shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in
immortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly
censure tyranny and oppression. His song ended, he precipitates
himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that
rolls at its feet."

Mitford, in his "Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The
tendency of _The Bard_ is to show the retributive justice that
follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in
his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed
in the massacre of the bards; to convince him that neither his power
nor situation could save him from the natural and necessary
consequences of his guilt; that not even the virtues which he
possessed could atone for the vices with which they were accompanied:

'Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy _virtues_, tyrant, shall avail.'

This is the real tendency of the poem; and well worthy it was of
being adorned and heightened by such a profusion of splendid images
and beautiful machinery. We must also observe how much this moral
feeling increases as we approach the close; how the poem rises in
dignity; and by what a fine gradation the solemnity of the subject
ascends. The Bard commenced his song with feelings of sorrow for his
departed brethren and his desolate country. This despondence,
however, has given way to emotions of a nobler and more exalted
nature. What can be more magnificent than the vision which opens
before him to display the triumph of justice and the final glory of
his cause? And it may be added, what can be more forcible or emphatic
than the language in which it is conveyed?

'But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height,
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!
_Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!_'

The fine apostrophe to the shade of Taliessin completes the picture
of exultation:

'Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.'

The triumph of justice, therefore, is now complete. The vanquished
has risen superior to his conqueror, and the reader closes the poem
with feelings of content and satisfaction. He has seen the Bard
uplifted both by a divine energy and by the natural superiority of
virtue; and the conqueror has shrunk into a creature of hatred and
abhorrence:

'Be thine despair, and sceptred care;
To triumph, an