ll those wild-wood appearances of which the great poet
was so enthusiastically fond:

"I view that oak, the fancied glades among,
By which as Milton lay, his evening ear,
Nigh sphered in heaven, its native strains could hear."

ODE,

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1746.

ODE TO MERCY.

The Ode written in 1746, and the Ode to Mercy, seem to have been written
on the same occasion, viz. the late rebellion; the former in memory of
those heroes who fell in defence of their country, the latter to excite
sentiments of compassion in favour of those unhappy and deluded wretches
who became a sacrifice to public justice.

The language and imagery of both are very beautiful; but the scene and
figures described, in the strophe of the Ode to Mercy, are exquisitely
striking, and would afford a painter one of the finest subjects in the
world.

ODE TO LIBERTY.

The ancient states of Greece, perhaps the only ones in which a perfect
model of liberty ever existed, are naturally brought to view in the
opening of the poem:

"Who shall awake the Spartan fife,
And call in solemn sounds to life,
The youths, whose locks divinely spreading,
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue."

There is something extremely bold in this imagery of the locks of the
Spartan youths, and greatly superior to that description Jocasta gives
us of the hair of Polynices:

~Bostrychon te kyanochrota chaitas
Plokamon------~

"What new Alcaeus, fancy-blest,
Shall sing the sword, in myrtles drest," &c.

This alludes to a fragment of Alcaeus still remaining, in which the poet
celebrates Harmodius and Aristogiton, who slew the tyrant Hipparchus,
and thereby restored the liberty of Athens.

The fall of Rome is here most nervously described in one line

"With heaviest sound, a giant statue, fell."

The thought seems altogether new, and the imitative harmony in the
structure of the verse is admirable.

After bewailing the ruin of ancient liberty, the poet considers the
influence it has retained, or still retains, among the moderns; and here
the free republics of Italy naturally engage his attention.--Florence,
indeed, only to be lamented on account of losing its liberty under those
patrons of letters, the Medicean family; the jealous Pisa, justly so
called, in respect to its long impatience and regret under the same
yoke; and the small Marino, which, however unrespectable with regard to
power or extent of territory, has, at