ALEXANDER'S FEAST, OR, THE POWER OF MUSIC

"T WAS at the royal feast for Persia won

By Philip's warlike son
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;

His valiant peers were placed around,

Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound, (So should desert in arms be crown'd);

The lovely Thais by his side

Sate like a blooming Eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride:-
Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave

None but the brave

None but the brave deserves the fair!

Timotheus placed on high

Amid the tuneful quire

With flying fingers touch'd the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove
Who left his blissful seats above-
Such is the power of mighty love!
A dragon's fiery form belied the god;
Sublime on radiant spires he rode
When he to fair Olympia prest,
And while he sought her snowy breast,
Then round her slender waist he curl'd,

-The listening crowd admire the lofty sound;
A present deity! they shout around:

A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound:
With ravish'd, ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god;

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And stamp'd an image of himself, a sovereign of the world.

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Affects to nod

And seems to shake the spheres.

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,

Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;

Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!
Flush'd with a purple grace
He shows his honest face:

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Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes!
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure:
Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure,

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

The master saw the madness rise,
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And while he Heaven and Earth defied
Changed his hand and check'd his pride.
He chose a mournful Muse

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Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain:

Fought all his battles o'er again,

And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew

the slain!

Soft pity to infuse :

He sung Darius great and good,
By too severe a fate

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies
With not a friend to close his eyes.

With downcast looks the joyless victor sate, Revolving in his alter'd soul

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The various turns of Chance below;
And now and then a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

The mighty master smiled to see
That love was in the next degree;
"T was but a kindred-sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble,
Honour but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think, it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Who caused his care,

And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again:
At length with love and wine at once opprest
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again:
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain!
Break his bands of sleep asunder

And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark! the horrid sound

Has raised up his head:

As awaked from the dead

And amazed he stares around.

Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries,

See the Furies arise!

See the snakes that they rear
How they hiss in their hair,

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Take the good the gods provide thee!
-The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause. 90
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gazed on the fair

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And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!

Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew!

Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes

And glittering temples of their hostile gods.

- The princes applaud with a furious joy: And the King seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way

To light him to his prey,

And like another Helen, fired another Troy !

Thus, long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow,
While organs yet were mute,

Timotheus, to his breathing flute

And sounding lyre

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,

Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast from her sacred store
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

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Or both divide the crown;

He raised a mortal to the skies ;
She drew an angel down!

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With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before. -Let old Timotheus yield the prize

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WILLIAM COLLINS

1721-1759

A COMPARISON of the dates which mark the birth and death of Collins with those which mark the birth and death of Burns, shows that Collins lived only about a year longer than Burns. He wrote in that time much less than Burns; indeed, he has left behind him only about fifteen hundred lines of verse. And what he has written is scarcely known to that wide populace who sing the songs of the Scottish bard with such familiar ease. Collins is a favorite with the academic few; Burns is a favorite alike with those few and with the untutored many.

Collins, who was the son of a prominent hatter of Chichester, began to write very early. Indeed, one of his poems, which has been lost, is said to have been printed when the poet was a lad of eight. He wrote during his school days at Winchester and during his university years at Oxford. While still an undergraduate, only seventeen years old, he published his Persian Eclogues and his Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer. He grew restive at Oxford, abandoned his university career before obtaining his degree, and hurried to London to carry out some of the chimerical schemes which crowded his brain.

His experience in London disclosed his weakness. He was magnificently great in his conceptions; he was pitifully small in his executions. When the fame which he coveted did not come to him, he abandoned himself to reckless extravagance and dissipation, and soon found himself within the unhappy toils of debt and hopeless poverty.

But he did not yield to unconditional surrender. In 1746 he published his Odes, Descriptive and Allegorical, and upon these his title to fame mainly rests. He was original enough to get away from the enmeshing restrictions of an artificial poetical régime which Pope and the Classical School had perfected. He looked out upon nature and felt the thrill of a residing beauty. Straightway he