O DE

ON THE

DEPARTING

YEAR.

STROPHE I.

BEING! Who Sweepest the wild Harp of Time,.
It is most hard with an untroubled Ear

Thy dark inwoven Harmonies to hear!

Yet, mine eye fix'd on Heaven's unchanging clime,

"Ode on the Departing Year."- This Ode was written on the 24th, 25th, and 26th days of December, 1796; and published separately on the last day of the year.The Ode commences with an address to the great BEING; or Divine Providence, who regulates into one vast Harmony all the Events of Time, however calamitous some of them appear to mortals.

Long had I listen'd, free from mortal fear,
With inward stillness, and submitted mind!
When lo! far onwards waving on the wind
I saw the skirts of the DEPARTING YEAR!
Starting from my silent sadness

Then with no unholy madness,

Ere yet the entered cloud forbade my sight, I rais'd th' impetuous song, and solemnized his flight.

STROPHE II.*

Hither from the recent tomb;

From the Prison's direr gloom;

From Poverty's heart-wasting languish ;
From Distemper's midnight anguish :

* The second Strophe calls on men to suspend their private Joys and Sorrows, and to devote their passions for a while to the cause of human Nature in general.

Or where his two bright torches blending

Love illumines Manhood's maze ;

Or where o'er cradled infants bending
Hope has fix'd her wishful gaze:

Hither, in perplexed dance,

Ye WOES, and young-eyed Joys, advance!

By Time's wild harp, and by the Hand

Whose indefatigable Sweep

Forbids its fateful strings to sleep,

I bid you haste, a mixt tumultuous band!

From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,

Haste for one solemn hour;

And with a loud and yet a louder voice,

O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth,

Weep and rejoice!

Still echoes the dread * Name, that o'er the earth

Let slip the storm and woke the brood of Hell!
And now advance in saintly Jubilee

JUSTICE and TRUTH: they too have heard the spell,
They too obey thy Name, divinest liberty!

EPODE. †

I mark'd Ambition in his war-array.;

I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry"Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay? "Groans not her Chariot o'er its onward way ?"

* The Name of Liberty, which at the commencement of the French Revolution was both the occasion and the pretext of unnumbered crimes and horrors.

The first Epode refers to the late Empress of Russia, who died of an Apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1796, having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the Kings combined against France.