Dear shall be the day we met, Oh! that Love's celestial dream you In all its purity would know, Let not the senses' ardent beam Too strongly through the vision glow! Love sweetest lies conceal'd in night, The night where Heaven has bid him lie; Oh! shed not there unhallow'd light, Or, Psyche knows the boy will fly! Dear Psyche! many a charmed hour, Through many a wild and magic waste, To the fair fount and blissful bower' Thy mazy foot my soul hath traced! Where'er thy joys are number'd now, Has chain'd thee to thy Cupid's breast; 1 See the story in APULEIUS. With respect to this beautiful allegory of Love and Psyche, there is an ingenious idea suggested by the senator BUONAROTTI, in his Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi. He thinks the fable is taken from some very occult mysteries, which had long been celebrated in honour of Love; and he accounts, upon this supposition, for the silence of the more an cient authors upon the subject, as it was not till towards the decline of Pagan superstition that writers could venture to reveal or discuss such ceremonies; accordingly, he observes, we find Lucian and Plutarch treating, without reserve, of the Dea Syria, and Isis and Osiris; and APULEIUS, who has given us the story of Cupid and Psyche, has also detailed some of the mysteries of Isis.-See the Giornale di Litterati d'Italia, tome xxvii, articol. 1. See also the Observations upon the ancient gems in the Museum Florentinum, vol. i, P. 156. I cannot avoid remarking here an error into which the French Encyclopédistes have been led by M. Spon, in their article Psyché.— They say, Petron fait un récit de la pompe nuptiale de ces deux amans (Amour et Psyché). Déjà, dit-il, etc. etc. The Psyche of PETRONICS, however, is a servant-maid, and the marriage which he describes is that of the young Pannychis. See SPox's Recherches Curieuses, etc. dissertat. 5. Allusions to Mrs T-Gas's poem. 3 Constancy. And dear shall be the night we parted! Oh! if regrets, however sweet, Must with the lapse of time decay, Yet still, when thus in mirth you meet, Fill high to him that's far away! Long be the flame of memory found EPISTLE VIII. TO THE HONOURABLE W. R. SPENCER. Nec venit ad duros musa vocata Getas. FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE. THOU oft hast told me of the fairy hours That relic of its light, so soft, so dear, All that creation's varying mass assumes 'This epithet was suggested by CHARLEVOIX's striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi :- I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much of the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waves to the opposite shore without mixing them: afterwards it gives its colour to the Missis By this image the Platonists expressed the middle state of the sippi, which it never loses again, but carries quite down to the sea.» soul between sensible and intellectual existence. -Letter xxvih Mind, mind alone, in harren, still repose, Is this the region, then, is this the clime To heads that meditate and hearts that feel? Yet, yet forgive me, oh you sacred few! If, neither chain'd by choice, nor damn'd by fate In the society of Mr Dennie and his friends, at Philadelphia, I passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me. Mr Dennie has succeeded in diffusing through this elegant little circle that love for good literature and sound politics, which he feels so zealously himself, and which is so very rarely the characteristic of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, accuse me of illiberality for the picture which I have given of the ignorance and corruption that surround them. If I did not hate, as I ought, the rabble to which they are opposed, I could not value, as I do, the spirit with which they defy it; and in learning from them what Americans can be, I but see with the more indignation what Americans are. She yet can rise, can wreathe the attic charms Her fruits would fall, before her spring were o'er! Believe me, Spencer, while I wing'd the hours I sigh for England-oh! these weary feet ΤΟ A WARNING. On fair as Heaven and chaste as light! No, no! a star was born with thee, Whose bosom too was once a zone Her charms have shed their radiant flower; The gem has been beguiled away; Like some wave-beaten, mouldering stone, To tell the traveller, as he cross'd, Whose harp around my altar swells, The sweetest of a thousand shells?. 'T was thus the deity, who treads 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, For foot so light has never trod 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; 3 Since He, who lights the path of yearsEven from the fount of morning's tears, To where his setting splendours burn Upon the western sea-maid's urnCannot, 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. nation towards any fair visitor of the shrine, and at the same time felt a diffidence in his own powers of persuasion, he had but to proclaim that the God himself was enamoured of her, and had signified his divine will that she should sleep in the interior of the temple. Many a pious husband connived at this divine assignation, and even declared himself proud of the selection with which his family had been distinguished by the deity. In the temple of Jupiter Belus there was a splendid bed for these occasions. In Egyptian Thebes the same mockery was practised; and at the oracle of Patara in Lycia, the priestess never could prophecy till an interview with the deity was allowed her. The story which we read in JOSEPHUS (lib. xviii, cap. 3) of the Roman matron Paulina, whom the priests of Isis, for a bribe, betrayed in this manner to Mundus, is a singular instance of the impudent excess to which credulity suffered these impostures to be carried. This story has been put into the form of a little novel, under the name of La Pudicitia Schernita, by the licentious and unfortunate PALLAVICINO. See his Opere Scelte, tom. i.-I have made my priest here prefer a cave to the temple. In the 9th Pythic of Pindar, where Apollo, in the same manner, requires of Chiron some information respecting the fair Cyrene, the Centaur, in obeying, very gravely apologises for telling the god what his omniscience must know so perfectly already : Ει δε γε χρη και παρ σοφον αντιφεριξαι 3 Αλλ' εις δάφνωση γυαλα βήσομαι ταδε.--ΕπIPID. Ion. v. 76. Ne deve partorir ammiratione ch' egli si pregiasse di haver una Deità concorrente nel possesso della moglie; mentre anche noi nei nostri secoli, non ostante così rigorose legge d'onore, trovasi chi s'ascrive à gloria il veder la moglie honorata da gl' amplessi di un Principe.-PALLAVICINO. The Corycian Cave, which PAUSANIAS mentions. The inhabitants of Parnassus held it sacred to the Corycian nymphs, who were chil dren of the river Plistus. See a preceding note, page 91. It should seem that lunar spi rits were of a purer order than spirits in general, as Pythagoras was said by his followers to have descended from the regions of the moon. The beresiarch Manes too imagined that the sun and moon are the residence of Christ, and that the ascension was nothing more than his flight to those orbs. 3 Temple of Jupiter Belus, at Babylon, which consisted of several chapels and towers. In the last tower (says HERODOTUS) is a large chapel, in which there lies a bed, very splendidly ornamented, and beside it a table of gold; but there is no statue in the place. No man is allowed to sleep here, but the apartment is appropriated to a female, whom, if we believe the Chaldean priests, the deity selects from the women of the country, as his favourite.-Lib. i, cap. 181. The poem now before the reader, and a few more in the present collection, are taken from a work, which I rather prematurely announced to the public, and which, perhaps very luckily for myself, was interrupted by my voyage to America. The following fragments from the same work describe the effect of one of these invitations of Apollo upon the mind of a young enthusiastic girl. Delphi heard ber shrine proclaim, How often ere the destined time, I thought-alas! the simple dream—- Tell him, when to his midnight loves In mystic majesty he moves, The pompous joy delights him less A mystery, more divinely warm'd Happy the maid, whom Heaven allows Oh, virgin! what a doom is thine! Fly to the cave, Aphelia, fly; There lose the world and wed the sky! Oft too, at day's meridian hour, If, through the grove, whose modest arms No deity at midnight came: FONTENELLE, in his playful rifacimento of the learned materials of Van-Dale, has related in his own inimitable manner an adventure of this kind which was detected and exposed at Alexandria.-See [Histoire des Oracles, seconde dissertat. chap. vii. CREBILlon, 100, in one of his most amusing little stories, has made the Génie MangeTaupes, of the Isle Jonquille, assert this privilege of spiritual beings in a manner very formidable to the husbands of the island. He says, however, Les maris ont le plaisir de rester toujours dans le doute; en pareil cas, c'est une ressource,» 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, Sweet notes! they tell of former peace, Art thou too wretched? yes, thou art; A VISION OF PHILOSOPHY. 'T WAS on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met When death is nigh! 2 and still, as he unclosed In PLUTARCH'S Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with, after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year this supernatural personage appeared to mortals, and conversed with them: the rest of his time he passed among the Genii and the Nymphs. Περί την ερυθραν θάλασσαν εύρον, ανθρώποις ανα πάν ετος άπαξ εντυγχάνοντα, τ' αλλα δε συν ταις νυμφαις, νόμασι και δαίμοσι, ώς έφασκε. He spoke in a tone not far removed from singing, and whenever he opened his lips, a fragrance filled the place: Seguero de τον τόπον ευωδία κατείχε, του ςόματος ήδιςον απο TIYEQYTOS. From him Cleombrotus learned the doctrine of a plurality of worlds. 2 The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before his death, imagined that he heard a strain of music in the air. See the poem of HEINSIUS . In harmoniam quam paulo ante obitum audire sibi visus est Dousa. Page 501. |