When, in the starry courts above,
The pregnant brain of mighty Jove
Disclosed the nymph of azure glance,
The nymph who shakes the martial lance;
Then, then, in strange eventful hour,
The earth produced an infant flower,
Which sprung, with blushing tinctures drest,
And wantoned o'er its parent breast.
The gods beheld this brilliant birth,
And hailed the Rose, the boon of earth!
With nectar drops, a ruby tide,
The sweetly orient buds they dyed,
And bade them bloom, the flowers divine
Of him who sheds the teeming vine;
And bade them on the spangled thorn
Expand their bosoms to the morn.
HE who instructs the youthful crew
To bathe them in the brimmer's dew,
And taste, uncloyed by rich excesses,
All the bliss that wine possesses!
He who inspires the youth to glance
In winged circlets through the dance;
Bacchus the god, again is here,
And leads along the blushing year;
The blushing year with rapture teems,
Ready to shed those cordial streams
Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,
Illuminate the sons of earth!
And when the ripe and vermeil wine,
Sweet infant of the pregnant vine,
Which now in mellow clusters swells,
Oh! when it bursts its rosy cells,
The heavenly stream shall mantling flow
To balsam every mortal woe!
No youth shall then be wan or weak,
For dimpling health shall light the cheek
No heart shall then desponding sigh,
For wine shall bid despondence fly!
Thus till another autumn's glow
Shall bid another vintage flow!
AND whose immortal hand could shed
Upon this disk the ocean's bed?
And, in a frenzied flight of soul
Sublime as heaven's eternal pole,
Imagine thus, in semblance warm,
The Queen of Love's voluptuous form
Floating along the silvery sea
In beauty's naked majesty?
Oh! he has given the captured sight
A witching banquet of delight;
And all those sacred scenes of love,
Where only hallowed eyes may rove,
Lie, faintly glowing, half concealed,
Within the lucid billows veiled.
Light as the leaf, that summer's breeze
Has wafted o'er the glassy seas,
She floats upon the ocean's breast,
Which undulates in sleepy rest,
And stealing on, she gently pillows
Her bosom on the amorous billows.
Her bosom, like the humid rose,
Her neck, like dewy-sparkling snows,
Illume the liquid path she traces,
And burn within the stream's embraces!
In languid luxury soft she glides,
Encircled by the azure tides,
Like some fair lily, faint with weeping,
Upon a bed of violets sleeping!
Beneath their queen's inspiring glance,
The dolphins o'er the green sea dance,
Bearing in triumph young Desire,
And baby Love with smiles of fire!
While, sparkling on the silver waves,
The tenants of the briny caves
Around the pomp in eddies play,
And gleam along the watery way.
WHEN gold, as fleet as zephyr's pinion, Escapes like any faithless minion, And flies me (as he flies me ever), Do I pursue him? Never, never! No, let the false deserter go. For who would court his direst foe? But, when I feel my lightened mind No more by ties of gold confined, I loosen all my clinging cares, And cast them to the vagrant airs. Then, then I feel the Muse's spell, And wake to life the dulcet shell; The dulcet shell to beauty sings, And love dissolves along the strings! Thus, when my heart is sweetly taught How little gold deserves a thought,
The winged slave returns once more,
And with him wafts delicious store
Of racy wine, whose balmy art
In slumber seals the anxious heart!
Again he tries my soul to sever
From love and song, perhaps for ever!
Away, deceiver! why pursuing
Ceaseless thus my heart's undoing?
Sweet is the song of amorous fire;
Sweet are the sighs that thrill the lyre;
Oh sweeter far than all the gold
The waftage of thy wings can hold !
I well remember all thy wiles;
They withered Cupid's flowery smiles,
And o'er his harp such garbage shed
I thought its angel breath was fled !
They tainted all his bowl of blisses,
His bland desires and hallowed kisses
Oh fly to haunts of sordid men,
But rove not near the bard again!
Thy glitter in the Muse's shade
Scares from her bower the tuneful maid;
And not for worlds would I forego
This moment of poetic glow,
When my full soul, in Fancy's stream,
Pours o'er the lyre its swelling theme.
Away, away! to worldings hence,
Who feel not this diviner sense,
And with thy gay, fallacious blaze,
Dazzle their unrefined gaze.
SABLED by the solar beam,
Now the fiery clusters teem,
In osier baskets, borne along
By all the festal vintage throng
Of rosy youths and virgins fair,
Ripe as the melting fruits they bear.
Now, now they press the pregnant grapes,
And now the captive stream escapes,
In fervid tide of nectar gushing,
And for its bondage proudly blushing!
While round the vat's impurpled brim,
The choral song, the vintage hymn
Of rosy youths and virgins fair,
Steals on the cloyed and panting air.
Mark, how they drink, with all their eyes,
The orient tide that sparkling flies;
The infant balm of all their fears,
The infant Bacchus, born in tears!
When he whose verging years decline
As deep into the vale as mine,
When he inhales the vintage-spring,
His heart is fire, his foot's a wing;
And as he flies, his hoary hair
Plays truant with the wanton air!
While the warm youth, whose wishing soul
Has kindled o'er the inspiring bowl,
Impassioned seeks the shadowy grove,
Where, in the tempting guise of love,
Reclining sleeps some witching maid,
Whose sunny charms, but half displayed,
Blush through the bower, that, closely twined,
Excludes the kisses of the wind!
The virgin wakes, the glowing boy
Allures her to the embrace of joy;
Swears that the herbage Heaven had spread
Was sacred as the nuptial bed;
That laws should never bind desire,
And love was nature's holiest fire!
The virgin weeps, the virgin sighs;
He kissed her lips, he kissed her eyes;
The sigh was balm, the tear was dew,
They only raised his flame anew.
And oh he stole the sweetest flower
That ever bloomed in any bower!
Such is the madness wine imparts,
Whene'er it steals on youthful hearts.
AWAKE to life, my dulcet shell,
To Phoebus all thy sighs shall swell;
And though no glorious prize be thine,
No Pythian wreath around thee twine,
Yet every hour is glory's hour
To him who gathers wisdom's flower!
Then wake thee from thy magic slumbers,
Breathe to the soft and Phrygian numbers,
Which, as my trembling lips repeat,
Thy chords shall echo back as sweet.
The cygnet thus, with fading notes,
As down Cayster's tide he floats,
Plays with his snowy plumage fair
Upon the wanton, murmuring air,
Which amorously lingers round,
And sighs responsive sound for sound!
Muse of the Lyre! illume my dream,
Thy Phoebus is my fancy's theme;
And hallowed is the harp I bear,
And hallowed is the wreath I wear,
Hallowed by him, the god of lays,
Who modulates the choral maze!
I sing the love which Daphne twined
Around the godhead's yielding mind;
I sing the blushing Daphne's flight
From this æthereal youth of light;
And how the tender, timid maid
Flew panting to the kindly shade,
Resigned a form, too tempting fair,
And grew a verdant laurel there;
Whose leaves, with sympathetic thrill,
In terror seemed to tremble still!
The god pursued, with winged desire;
And when his hopes were all on fire,
And when he thought to hear the sigh
With which enamoured virgins die,
He only heard the pensive air
Whispering amid her leafy hair!
But, O my soul! no more-no more!
Enthusiast, whither do I soar?
This sweetly-maddening dream of soul
Has hurried me beyond the goal.
Why should I sing the mighty darts
Which fly to wound celestial hearts,
When sure the lay with sweeter tone
Can tell the darts that wound my own?
Still be Anacreon, still inspire
The descant of the Teian lyre:
Still let the nectared numbers float,
Distilling love in every note!
And when the youth, whose burning soul
Has felt the Paphian star's control,
When he the liquid lays shall hear,
His heart will flutter to his ear,
And drinking there of song divine,
Banquet on intellectual wine!
GOLDEN hues of youth are fled;
Hoary locks deform my head.
Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,
All the flowers of life decay.
Withering age begins to trace
Sad memorials o'er my face;
Time has shed its sweetest bloom,
All the future must be gloom!
This awakes my hourly sighing;
Dreary is the thought of dying!
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