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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537954" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>To My Father (Translated From Milton)</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh that Pieria's spring would thro' my breast<br>Pour its inspiring influence, and rush<br>No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!<br>That, for my venerable Father's sake<br>All meaner themes renounced, my Muse, on wings<br>Of Duty borne, might reach a loftier strain.<br>For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please,<br>She frames this slender work, nor know I aught,<br>That may thy gifts more suitably requite;<br>Though to requite them suitably would ask <br>Returns much nobler, and surpassing far<br>The meagre stores of verbal gratitude.<br>But, such as I possess, I send thee all.<br>This page presents thee in their full amount<br>With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought;<br>Naught, save the riches that from airy dreams<br>In secret grottos and in laurel bow'rs,<br>I have, by golden Clio's gift, acquir'd.<br>Verse is a work divine; despise not thou<br>Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more)<br>Man's heav'nly source, and which, retaining still<br>Some scintillations of Promethean fire,<br>Bespeaks him animated from above.<br>The Gods love verse; the infernal Pow'rs themselves<br>Confess the influence of verse, which stirs<br>The lowest Deep, and binds in triple chains<br>Of adamant both Pluto and the shades.<br>In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale<br>Tremulous Sybil make the Future known,<br>And He who sacrifices, on the shrine <br>Hangs verse, both when he smites the threat'ning bull,<br>And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide<br>To scrutinize the Fates envelop'd there.<br>We too, ourselves, what time we seek again<br>Our native skies, and one eternal Now<br>Shall be the only measure of our Being,<br>Crown'd all with gold, and chanting to the lyre<br>Harmonious verse, shall range the courts above,<br>And make the starry firmament resound.<br>And, even now, the fiery Spirit pure <br>That wheels yon circling orbs, directs, himself,<br>Their mazy dance with melody of verse<br>Unutt'rable, immortal, hearing which<br>Huge Ophiuchus holds his hiss suppress'd,<br>Orion, soften'd, drops his ardent blade,<br>And Atlas stands unconscious of his load.<br>Verse graced of old the feasts of kings, ere yet<br>Luxurious dainties destin'd to the gulph<br>Immense of gluttony were known, and ere<br>Lyaeus deluged yet the temp'rate board. <br>Then sat the bard a customary guest<br>To share the banquet, and, his length of locks<br>With beechen honours bound, proposed in verse<br>The characters of Heroes and their deeds<br>To imitation, sang of Chaos old,<br>Of Nature's birth, of Gods that crept in search<br>Of acorns fall'n, and of the thunderbolt<br>Not yet produc'd from Aetna's fiery cave.<br>And what avails, at last, tune without voice,<br>Devoid of matter? Such may suit perhaps<br>The rural dance, but such was ne'er the song<br>Of Orpheus, whom the streams stood still to hear<br>And the oaks follow'd. Not by chords alone<br>Well-touch'd, but by resistless accents more<br>To sympathetic tears the Ghosts themselves<br>He mov'd: these praises to his verse he owes.<br>Nor Thou persist, I pray thee, still to slight<br>The sacred Nine, and to imagine vain<br>And useless, Pow'rs by whom inspir'd, thyself<br>Art skillfill to associate verse with airs <br>Harmonious, and to give the human voice<br>A thousand modulations, heir by right<br>Indisputable of Arion's fame.<br>Now say, what wonder is it, if a son<br>Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoin'd<br>In close affinity, we sympathize<br>In social arts and kindred studies sweet?<br>Such distribution of himself to us<br>Was Phoebus' choice; thou hast thy gift, and I<br>Mine also, and between us we receive,<br>Father and son, the whole inspiring God.<br>No. Howsoe'er the semblance thou assume<br>Of hate, thou hatest not the gentle Muse,<br>My Father! for thou never bad'st me tread<br>The beaten path and broad that leads right on<br>To opulence, nor did'st condemn thy son<br>To the insipid clamours of the bar,<br>To laws voluminous and ill observ'd,<br>But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill<br>My mind with treasure, led'st me far away<br>From city-din to deep retreats, to banks<br>And streams Aonian, and, with free consent<br>Didst place me happy at Apollo's side.<br>I speak not now, on more important themes<br>Intent, of common benefits, and such<br>As Nature bids, but of thy larger gifts<br>My Father! who, when I had open'd once<br>The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learn'd<br>The full-ton'd language, of the eloquent Greeks,<br>Whose lofty music grac'd the lips of Jove, <br>Thyself did'st counsel me to add the flow'rs<br>That Gallia boasts, those too with which the smooth<br>Italian his degentrate speech adorns,<br>That witnesses his mixture with the Goth,<br>And Palestine's prophetic songs divine.<br>To sum the whole, whate'er the Heav'n contains,<br>The Earth beneath it, and the Air between,<br>The Rivers and the restless deep, may all<br>Prove intellectual gain to me, my wish<br>Concurring with thy will; Science herself,<br>All cloud removed, inclines her beauteous head<br>And offers me the lip, if, dull of heart,<br>I shrink not and decline her gracious boon.<br>Go now, and gather dross, ye sordid minds<br>That covet it; what could my Father more,<br>What more could Jove himself, unless he gave<br>His own abode, the heav'n in which he reigns?<br>More eligible gifts than these were not<br>Apollo's to his son, had they been safe<br>As they were insecure, who made the boy <br>The world's vice-luminary, bade him rule<br>The radiant chariot of the day, and bind<br>To his young brows his own all dazzling-wreath.<br>I therefore, although last and least, my place<br>Among the Learned in the laurel-grove<br>Will hold, and where the conqu'ror's ivy twines,<br>Henceforth exempt from th'unletter'd throng<br>Profane, nor even to be seen by such.<br>Away then, sleepless Care, Complaint away,<br>And Envy, with thy 'jealous leer malign'<br>Nor let the monster Calumny shoot forth<br>Her venom'd tongue at me. Detested foes!<br>Ye all are impotent against my peace,<br>For I am privileged, and bear my breast<br>Safe, and too high, for your viperean wound.<br>But thou my Father! since to render thanks<br>Equivalent, and to requite by deeds<br>Thy liberality, exceeds my power,<br>Sufffice it, that I thus record thy gifts,<br>And bear them treasur'd in a grateful mind!<br>Ye too, the favourite pastime of my youth,<br>My voluntary numbers, if ye dare<br>To hope longevity, and to survive<br>Your master's funeral pile, not soon absorb'd<br>In the oblivious Lethaean gulph<br>Shall to Futurity perhaps convey<br>This theme, and by these praises of my sire<br>Improve the Fathers of a distant age.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Cowper">William Cowper</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=537954" data-title="To My Father (Translated From Milton) de William Cowper" data-description="Oh that Pieria's spring would thro' my breast
Pour its inspiring influence, and rush
No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable Father's sake
All meaner themes renounced, my Muse, on wings
Of Duty borne, might reach a loftier..."></div>
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