But no, no, no-farewell-we part,
Never to meet, no, never, never-
Oh woman! what a mind and heart
Thy coldness has undone for ever!

FROM

THE HIGH PRIEST OF APOLLO

ΤΟ

A VIRGIN OF DELPHI.1

Cum digno digna.-Sulpicia.

'WHO is the maid, with golden hair,
With eyes of fire and feet of air,
Whose harp around my altar swells,
The sweetest of a thousand shells?'
'Twas thus the deity, who treads
The arch of Heaven, and grandly sheds
Day from his eyelids!-thus he spoke,
As through my cell his glories broke:
Who is the maid, with golden hair,
With eyes of fire and feet of air,
Whose harp around my altar swells,
The sweetest of a thousand shells?

Aphelia is the Delphic fair,
With eyes of fire and golden hair,
Aphelia's are the airy feet,
And hers the harp divinely sweet;
For foot so light has never trod
The laurelled caverns of the god,
Nor harp so soft has ever given
A strain to earth or sigh to Heaven!
'Then tell the virgin to unfold,
In looser pomp, her locks of gold,
And bid those eyes with fonder fire
Be kindled for a god's desire;

is well known that, in the ancient temples, when- the oracle of Patara in Lycia, the priestess never This poem requires a little explanation. It Thebes the same mockery was practised; and at ever a reverend priest, like the supposed author could prophesy till an interview with the deity tender inclination towards any fair visitor of the Josephus (lib. xviii. cap. 3), of the Roman matron of the invitation before us, was inspired with a was allowed her. The story which we read in his own powers of persuasion, he had but to pro- trayed in this manner to Mundus, is a singular shrine, and at the same time felt a diffidence in Paulina, whom the priests of Isis, for a bribe, belaim that the god himself was enamoured of her, instance of the impudent excess to which credusleep in the interior of the temple. Many a pious story has been put into the form of a little novel and had signified his divine will that she should lity suffered these impostures to be carried. This husband connived at this divine assignation, and under the name of La Pudicità Schernita, by which his family had been distinguished by the his Opere Scelte, tom. i. I have made my priest even declared himself proud of the selection with the licentious and unfortunate Pallavicino. See deity. In the temple of Jupiter Belus there was here prefer a cave to the temple. a splendid bed for these occasions. In Egyptian

Since He, who lights the path of years-
Even from the fount of morning's tears,
To where his setting splendours burn
Upon the western sea-maid's urn-
Cannot, in all his course, behold
Such eyes of fire, such hair of gold!
Tell her he comes in blissful pride,
His lip yet sparkling with the tide
That mantles in Olympian bowls,
The nectar of eternal souls!

For her, for her he quits the skies,
And to her kiss from nectar flies.
Oh! he would hide his wreath of rays,
And leave the world to pine for days,
Might he but pass the hours of shade
Imbosomed by his Delphic maid—
She, more than earthly woman blest,
He, more than god on woman's breast!'

There is a cave beneath the steep,1
Where living rills of crystal weep
O'er herbage of the loveliest hue
That ever spring begemmed with dew,
There oft the green bank's glossy tint
Is brightened by the amorous print
Of many a faun and Naiad's form,
That still upon the dew is warm
When virgins come at peep of day
To kiss the sod where lovers lay!
'There, there,' the god, impassioned, said,
'Soon as the twilight tinge is fled,
And the dim orb of lunar souls
Along its shadowy pathway rolls-
There shall we find our bridal bed,
And ne'er did rosy rapture spread,
Not even in Jove's voluptuous bowers,
A bridal bed so blest as ours!

Tell the imperial God, who reigns
Sublime in oriental fanes,

Whose towering turrets paint their pride
Upon Euphrates' pregnant tide;
Tell him, when to his midnight loves
In mystic majesty he moves,
Lighted by many an odorous fire,
And hymned by all Chaldæa's choir--

Oh! tell the godhead to confess,
The pompous joy delights him less
(Even though his mighty arms enfold
A priestess on a couch of gold)

1 The Corycian Cave, which Pausanias mentions. The inhabitants of Parnassus held it sacred to the Corycian nymphs, who were children of the river Plistus

Than when in love's unholier prank,
By moonlight cave or rustic bank,
Upon his neck some wood-nymph lies,
Exhaling from her lip and eyes
The flame and incense of delight,
To sanctify a dearer rite,

A mystery, more divinely warmed
Than priesthood ever yet performed !'

Happy the maid, whom Heaven allows
To break for Heaven her virgin vows!
Happy the inaid !—her robe of shame
Is whitened by a heavenly flame,
Whose glory, with a lingering trace,
Shines through and deifies her race!

Oh, virgin! what a doom is thine!
To-night, to-night a lip divine
In every kiss shall stamp on thee
A seal of immortality!

Fly to the cave, Aphelia, fly,

There lose the world and wed the sky!
There all the boundless rapture steal
Which gods can give or women feel

WOMAN.

AWAY, away-you're all the same,
A fluttering, smiling, jilting throng!
Oh! by my soul, I burn with shame,
To think I've been your slave so long!
Slow to be warmed and quick to rove

From folly kind, from cunning loth
Too cold for bliss, too weak for love,
Yet feigning all that's best in both.
Still panting o'er a crowd to reign,
More joy it gives to woman's breast
To make ten frigid coxcombs vain,
Than one true, manly lover blest!
Away, away,-your smile's a curse-

Oh! blot me from the race of men,
Kind pitying Heaven! by death or worse,
Before I love such things again!

BALLAD STANZAS.

I KNEW by the smoke, that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms, that a cottage was near;
And I said, If there's peace to be found in the world,
A heart that was humble might hope for it here!'

It was noon, and on flowers that languished around
In silence reposed the voluptuous bee;
Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound

But the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree.

And Here in this lone little wood,' I exclaimed,
'With a maid who was lovely to soul and to eye,
Who would blush when I praised her, and weep if I blamed,
How blest could I live, and how calm could I die !

'By the shade of yon sumach, whose red berry dips
In the gush of the fountain, how sweet to recline,
And to know that I sighed upon innocent lips,
Which had never been sighed on by any but mine !'

ΤΟ

ΝΟΣΕΙ ΤΑ ΦΙΛΤΑΤΑ.-Euripides.

1803.

COME, take the harp-'tis vain to muse
Upon the gathering ills we see ;
Oh! take the harp, and let me lose

All thoughts of ill in hearing thee!

Sing to me, Love! though death were near,
Thy song could make my soul forget-

Nay, nay, in pity, dry that tear,

All may be well, be happy yet!

Let me but see that snowy arm

Once more upon the dear harp lie,
And I will cease to dream of harm,

Will smile at fate, while thou art nigh!

Give me that strain, of mournful touch,
We used to love long, long ago,
Before our hearts had known as much

As now, alas! they bleed to know!

Sweet notes! they tell of former peace,
Of all that looked so rapturous then,
Now withered, lost-oh! pray thee, cease,
I cannot bear those sounds again!

Art thou, too, wretched? yes, thou art;
I see thy tears flow fast with mine-
Come, come to this devoted heart,
'Tis breaking, but it still is thine!

the Red Sea.

A VISION OF PHILOSOPHY.

"TWAS on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met
The venerable man: a virgin bloom
Of softness mingled with the vigorous thought
That towered upon his brow; as when we see
The gentle moon and the full radiant sun
Shining in heaven together. When he spoke,

"Twas language sweetened into song--such holy sounds
As oft the spirit of the good man hears,
Prelusive to the harmony of heaven,

When death is nigh! and still, as he unclosed
His sacred lips, an odour, all as bland
As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers
That blossom in Elysium, breathed around!
With silent awe we listened while he told
Of the dark veil which many an age had hung
O'er Nature's form, till by the touch of Time
The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous,
And half the goddess beamed in glimpses through it!
Of magic wonders, that were known and taught
By him (or Cham or Zoroaster named)

Who mused, amid the mighty cataclysm,

O'er his rude tablets of primeval lore,3
Nor let the living star of science1 sink

Beneath the waters which engulfed the world!-
Of visions by Calliope revealed

To him who traced upon his typic lyre

The diapason of man's mingled frame,

And the grand Doric heptachord of Heaven!
With all of pure, of wondrous and arcane,

Which the grave sons of Mochus, many a night

describes an extraordinary man whom he had antediluvian knowledge to his posterity.-See Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, ravages of the deluge, and transmit the secrets of 1 In Plutarch's Essay on the Decline of the substances, in order that they might resist the met with, after long research, upon the banks of the extracts made by Bayle in his article Cham. natural personage appeared to mortals, and con- upon the authority of Berosus, or the impostor versed with them: the rest of his time he passed Annius, and a few more such respectable testiamong the Genii and the Nymphs. Ilept my monies. See Naude's Apologie pour les Grands ερυθραν θαλασσαν εύρον, ανθρώποις ανα παν ετος Hommes, etc., chap. 8, where he takes more νόμασι και δαιμοσί, ώς έφασκε. He spoke in a tous supposition. άπαξ εντυγχανοντα, τάλλα δε συν ταις νύμφαις, trouble than is necessary in refuting this gratui

Once in every year this super- The identity of Cham and Zoroaster depends

tone not far removed from singing, and when

4 Chamum à posteris hujus artis admirato.

ever he opened his lips a fragrance filled the Zoroastrum, seu vivum astrum, propterea fuisse

dictum et pro Deo habitum.-Bochart. Geograph. Saer. lib. iv. cap. 1.

5 Orpheus.-Paulinus, in his Hebdomades,

his death, imagined that he heard a strain of the Platonists, that man is a diapason, made up 2 The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before cap. 2, lib. iii., has endeavoured to show, after harmoniam quam paulo ante obitum audire sibi which is his body. Those frequent allusions to

of a diatesseron, which is his soul, and a diapente,

music, by which the ancient philosophers illus

Cham, the son of Noah, is supposed to have trated their sublime theories, must have tended taken with him into the ark the principal doc- very much to elevate the character of the art, and trines of magical, or rather of natural, science, to enrich it with associations of the grandest and which he had inscribed upon some very durable most interesting nature