Ode to Adversity

by Thomas Gray

  DAUGHTER of Jove, relentless power,
    Thou tamer of the human breast,
  Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
    The bad affright, afflict the best!
  Bound in thy adamantine chain
  The proud are taught to taste of pain,
  And purple tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.
 
  When first thy Sire to send on earth
    Virtue, his darling child, design’d,
  To thee he gave the heavenly birth
    And bade to form her infant mind.
  Stern, rugged Nurse! thy rigid lore
  With patience many a year she bore;
  What sorrow was, thou bad’st her know,
And from her own she learn’d to melt at others’ woe.
 
  Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
    Self-pleasing Folly’s idle brood,
  Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
    And leave us leisure to be good.
  Light they disperse, and with them go
  The summer Friend, the flattering Foe;
  By vain Prosperity received,
To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.
 
  Wisdom in sable garb array’d
    Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
  And Melancholy, silent maid,
    With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
  Still on thy solemn steps attend:
  Warm Charity, the general friend,
  With Justice, to herself severe,
And Pity dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.
 
  O! gently on thy suppliant’s head
    Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
  Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
    Nor circled with the vengeful band
  (As by the impious thou art seen)
  With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
  With screaming Horror’s funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty;—
 
  Thy form benign, O Goddess, wear,
    Thy milder influence impart,
  Thy philosophic train be there
    To soften, not to wound my heart.
  The generous spark extinct revive,
  Teach me to love and to forgive
  Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are to feel, and know myself a Man.