LINES WRITTEN ON LEAVING PHILADELPHIA. τηνδε την πολιν φίλως

Είπων ἐπαξια γαρ.

Sophocl. Edip. Colon. v. 758.

ALONE by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved,
And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;
But far, very far were the friends that he loved,
And he gazed on its flowery banks with a sigh!
O Nature! though blessed and bright are thy rays,
O'er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown,
Yet faint are they all to the lustre that plays

In a smile from the heart that is dearly our own!

Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain

Unblest by the smile he had languished to meet ; Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again, Till the threshold of home had been kissed by his feet!

But the lays of his boyhood had stolen to their ear,

And they loved what they knew of so humble a name, And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear, That they found in his heart something sweeter than fame! Nor did woman-O woman! whose form and whose soul Are the spell and the light of each path we pursue, Whether sunned in the tropics, or chilled at the pole, If woman be there, there is happiness too !—

Nor did she her enamouring magic deny,

That magic his heart had relinquished so long, Like eyes he had loved was her eloquent eye,

Like them did it soften, and weep at his song!

Oh! blest be the tear, and in memory oft

May its sparkle be shed o'er his wandering dream!
Oh! blest be that eye, and may passion as soft,
As free from a pang, ever mellow its beam!

The stranger is gone-but he will not forget,

When at home he shall talk of the toil he has known,

To tell, with a sigh, what endearments he met,
As he strayed by the wave of the Schuylkill alone!

THE FALL OF HEBE.

A DITHYRAMBIC ODE.

'TWAS on a day

When the immortals at their banquet lay;

The bowl

Sparkled with starry dew,

The weeping of those myriad urns of light,
Within whose orbs the almighty Power,
At Nature's dawning hour,

Stored the rich fluid of ethereal soul !

Around

Soft odorous clouds, that upward wing their flight
From eastern isles

(Where they have bathed them in the orient ray,
And with fine fragrance all their bosoms filled),
In circles flew, and, melting as they flew,
A liquid daybreak o'er the board distilled!
All, all was luxury!

All must be luxury, where Lyæus smiles!
His locks divine

Were crowned

With a bright meteor-braid,

Which, like an ever-springing wreath of vine,
Shot into brilliant leafy shapes,
And o'er his brow in lambent tendrils played!
While 'mid the foliage hung,
Like lucid grapes,

A thousand clustering blooms of light,
Culled from the gardens of the galaxy!
Upon his bosom, Cytherea's head
Lay lovely, as when first the Sirens sung
Her beauty's dawn,

And all the curtains of the deep, undrawn,
Revealed her sleeping in its azure bed.
The captive deity

Languished upon her eyes and lip,
In chains of ecstacy!

Now on his arm,

In blushes she reposed,

And, while her zone resigned its every charm, To shade his burning eyes her hand in dalliance stole. And now she raised her rosy mouth to cip

The nectared wave

Lyæus gave,

And from her eyelids, gently closed,

Shed a dissolving gleam,

Which fell, like sun-dew, in the bowl,

While her bright hair, in mazy flow

Of gold descending

Along her cheek's luxurious glow,
Waved o'er the goblet's side,
And was reflected by its crystal tide,

Like a sweet crocus flower,

Whose sunny leaves, at evening hour,
With roses of Cyrene blending,

Hang o'er the mirror of a silver stream!

The Olympian cup

Burned in the hands

Of dimpled Hebe, as she winged her feet
Up

The empyreal mount,

To drain the soul-drops at their stellar fount;
And still,

As the resplendent rill

Flamed o'er the goblet with a pantling heat,
Her graceful care

Would cool its heavenly fire

In gelid waves of snowy-feathered air,
Such as the children of the pole respire,

In those enchanted lands,

Where life is all a spring, and north winds never blow! But, oh!

Sweet Hebe, what a tear

And what a blush were thine,
When, as the breath of every Grace
Wafted thy fleet career

Along the studded sphere,

With a rich cup for Jove himself to drink,
Some star, that glittered in the way,
Raising its amorous head
To kiss so exquisite a tread,
Checked thy impatient pace!
And all heaven's host of eyes

Saw those luxuriant beauties sink

In lapse of loveliness, along the azure skies!
Upon whose starry plain they lay,

Like a young blossom on our meads of gold,
Shed from a vernal thorn

Amid the liquid sparkles of the morn!
Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade,
The myrtled votaries of the queen behold
An image of their rosy idol, laid

Upon a diamond shrine!

The wanton wind,

Which had pursued the flying fair,
And sweetly twined

Its spirit with the breathing rings
Of her ambrosial hair,

Soared as she fell, and on its ruffling wings,
(O wanton wind!)
Wafted the robe, whose sacred flow
Shadowed her kindling charms of snow,
Pure, as an Eleusinian veil

Hangs o'er the mysteries!
The brow of Juno flushed-
Love blessed the breeze!

The Muses blushed,

And every cheek was hid behind a lyre,
While every eye was glancing through the strings.

Drops of ethereal dew

That burning gushed,

As the great goblet flew

From Hebe's pearly fingers through the sky!
Who was the spirit that remembered Man
In that voluptuous hour?

And with a wing of Love
Brushed off your scattered tears,
As o'er the spangled heaven they ran,
And sent them floating to our orb below?
Essence of immortality!
The shower

Fell glowing through the spheres,
While all around new tints of bliss,
New perfumes of delight,
Enriched its radiant flow!
Now, with a humid kiss,
It thrilled along the beamy wire
Of heaven's illumined lyre,

Stealing the soul of music in its flight!
And now, amid the breezes bland,
That whisper from the planets as they roll,
The bright libation, softly fanned
By all their sighs, meandering stole !
They who, from Atlas' height,

Beheld the rill of flame
Descending through the waste of night,
Thought 'twas a planet, whose stupendous frame
Had kindled, as it rapidly revolved
Around its fervid axle, and dissolved

Into a flood so bright!

The child of day,

Within his twilight bower,

Lay sweetly sleeping

On the flushed bosom of a lotus flower;
When round him, in profusion weeping,
Dropped the celestial shower,
Steeping

The rosy clouds, that curled

About his infant head,

Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed!
But, when the waking boy

Waved his exhaling tresses through the sky,
O morn of joy!

The tide divine,

All glittering with the vermeil dye
It drank beneath his orient eye,
Distilled, in dews, upon the world,

And every drop was wine, was heavenly WINE!

Blest be the sod, the floweret blest,

That caught, upon their hallowed breast,

The nectared spray of Jove's perennial springs!
Less sweet the floweret, and less sweet the sod,
O'er which the Spirit of the rainbow flings
The magic mantle of her solar god!

ΤΟ

THAT wrinkle, when first I espied it,
At once put my heart out of pain,
Till the eye that was glowing beside it
Disturbed my ideas again!

Thou art just in the twilight at present,
When woman's declension begins,
When, fading from all that is pleasant,
She bids a good-night to her sins!
Yet thou still art so lovely to me,

I would sooner, my exquisite mother!
Repose in the sunset of thee

Than bask in the noon of another!

ANACREONTIC.

"SHE never looked so kind before-
Yet why the wanton's smile recall?
I've seen this witchery o'er and o'er,
'Tis hollow, vain, and heartless all !"

Thus I said, and, sighing, sipped

The wine which she had lately tasted;
The cup where she had lately dipped
Breath so long in falsehood wasted.

I took the harp, and would have sung
As if 'twere not of her I sang;
But still the notes on Lamia hung-

On whom but Lamia could they hang?
That kiss, for which, if worlds were mine,
A world for every kiss I'd give her ;
Those floating eyes, that floating shine
Like diamonds in an eastern river!

That mould so fine, so pearly bright,

Of which luxurious Heaven hath cast her, Through which her soul doth beam as white As flame through lamps of alabaster!

Of these I sung, and notes and words
Were sweet, as if 'twas Lamia's hair
That lay upon my lute for chords,

And Lamia's lip that warbled there !