In the eighteenth century, as part of a continuing effort to reconstitute a synthesis of music and poetry, or as an attempt at lending poetry something of the immediacy of a musical performance, all kinds of literary cantatas and literary hymns were composed. The cantata disappeared as the century went on, but the hymn continued as a favorite genre, if not form, of the Romantic poets. Literary hymns bear no resemblance to liturgical hymns, the latter being in relatively short, recurring stanzas whereas the literary variety are often longer and sometimes erratic in form--or else composed in blank verse.
 

    CANTATA VI.

    THE COQUET
 

    RECITATIVE.

AIRY Cloe, proud and young,
  The fairest tyrant of the plain,
  Laugh'd at her adoring swain.
He sadly sigh'd--she gayly sung,
  And wanton, thus reproach'd his pain.
 

    AIR.

Leave me, silly shepherd, go,
You only tell me what I know,
 You view a thousand charms in me;
Then cease thy prayers, I'll kinder grow,
 When I can view such charms in thee.
Leave me, silly shepherd, go,
You only tell me what I know,
 You view a thousand charms in me.
 

    RECITATIVE.

 Amyntor, fir'd by this disdain,
 Curs'd the proud fair, and broke his chain;
  He rav'd, and at the scorner swore,
  And vow'd he'd be love's fool no more--
But Cloe smil'd, and thus she call'd him back again.
 

    AIR.

  Shepherd, this I've done to prove thee,
  Now thou art a man, I love thee:
   And without a blush resign.
  But ungrateful is the passion,
  And destroys our inclination,
   When, like slaves, out lovers whine.
   Shepherd, this I've done to prove thee,
  Now thou art a man, I love thee,
   And without a blush resign.
                            --John Hughes
 

Hymn on Solitude

            Hail, mildly pleasing Solitude,
            Companion of the wise and good,
            But from whose holy piercing eye
            The herd of fools and villains fly.
            Oh! how I love with thee to walk,
            And listen to thy whispered talk,
            Which innocence and truth imparts,
            And melts the most obdurate hearts.
                  A thousand shapes you wear with ease,
            And still in every shape you please.
            Now wrapt in some mysterious dream,
            A lone philosopher you seem;
            Now quick from hill to vale you fly,
            And now you sweep the vaulted sky;
            A shepherd next, you haunt the plain,
            And warble forth your oaten strain;
            A lover now, with all the grace
            Of that sweet passion in your face;
            Then, calmed to friendship, you assume
            The gentle looking Hertford's bloom,
            As, with her Musidora, she
            (Her Musidora fond of thee)
            Amid the long-withdrawing vale
            Awakes the rivalled nightingale.
                  Thine is the balmy breath of morn,
            Just as the dew-bent rose is born;
            And, while meridian fervors beat,
            Thine is the woodland dumb retreat;
            But chief, when evening scenes decay
            And the faint landscape swims away,
            Thine is the doubtful soft decline,
            And that best hour of musing thine.
                  Descending angels bless thy train,
            Thy virtues of the sage and swain--
            Plain Innocence, in white arrayed,
            Before thee lifts her fearless head;
            Religion's beams around thee shine
            And cheer thy glooms with light divine;
            About thee sports sweet Liberty,
            And rapt Urania sings to thee.
                  Oh, let me pierce thy secret cell,
            And in thy deep recesses dwell!
            Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill,
            When Meditation has her fill,
            I just may cast my careless eyes
            Where London's spiry turrets rise,
            Think of its crimes, it cares, its pain,
            Then shield me in the woods again.
                                    --James Thomson
 

HYMN TO PAN

            From the forests and highlands
                  We come, we come;
            From the river-girt islands,
                  Where loud waves are dumb
                       Listening to my sweet pipings.
            The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
                  The bees on the bells of thyme
            The birds on the myrtle bushes,
                  The cacale above in the lime,
            And the lizards below in the grass,
            Were as silent as ever old Timolus was,
                      Listening to my sweet pipings.

            Liquid Peneus was flowing,
                  And all dark Tempe lay
            In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
                  The light of the dying day,
                  Speeded by my sweet pipings.
            The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
                  And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,
            To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
                  And the brink of the dewy caves,
            And all that did then attend and follow,
            Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
                      With envy of my sweet pipings.

            I sang of the dancing stars,
                  I sang of the daedal Earth,
            And of Heaven -- and the giant wars,
                  And Love, and Death, and Birth, --
                  And then I changed my pipings, --
            SInging how down the vale of Maenalus
                  I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.
            Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
                  It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
            All wept, as I think both ye now would,
            If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
                      At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
                                            --Percy Bysshe Shelley

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