At once, a storm of passion heaved
My boiling bosom, much I grieved,
But more I raged, at ev'ry breath
Devoting Death himself to death.
With less revenge did Naso teem,
When hated Ibis was his theme;
With less, Archilochus, denied
The lovely Greek, his promised bride.
But lo! while thus I execrate,
Incensed, the minister of fate,
Wondrous accents, soft, yet clear,
Wafted on the gale I hear.
“Ah, much deluded! lay aside
Thy threats and anger misapplied!
Art not afraid with sound like these
T'offend, where thou canst not appease?
Death is not (wherefore dream'st thou thus?)
The son of Night and Erebus ;
Nor was of fell Erynnis born
On gulfs, where Chaos rules forlorn:
But, sent from God, his presence leaves
To gather home his ripen'd sheaves,
To call encumber'd souls away
From fleshly bonds to boundless day,
(As when the winged hours excite,
And summon forth the morning-light)
And each to convoy to her place
Before th'Eternal Father's face.
But not the wicked-them, severe
Yet just, from all their pleasures here
He hurries to the realms below,
Terrific realms of penal woe!
Myself no sooner heard his call,
Than, 'scaping through my prison-wall,
I bade adieu to bolts and bars,
And soar'd, with angels, to the stars,
Lil him of old, to whom 'twas giv'n
To mount, on fiery wheels to heav'n.
Boötes' waggon, slow with cold,
Appall'd me not; nor to behold
The sword, that vast Orion draws,
Or e'en the Scorpion's horrid claws.
Beyond the Sun's bright orb I fly,
And, far beneath my feet descry
Night's dread goddess, seen with awe,
Whom her winged dragons draw.
Thus ever wond'ring at my speed,
Augmented still as I proceed,
I pass the planetary sphere,
The milky Way-and now appear
Heav'n's crystal battlements, her door
Of massy pearl and em'rald floor.
For never can
"But here I cease.
The tongue of once a mortal man
In suitable description trace
The pleasures of that happy place
Suffice it, that those joys divine
Are all, and all for ever, mine!"
NATURE UNIMPAIRED BY TIME.
Ah, how the human mind wearies itself
With her own wand'rings, and involved in gloom
Impenetrable, speculates amiss!
Measuring, in her folly, things divine
By human; laws inscribed on adamant
By laws of man's device, and counsels fix'd
For ever, by the hours, that pass and die.
How? shall the face of nature then be plough'd
Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last
On the great Parent fix a sterile curse?
Shall even she confess old age and halt,
And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows?
Shall foul Antiquity with rust and drought,
And Famine, vex the radiant worlds above?
Shall Time's unsated maw crave and ingulf
The very heav'ns, that regulate his flight?
And was the Sire of all able to fence
His works, and to uphold the circling worlds,
But, through improvident and heedless haste,
Let slip th'occasion ?--so then-all is lost-
And in some future evil hour, yon arch
Shall crumble, and come thund'ring down the poles.
Jar in collision, the Olympian king
Fall with his throne, and Pallas, holding forth
The terrors of the Gorgon shield in vain,
Shall rush to the abyss like Vulcan hurl'd
Down into Lemnos, through the gate of heav'n.
Thou also, with precipitated wheels,
Phoebus! thine own son's fall shalt imitate,
With hideous ruin shalt impress the deep
Suddenly, and the flood shall reek, and hiss,
At the extinction of the lamp of day.
Then too shall Hemus, cloven to his base,
Be shatter'd, and the huge Ceraunian hills,
Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immersed
In Erebus, shall fill himself with fear.
No. The Almighty Father surer laid
His deep foundations, and providing well
For the event of all, the scales of Fate
Suspended in just equipoise, and bade
His universal works, from age to age,
One tenor hold, perpetual, undisturb'd.
Hence the prime mover wheels itself about Continual, day by day, and with it bears In social measure swift the heav'ns around. Not tardier now is Saturn than of old, Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars. Phoebus, his vigor unimpair'd still shows Th'effulgence of his youth, nor needs the god A downward course, that he may warm the vales, But, ever rich in influence, runs his road, Sign after sign, through all the heav'nly zone. Beautiful, as at first, ascends the star
For odorif 'rous Ind, whose office is
To gather home betimes th'ethereal flock,
To pour them o'er the skies again at eve,
And to discriminate the night and day
Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes, and wanes,
Alternate, and with arms extended still,
She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams.
Nor have the elements deserted yet
Their functions; thunder, with as loud a stroke
As erst, smites thro' the rocks, and scatters them.
The east still howls, still the relentless north
Invades the shudd'ring Scythian, still he breathes
The winter, and still rolls the storms along.
The king of ocean, with his wonted force
Beats on Pelorus, o'er the deep is heard
The hoarse alarm of Triton's sounding shell,
Nor swim the monsters of the Ægean sea
In shallows, or beneath diminish'd waves.
Thou too, thy ancient vegetative pow'r
Enjoy'st, O earth! Narcissus still is sweet,
And, Phoebus! still thy favorite, and still
Thy fav'rite Cytherea! both retain
Their beauty, nor the mountains, ore-enrich'd
For punishment of man, with purer gold
Teem'd ever, or with brighter gems the Deep.
Thus, in unbroken series, all proceeds,
And shall, till wide involving either pole,
And the immensity of yonder heav'n,
The final flames of destiny absorb
The world, consumed in one enormous pyre!
AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE.
Ye sister pow'rs who o'er the sacred grove
Preside, and thou, fair mother of them all,
Mnemosyne! and thou, who in thy grot
Immense, reclined at leisure, hast in charge
The archives, and the ord❜nances of Jove,
And dost record the festivals of heav'n,
Eternity!-Inform us who is He,
That great original by nature chos'n
To be the archetype of human kind,
Unchangeable, immortal, with the poles
Themselves coeval, one, yet ev'ry where,
An image of the god who gave him being?
Twin-brother of the goddess born from Jove,
He dwells not in his father's mind, but though
Of common nature with ourselves, exists
Apart, and occupies a local home.
Whether, companion of the stars, he spend
Eternal ages, roaming at his will
From sphere to sphere the tenfold heav'ns, or dwell
On the moon's side, that nearest neighbours earth, Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit
Among the multitude of souls ordain'd
To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance)
That vast and giant model of our kind
In some far distant region of this globe
Sequester'd stalk, with lifted head on high
O'ertow'ring Atlas, on whose shoulders rest
The stars, terrific even to the gods.
Never the Theban seer, whose blindness proved
His best illumination, him beheld
In secret vision; never him the son
Of Pleione, amid the noiseless night
Descending, to the prophet-choir reveal'd:
Him never knew th'Assyrian priest, who yet
The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,
And Belus, and Osiris, far renown'd ;
Nor even thrice great Hermes, although skill'd
So deep in myst'ry to the worshippers
Of Isis show'd a prodigy like him.
And thou, who hast immortalized the shades
Of Academus, if the schools received
This monster of the fancy first from thee,
Either recall at once the banish'd bards
To thy republic, or thyself evinced
A wilder fabulist, go also forth.
Oh that Pieria's spring would through my breast Pour its inspiring influence, and rush
No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable Father's sake,
All meaner themes renounced, my muse, on wings
Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain.
For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please,
She frames this slender work, nor know I aught
That may thy gifts more suitably requite;
Though, to requite them suitably, would ask
Returns much nobler, and surpassing far
The meagre stores of verbal gratitude:
But, such as I possess, I send thee all.
This page presents thee, in their full amount,
With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought;
Nought, save the riches that from airy dream
In secret grottos, and in laurel bow'rs,
I have, by Clio's golden gift, acquired.
Verse is a work divine; despise not thou
Verse, therefore, which evinces (nothing more)
Man's heavenly source, and which, retaining still
Some scintillations of Promethean fire,
Bespeaks him animated from above.
The Gods love verse; the infernal Pow'rs themselves
Confess the influence of verse, which stirs
The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains
Of adamant both Pluto and the Shades.
In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale
Tremulous Sybil, make the future known,
And he who sacrifices, on the shrine
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