Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms; That, in short, you're a woman; your lip and your eye As mortal as ever drew gods from the sky. But I will not believe them-no, Science, to you Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know. Oh! who, that has e'er enjoyed rapture complete, Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it? As for you, my sweet-voiced and invisible love, You must surely be one of those spirits, that rove you, with a veil of seclusion between, Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love, Then, come and be near me, for ever be mine, We shall hold in the air a communion divine, As sweet as, of old, was imagin'd to dwell In the grotto of Numa, or Socrates' cell. And oft, at those lingering moments of night, When the heart's busy thoughts have put slumber to flight, You shall come to my pillow and tell me of love, Such as angel to angel might whisper above. I should be sorry to think that my friend had any serious intentions of frightening the nursery by this story: I rather hope though the manner of it leads me to doubt that his design was to ridicule that distempered taste which prefers those monsters of the fancy to the "speciosa miracula" of true poetic imagination. Sweet spirit!-and then, could you borrow the tone Of that voice, to my ear like some fairy-song known, The voice of the one upon earth, who has twin'd And kisses my eyelid and breathes on my cheek, Fair spirit! if such be your magical power, It will lighten the lapse of full many an hour; And, let fortune's realities frown as they will, Hope, fancy, and Cara may smile for me still. THE RING.1 A TALE. Annulus ille viri.-OvID. Amor. lib. ii. eleg. 15. THE happy day at length arriv'd As soon as morn was in the sky, In many a sweet device of mirth The younger maids with Isabel Disported through the bowers, And deck'd her robe, and crown'd her head With motley bridal flowers. The matrons all in rich attire, I find, by a note in the manuscript, that he met with this story in a German author, Fromman upon Fascination, book iii. part vi. ch. 18. On consulting the work, I perceive that Fromman quotes it from Beluacensis, among many other stories equally diabolical and interesting. E. |