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There frantic Anger, prone to wild extremes,
Grasps an ensanguin'd sword, and Heaven blas-
There heart-sick Agony distorted stands, [phemes.
Writhes his convulsive limbs, and wrings his hands.
There Sorrow droops his ever pensive head,
And Care still tosses on his iron bed:
Or, musing, fastens on the ground his eye,
With folded arms; with every breath a sigh.
Hydrops unwieldly wallows in a flood;
And Murther rages, red with human blood,
With Fever, Famine, and afflictive Pain,
Plague, Pestilence, and War, a dismal train!
These, and a thousand more, the fiend surround,
Shrieks pierce the air, and groans to groans re-

sound.

Impair'd by labour, and by ease undone,
Commenc'd in tears, and ended in a groan!
Evin while I write, the transient Now is past,
And Death more near, this sentence than the
last!

As some weak isthmus seas from seas divides,
Beat by rude waves, and sapp'd by rushing tides,
Torn from its base, no more their fury bears,
At once they close, at once it disappears:
Such, such is life! the mark of misery plac'd
Between two worlds, the future and the past;
To Time, to Sickness, and to Death, a prey,
It sinks, the frail possession of a day!

As some fond boy, in sport, along the shore
Builds from the sands a fabric of an hour;
Proud of his spacious walls, and stately rooms,
He styles the mimic cells imperial domes;
'The little monarch swells with fancy'd sway,
Till some wind rising puffs the dome away:
So the poor reptile, man! an heir of woe,
The lord of earth and ocean, swells in show;
He plants, he builds, aloft the walls arise!
The noble plan he finishes, and▬▬▬▬dies.
Swept from the Earth, he shares the common fate;
His sole distinction now, to rot in state!
Thus busy to no end till out of breath,

O! Heavens! is this the passage to the skies
That man must tread, when man, your favourite,
Oh! for Elijah's car to wing my way [dies?
O'er the dark gulph of Death to endless day!
Confounded at the sight, my spirits fled,
My eyes rain'd tears, my very heart was dead!
I wail'd the lot of man, that all would shun,
And all must bear that breathe beneath the Sun.
When lo! an heavenly form, divinely fair,
Shoots from the starry vault through fields of air;
And, swifter than on wings of lightning driven,
At once seems here and there, in Earth and Hea-Tir'd we lie down, and close up all in death. [led
A dazzling brightness in refulgent streams: [ven!
Flows from his locks inwreath'd with sunny beams:
His roseate cheeks the bloom of Heaven display,
And from his eyes dart glories, more than day:
A robe, of light condens'd, around him shone,
And his loins glitter'd with a starry zone:
And while the listening Winds lay hush'd to hear,
Thus spoke the vision, amiably severe !

[lot,

"Vain man! wouldst thou escape the common
To live, to suffer, die, and be forgot?
Look back on ancient times, primeval years,
All, all are past! a mighty void appears!
Heroes, and kings, those gods of Earth, whose fame
Aw'd half the nations, now are but a name!
The great in arts or arms, the wise, the just,
Mix with the meanest in congenial dust!
Ev'n saints and prophets the same paths have trod,
Ambassadors of Heaven, and friends of God!
And thou, wouldst thou the general sentence fly?
Moses is dead! thy Saviour deign'd to die!
Mortal, in all thy acts regard thy end! [friend:
Live well, the time thou liv'st, and Death's thy
Then curb each rebel thought against the Sky,
And die resign'd, O! Man ordain'd to die!"

He added not, but spread his wings in flight,
And vanish'd instant in a blaze of light.
Abash'd, asham'd, I cry,
64 Eternal Power,
I yield! I wait resign'd th' appointed hour!
Man, foolish man, no more thy soul deceive!
To die, is but the surest way to live:
When age we ask, we ask it in our wrong,
And pray our time of suffering may be long;
The nauseous draught, and dregs of life to drain,
And feel infirmity, and length of pain!

What art thou, Life, that we should court thy
stay?

A breath, one single gasp must puff away!
A short-liv'd flower, that with the day must fade!
A fleeting vapour, and an empty shade!
A stream, that silently but swiftly glides
To meet Eternity's imineasur'd tides!

A being, lost alike by pain or joy!

A fly can kill it, or a worm destroy,

Then blest the man whom gracious Heaven has
Through life's blind mazes to th' immortal dead!
Who, safely landed on the blissful shore,
Nor human folly feels nor frailty more!
O! Death, thou cure of all our idle strife!
End of the gay, or serious farce of life!
Wish of the just, and refuge of th' opprest!
Where Poverty, and where ev'n kings find rest!
Safe from the frowns of power! calm, thoughtful
And the rude insults of the scornful great! [hate!
The grave
is sacred! wrath and malice dread
To violate its peace, and wrong the dead:
But Life, thy name is Woe! to Death we fly
To grow immortal '—————into life we die!
Then wisely Heaven in silence has confin'd
The happier dead, lest none should stay behind.
What though the path be dark that must be trod,
Though man be blotted from the works of God,
Though the four winds his scattered atoms bear
To Earth's extremes, thro' all th' expanse of air;
Yet bursting glorious from the silent clay,
He mounts triumphant to eternal day.

So, when the Sun rolls down th' ethereal plain,
Extinct his splendours in the whelming main,
A transient night earth, air, and heaven invades,
Eclips'd in horrours of surrounding shades;
But soon, emerging with a fresher ray,
He starts exultant, and renews the day.

COURAGE IN LOVE.

My eyes with floods of tears o'erflow,
My bosom heaves with constant woe;
Those eyes, which thy unkindness swells;
That bosom, where thy image dwells;

How could I hope so weak a flame
Could ever warm that matchless dame,
When none Elysium must behold,
Without a radiant bough of gold?
'Tis hers, in spheres to shine;
At distance to admire, is mine:

Doom'd, like th' enamour'd youth', to groan For a new goddess form'd of stone.

While thus I spoke, Love's gentle power
Descended from th' ethereal bower;
-A quiver at his shoulder hung,
A shaft he grasp'd, and bow unstrung.
All nature own'd the genial god,

And the Spring flourish'd where he trod:
My heart, no stranger to the guest,
Flutter'd, and labour'd in my breast;
When, with a smile that kindles joy
Ev'n in the gods, began the boy:

"How vain these tears! is man decreed, By being abject, to succeed?

Hop'st thou by meagre looks to move?
Are women frighten'd into love?
He most prevails, who nobly dares;
In love a hero, as in wars:
Ev'n Venus may be known to yield,
But 'tis when Mars disputes the field:
Sent from a daring hand my dart
Strikes deep into the fair-one's heart:
To winds and waves thy cares bequeath,
A sigh is but a waste of breath.
What though gay youth, and every grace
That Beauty boasts, adorn her face;
Yet goddesses have deign'd to wed,
And take a mortal to their bed:
And Heaven, when gifts of incense rise,
Accepts it, though it cloud their skies.

"Mark! how this Marygold conceals
Her beauty, and her bosom veils;
How from the dull embrace she flies
Of Phoebus, when his beams arise:
But when his glory he displays,
And darts around his fiercer rays,
Her charins she opens, and receives
The vigorous god into her leaves,"

I

THE COMPLAINT.

CELIA TO DAMON.

WHO was once the glory of the plain,
The fairest virgin of the virgin train,
And now (by thee, O! faithless man, betray'd!)
A fall'n, a lost, a miserable maid.

Ye Winds, that witness to my deep despair,
Receive my sighs, and waft them through the air,
And gently breathe them to my Damon's car!
Curst, ever curst be that unlucky day,
When, trembling, sighing, at my feet he lay,
I trembled, sigh'd, and look'd my heart away!
Why was he form'd, ye powers, his sex's pride,
Too false to love, too fair to be deny'd?
Ye heedless virgins, gaze not on his eyes;
Lovely they are, but she that gazes dies!
Oh! fly his voice, be deaf to all he says;
Charms has his voice, but charming it betrays!
At every word, each motion of his eye,

A thousand Loves are born, a thousand lovers die.
Say, gentle youths, ye blest Arcadian swains,
Inhabitants of these delightful plains,
Say, by what fountain, in what rosy bower,
Reclines my charmer in the noon-tide hour!
To you, dear fugitive, where'er you stray,
Wild with despair, impatient of delay,
Swift on the wings of eager Love I fly,
Or send my soul still swifter in a sigh!

1 Polydorus who pined to death for the love of a beautiful statue.

I'd then inform you of your Calia's cares,
And try the eloquence of female tears;
Fearless I'd pass where Desolation reigns,
Tread the wild waste, or burning Libyan plains:
Or where the North his furious pinions tries,
And howling hurricanes embroil the skies!
Should all the monsters in Getulia bred
Oppose the passage of a tender maid;
Dauntless, if Damon calls, his Cælia speeds
Through all the monsters that Getulia breeds!
Bold was Bonduca, and her arrows flew
Swift and unerring from the twanging yew:
By Love inspir'd, I'll teach the shaft to fly;
For thee I'd conquer, or at least would die!
If o'er the dreary Caucasus you go,

Or mountains crown'd with everlasting snow,
Where through the freezing skies in storms it pours,
And brightens the dull air with shining showers,
Ev'n there with you I could securely rest,
And dare all cold, but in my Damon's breast;
Or should you dwell beneath the sultry ray,
Where rising Phoebus ushers in the day,
There, there I dwell! Thou Sun, exert thy fires!
Love, mighty Love, a fiercer flame inspires:
Or if, a pilgrim, you would pay your vows
Where Jordan's streams in soft meanders flows;
I'll be a pilgrim, and my vows I'll pay
Where Jordan's streams in soft meanders play.
Joy of my soul! my every wish in one!
Why must I love, when loving I'm undone?
Sweet are the whispers of the waving trees,
And murmuring waters, curling to the breeze;
Sweet are soft slumbers in the shady bowers
When glowing suns infest the sultry hours:
But not the whispers of the waving trees,
Nor murmuring waters, curling to the breeze,
Not sweet soft slumbers in the shady bowers,
When thou art absent whom my soul adores!
Come, let us seck some flowery, fragrant bed!
Come, on thy bosom rest my love-sick head!
Come, drive thy flocks beneath the shady hills,
Or softly slumber by the murmuring rills!
Ah no! he flies! that dear enchanting he!
Whose beauty steals my very self from me!

Yet wert thou wont the garland to prepare, To crown with fragrant wreaths thy Calia's hair: When to the lyre she tun'd the vocal lays, Thy tongue would flatter, and thine eyes speak praise: And when smooth-gliding in the dance she mov'd, Ask thy false bosom if it never lov'd?

And still her eye some little lustre bears, [tears! If swains speak truth!- though dim'd for thee with But fade each grace! since he no longer sees Those charms, for whom alone I wish to please!

But whence these sudden, sad presaging fears, These rising sighs, and whence these flowing tears? Ah! lest the trumpets terrible alarms

Have drawn the lover from his Calia's charms,
To try the doubtful field, and shine in azure arms!
Ah! canst thou bear the labours of the war,
Bend the tough bow, or dart the pointed spear?
Desist, fond youth! let others glory gain,
Seek empty honour o'er the surgy main,

Or sheath'd in horrid arms rush dreadful to the plain!
Thee, shepherd, thee the pleasurable woods,
The painted meadows, and the crystal floods,
Claim and invite to bless their sweet abodes.
There shady bowers and sylvan scenes arise,
There fountains murmur, and the spring supplies
Flowers to delight the smell, or charm the eyes:

But mourn, ye sylvan Scenes and shady Bowers; Weep, all ye Fountains; languish, all ye Flowers! If in a desert Damon but appear,

To Cælia's eyes a desert is more fair

Than all your charms, when Damon is not there!
Gods! what soft words, what sweet delusive wiles
He boasts and, oh! those dear undoing smiles!
Pleas'd with our ruin, to his arms we run:
To be undone by him, who would not be undone?
Alas! I rave! ye swelling Torrents, roll
Your watery tribute o'er my love-sick soul!
To cool my heart, your waves, ye Oceans, bear!
Oh! vain are all your waves, for Love is there!

But ah! what sudden thought to frenzy moves
My tortur d soul?-perhaps, my Damon loves!
Some fatal beauty, yielding all her charms,
Detains the lovely traitor from my arms!
Blast her, ye Skies! let instant vengeance seize
Those guilty charms, whose crime it is to please!
Damon is mine!-fond maid, thy fears subdue!
Am I not jealous? and my charmer true?
O! Heaven! from jealousy my bosom save!
Cruel as Death, insatiate as the Grave!

Ye powers! of all the ills that ever curst Our sex, sure man, dissembling man is worst! Like forward boys, awhile in wanton play, He sports with hearts, then throws the toys away: With specious wiles weak woman he assails; He swears, weeps, smiles, he flatters, and prevails: Then, in the moment, when the maid believes, The perjur'd traitor triumphs, scorns, and leaves. How oft my Damon swore, th' all-seeing Sun Should change his course, and rivers backward

run,

Ere his fond heart should range, or faithless prove
To the bright object of his stedfast love!
O! instant change thy course, all-seeing Sun!
Damon is false! ye Rivers backward run!

But die, O wretched Cælia, die! in vain
Thus to the fields and floods you breathe your pain!
The tear is fruitless, and the tender sigh,
And life a load!-forsaken Cælia, die!
Fly swifter, Time! O! speed the joyful hour!
Receive ine, Grave!-then I shall love no more!
Ah! wretched maid, so sad a cure to prove!
Ah! wretched maid, to fly to Death from Love!
Yet oh! when this poor frame no more shall live,
Be happy, Damon! may not Damon grieve!
Ah me! I'm vain! my death can not appear
Worth the vast price of but a single tear.
Forlorn, abandon'd, to the rocks I go;
But they have learnt new cruelties of you!
Alone, relenting Echo with me mourns,

And faint with grief she scarce my sighs returns!
Then, sighs, adieu! ye nobler passions, rise!
Be wise, fond maid!--but who in love is wise?
I rage, I rail, th' extremes of anger prove,
Nay, almost hate!-then love thee beyond love!
Pity, kind Heaven, and right an injur'd maid!
Yet, oh! yet, spare the dear deceiver's head!
If from the sultry suns at noon-tide hours
He seeks the covert of the breezy bowers,
Awake, O South, and where my charmer lies,
Bid roses bloom, and beds of fragrance rise!
Gently, O gently round in whispers fly,
Sigh to his sighs, and fan the glowing sky!
If o'er the waves he cuts the liquid way,
Be still, ye Waves, or round his vessel play!
And you, ye Winds, confine each ruder breath,
Lie hush'd in silence, and be calin as death!

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[rise,

Now sounds the vault of Heaven with loud alarms,
And gods by gods embattling rush to arms:
Here stalk the Titans of portentous size,
Burst from their dungeons, and assault the skies!
And there, unchain'd from Erebus and Night,
Auxiliar giants aid the gods in fight:
An hundred arms each tower-like warrior rears,
And stares from fifty heads amid the stars;
The dreadful brotherhood stern-frowning stands,
And hurls an hundred rocks from hundred hands:
The Titans rush'd with fury uncontrol'd:
Gods sunk on gods, o'er giant giant roll'd;
Then roar'd the Ocean with a dreadful sound,
Heaven shook with all its thrones, and groan'd the
Trembled th' eternal poles at every stroke, [ground,
And frighted Hell from its foundations shook:
Noise, horrid noise, th' aërial region fills,
Rocks dash on rocks, and hills encounter hills;
Through Earth, Air, Heaven, tumultuous clamours
And shouts of battle thunder in the skies.
Then Jove omnipotent display'd the god,
And all Olympus trembled as he trod:
He grasps ten thousand thunders in his hand,
Bares his red arm, and wields the forky brand;
Then aims the bolts, and bids his lightnings play;
They flash, and rend through Heaven their flaming
Redoubling blow on blow, in wrath he moves; [way:
The sing'd Earth groans, and burns with all her groves;
The floods, the billows, boiling hiss with fires,
And bickering flame, and smouldering smoke aspires:
A night of clouds blots out the golden day;
Full in their eyes the writhen lightnings play:
Ev'n Chaos burns: again Earth groans, Heaven roars,
As tumbling downward with its shining towers;
Or burst this Earth, torn from her central place,
With dire disruption from her deepest base:
Nor slept the Wind: the Wind new horrour forms,
Clouds dash on clouds before th' outrageous storms,
While, tearing up the sands, in drifts they rise,
And half the deserts mount th' encumber'd skies:
At once the tempest bellows, lightnings fly,
The thunders roar, and clouds involve the sky:
Stupendous were the deeds of heavenly might;
What less, when gods conflicting cope in fight?
Now Heaven its foes with horrid inroad gores,
And slow and sour recede the giant powers:

2 Egcon, Cottus, Gyges:

Here stalks Ægeon, here fierce Gyges moves,
There Cottus rends up hills with all their groves;
These hurl'd at once against the Titan bands
Three hundred mountains from three hundred hands:
And overshadowing, overwhelming bound
With chains infrangible beneath the ground;
Below this Earth, far as Earth's contines lie,
Through space unmeasur'd, from the starry sky;
Nine days an anvil of enormous weight,
Down rushing headlong from the aërial height,
Scarce reaches Farth; thence tost in giddy rounds
Scarce reaches in nine days th' infernal bounds:
A wall of iron of stupendous height

Guards the dire dungeons, black with threefold night:

High o'er the horrours of th' eternal shade
The stedfast base of earth and seas is laid;
There in coercive durance Jove detains
The groaning Titans in atlictive chains.
A seat of woe! remote from chearful day,
Through gulphs impassable, a boundless way.
Above these realms a brazen structure stands
With brazen portals, fram'd by Neptune's hands;
Through chaos to the ocean's base it swells;
There stern geon with his giants dwells;
Fierce guards of Jove! from hence the fountains

rise

That wash the earth, or wander through the skies;
That groaning murmur through the realm of woes,
Or feed the channels were the ocean flows;
Collected horrours throng the dire abodes,
Horrid and fell! detested ev'n by gods!
Enormous gulph! immense the bounds appear,
Wasteful and void, the journey of a year:
Where beating storms, as in wild whirls they fight,
Toss the pale wanderer, and retoss through night:
The powers immortal with affright survey
The hideous chasm, and seal it up from day. [rears
Hence through the vault of Heaven huge Atlas
His giant limbs, and props the golden spheres:
Here sable Night, and here the beamy Day,
Lodge and dislodge, alternate in their sway.
A brazen port the varying powers divides:
When Day forth issues, here the Night resides;
And when Night veils the skies, ob-equious Day,
Re-entering, plunges from the starry way.
She from her lamp, with beaming radiance bright,
Pours o'er th' expanded Earth a flood of light:
But Night, by Sleep attended, rides in shades,
Brother of Death, and ali that breathes invades :
From her 'foul womb they sprung, resistless powers,
Nurs'd in the horrours of Tartarean bowers,
Remote from Day, when with her flaming wheels
She mounts the skies, or paints the western hills:
With downy footsteps Sleep in silence glides
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the spacious tides;
The friend of life! Death unrelenting bears
An iron heart, and laughs at human cares;
She makes the mouldering race of man her prey,
And ev'n th' immortal powers detest her sway.

Thus fell the Titans from the realms above,
Beneath the thunder of almighty Jove;
Then Earth impregnate felt maternal woes, [throes:
And shook through all ber frame with teeming
Hence rose Typhoeus, a gigantic birth,
A monster sprung from Tartarus and Earth,
A match for gods in might! on high he spreads
From his huge trunk an hundred dragons heads,

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And from an hundred mouths in vengeance flings
Envenom'd foam, and darts an hundred stings;
Horrour, terrific, frowns from every brow,
And like a furnace his red eye-balls glow;
Fires dart from every crest; and, as he turns,
Keen splendours flash, and all the giant burns:
Whene'er he speaks, in echoing thunders rise
An hundred voices, and affright the skies,
Unutterably fierce! the bright abodes
Frequent they shake, and terrify the gods:
Now bellowing like a savage bull, they roar,
Or angry lions in the midnight hour;
Now yell like furious whelps, or hiss like snakes;
The rocks rebound, and every mountain shakes:
He hurl'd defiance 'gainst th' immortal powers,
And Heaven had seiz'd with all its shining towers,
But, at the voice of Jove, from pole to pole
Red lightnings flash, and raging thunders roll,
Rattling o'er all th' expansion of the skies,
Bolt after bolt o'er earth and ocean flies.
Stern frowns the god amidst the lightnings blaze,
Olympus shakes from his eternal base;
Trembles the earth; fierce flame involves the poles,
Devours the ground, and o'er the billows rolls:
Fires from Typhoeus flash: with dreadful sound
Storms rattle, thunder rolls, and groans the ground;
Above, below, the conflagration roars,
Ev'n the seas kindled burn through all their shores,
Deluge of fire! Earth rocks her tottering coasts,
And gloomy Pluto shakes with all his ghosts;
Ev'n the pale Titans, chain'd on burning floors,
Start at the din that rends th' infernal shores:
Then, in full wrath, Jove all the god applies,
And all his thunders burst at once the skies;
And rushing gloomy from th' Olympian brow,
He blasts the giant with th' almighty blow;
The giant tumbling sinks beneath the wound,
And with enormous ruin rocks the ground:
Nor yet the lightnings of th' Almighty stay, [way;
Through the sing'd earth they burst their burning
Earth kindling inward, melts in all her caves,
And hissing floats with fierce metallic waves:
As iron fusile from the furnace flows,
Or molten ore with keen effulgence glows,
When the dire bolts of Jove stern Vulcan frames,
In burning channels roll the liquid flames;
Thus melted earth, and Jove, from realms on high,
Plunge the huge giant to the nether sky.

Then from Typhoeus sprung the winds that bear
Storms on their wings, and thunder in the air:
But from the gods descend of milder kind,
The East, the West, the South, and Boreal wind;
These in soft whispers breathe a friendly breeze,
Play through the groves, or sport upon the seas;
They fan the sultry air with cooling gales,
And waft from realm to realm the flying sails:
The rest in storms of sounding whirlwinds fly,
Toss the wild waves, and battle in the sky;
Fatal to man! at once all Ocean roars,
And scatter'd navies bulge on distant shores.
Then thundering o'er the earth they rend their

way,

Grass, herb, and flower, beneath their rage decay; While towers, and domes, vain boasts of human trust,

Torn from their inmost base, are whelm'd in dust.
Thus Heaven asserted its eternal reign
O'er the proud giants, and Titanic train;
And now in peace the gods their Jove obey,
And all the thrones of Heaven adore his sway.

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ADVERTISEMENT.

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Shall I, all lost to shame, to Jason fly?
Then, Shame, farewell! Adieu for ever, Fame!
And yet I must—if Jason bleeds, I die!
Hail, black Disgrace! be fam'd for guilt, my name !
Live! Jason, live! enjoy the vital air!

Live through my aid! and fly where wings can bear!

But when he flies, ye poisons, lend your powers, THE translator has taken the liberty, in the folThat day, Medea treads th' infernal shores! lowing version from the Argonautics of Apollo-Then, wretched maid, thy lot is endless shame, ́nius, as well as in the story of Talus, to omit whatever has not an immediate relation to the subject; yet hopes that a due connection is not wanting; and that the reader will not be displeased with these short sketches from a poet, who is affirmed to be every where sublime, by no less a critic than Longinus; and from whom many verses are borrowed by so great a poet as Virgil.

Now rising shades a solemn gloom display,
O'er the wide Earth, and o'er th' ethereal way:
All night the sailor marks the northern team,
And golden circlet of Orion's beam :

A deep repose the weary wanderer shares,
And the faint watchman sleeps away his cares;
Ev'n the fond mother, while all breathless lies
Her child of love, in slumber seals her eyes;
No sound of village-dog, no noise invades
The death-like silence of the midnight shades:
Alone Medea wakes: To love a prey,
Restless she rolls, and groans the night away:
Now the fire-breathing bulls command her cares;
She thinks on Jason, and for Jason fears;
In sad review, on horrours horrours rise; [flies:
Quick beats her heart, from thought to thought she
As from replenish'd urns, with dubious ray,
The sun-beams dancing from the surface play,
Now here, now there, the trembling radiance falls
Alternate flashing round th' illumin'd walls;
Thus fluttering bounds the trembling virgin's blood,
And from her shining eyes descends a flood:
Now raving with resistless flames she glows,
Now sick with love she melts with softer woes:
The tyrant god, of every thought possest,
Beats in each pulse, and stings and racks her breast:
Now she resolves the magic to betray

To tame the bulls, now yield him up a prey:
Again, the drugs disdaining to supply,
She loaths the light, and meditates to die:
Anon, repelling with a brave disdain

The coward thought, she nourishes the pain :
Thus tost, retost with furious storms of cares,
On the cold ground she rolls, and thus with tears:
"Ah me! where'er 1 turn, before my eyes
A dreadful view, on sorrows sorrows rise!
Tost in a giddy whirl of strong desire,

I glow, I burn, yet bless the pleasing fire.

O had this spirit from its prison fled,

By Dian sent to wander with the dead,

Ere the proud Grecians view'd the Colchian skies;
Ere Jason, lovely Jason, met these eyes!
Hell gave the shining mischief to our coast,
Medea saw him, and Medea's lost-

But why these sorrows? if the powers on high
His death decree, die, wretched Jason, die!
Shall I elude my sire? my art betray?

Ah me! what words shall purge the guilt away But could I yield-O whither must I run

!

To find the man-whom Virtue bids me shun?

Then the proud dames of Colchos blast thy name▸
I hear them cry- The false Medea's dead,
Through guilty passion for a stranger's bed ;
Medea, careless of her virgin fame,
Preferr'd a stranger to a father's name!'
O may I rather yield this vital breath,
Than bear that base dishonour, worse than death!"
Thus wail'd the fair, and seiz'd, with horrid joy,
Drugs, foes to life, and potent to destroy;
A magazine of death! Again she pours
From her swoln eye-balls tears in shining showers;
With grief insatiate, and with trembling hands,
All comfortlesss the cask of death expands:
A sudden fear her labouring soul invades,
Struck with the horrours of th' infernal shades:
She stands deep-musing with a faded brow,
Absorpt in thought, a monument of woe!
While all the comforts that on life attend,
The cheerful converse, and the faithful friend,
By thought deep-imag'd in her bosom play,
Endearing life, and charm despair away:
Th' all-cheering suns with sweeter light arise,
And every object brightens to her eyes:
Then from her hand the baneful drug she throw's,
Consents to live, recover'd from her woes;
Resolv'd the magic virtue to betray,

She waits the dawn, and calls the lazy day:
Time seems to stand, or backward drive his wheels:
The hours she chides, and eyes the eastern hills:
At length the dawn with orient beams appears,
The shades disperse, and man awakes to cares.
Studious to please, her graceful length of hair
With art she binds, that wanton'd with the air;
From her soft cheek she wipes the tear away,
And bids keen lightnings from her eyes to play;
From limb to limb refreshing unguents pours,
Unguents, that breathe of Heaven, in copious
showers:

Her robe she next assumes; bright clasps of gold
Close to the lessening waist the robe infold;
Down from her swelling loins, the rest unbound
Floats in rich waves redundant o'er the ground:
Last, with a shining veil her cheeks she shades,
Then, swimming smooth along,magnificently treads.
Thus forward moves the fairest of her kind,
Blind to the future, to the present blind:
Twelve maids, attendants on her virgin bower,
Alike unconscious of the bridal hour,
Join to the car the mures: dire rites to pay,
To Hecate's black fane she bends her way;
A juice she bears, whose magic virtue tames
(Through fell Persephone) the rage of flames;
It gives the hero, strong in matchless might,
To stand secure of harms in mortal fight;
It mocks the sword: the sword without a wound,
Leaps as from marble, shiver'd to the ground:
She mounts the car'; nor rode the nymph alone;
On either side two lovely damsels shone:
• 869.

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