seas, for thou alone canst tell, Assailed by tempests, girt with hostile shores? |