Oh no!-believe me, lovely girl, SONG. THE wreath you wove, the wreath you wove Is fair-but oh! how fair, If Pity's hand had stolen from Love One leaf to mingle there! If every rose with gold were tied, One faded leaf where Love had sighed Were sweetly worth them all! The wreath you wove, the wreath you wove Our emblem well may be ; Its bloom is yours, but hopeless love ANACREONTIC. I FILLED to thee, to thee I drank, At length I bid an artist paint Behold, how bright that purple lip Is blushing through the wave at me! BLEST infant of eternity! Before the day-star learned to move, In pomp of fire, along his grand career, From his rich quiver to the farthest sphere, Nestling beneath the wings of ancient night, 1 Love and Psyche are here considered as the active and passive principles of creation, and the universe is supposed to have received its first harmonizing impulse from the nuptial sympathy between these two powers. A marriage is generally the first step in cosmogony. Timæns held Form to be the father, and Matter the mother o the World; Elion and Berouth, I think, are Sanchoniatho's first spiritual lovers, and Mancocapac and his wife introduced creation amongst the Peruvians. In short, Harlequin seems to have studied cosmogonies, when he said, 'tutto il mondo è fatto come la nostra famiglia.' No form of beauty soothed thine eye, As through the dim expanse it wandered wide; As o'er the watery waste it lingering died ! Unfelt the pulse, unknown the power, That latent in his heart was sleeping; Oh Sympathy! that lonely hour Saw Love himself by absence weeping! But look what glory through the darkness beams! What spirit art thou, moving o'er the tide So lovely? art thou but the child Of the young godhead's dreams, That mock his hope with fancies strange and wild? Till, kindled by the ardent spell Of his desiring eyes, And all impregnate with his sighs. They spring to life in shape so fair and warm? 'Tis she! Psyche, the first-born spirit of the air, The blooming god-the spirit fair— And their first kiss is great Creation's dawn! TO HIS SERENE HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF MONTPENSIER, ON HIS PORTRAIT OF THE LADY ADELAIDE F-RB-S. Donington Park, 1802. To catch the thought, by painting's spell, Howe'er remote, howe'er refine i, And o'er the magic tablet tell The silent story of the mind; O'er Nature's form to glance the eye, Her morning tinges ere they fly, Her evening blushes ere they fade! These are the pencil's grandest theme, That light the Muse's flowery dream, Yet, yet when Friendship sees the trace, On which her eye delights to rest; While o'er the lovely look serene, The smile of peace, the bloom of youth, The eye that tells the bosom's truth; She feels the value of thy art, THE PHILOSOPHER ARISTIP. TO A LAMP WHICH WAS GIVEN HIM Dulcis conscia lectuli lucerna. OH! love the Lamp (my mistress The faithful lamp that, many a night, Beside thy Lais' lonely bed Has kept his little watch of light! 'Full often has it seen her weep, And fix her eye upon its flame, Till, weary, she has sunk to sleep, Repeating her beloved's name! It was not very difficult to become a philosopher amongst the ancients. A moderate store of learning, with a considerable portion of c nfidence, and wit enough to produce an occasional apophthegm, were all the necessary qualifications for the purpose. The principles of moral science were so very imperfectly understood, that the founder of a new sect, in forming his ethical code, might consult either fancy or temperament, and adapt it to his own passions and propensities; so that Mahomet, with a little more learning, might have flourished as a philosopher in those days, and would have required but the polish of the schools to become the rival of Aristippus in morality. In the science of nature, too, though they discovered some valuable truths, yet they seemed not to know that they were truths, or at least were as well satisfied with errors; and Xenophanes, who asserted that the stars were igneous clouds, lighted up every night and extinguished again in the morning, was thought and styled a philosopher, as generally as he who anticipated Newton in developing the arrange ment of the universe. Yes, dearest Lamp! by every charm On which thy midnight beam has hung;1 The neck reclined, the graceful arm My Lamp and I shall never part!· In fancy's hour, thy gentle rays Shall guide my visionary tread Through poesy's enchanting maze ! Thy flame shall light the page refined, Where still we catch the Chian's breath, Where still the bard, though cold in Has left his burning soul behind! Oh man of Ascra's dreary glades !2 shades The crystal of Castalia's wave. Then, turning to a purer lore, We'll cull the sages' heavenly store, From Science steal her golden clue, And every mystic path pursue, Where Nature, far from vulgar eyes, Through labyrinths of wonder flies! "Tis thus my heart shall learn to know The passing world's precarious flight, Where all that meets the morning glow Is changed before the fall of night! I'll tell thee, as I trim thy fire, Swift, swift the tide of being runs ; The ancients had their lucernæ cubiculariæ, or bed-chamber lamps, which, as the Emperor Galenus said, 'nil eras meminere;' and with the same commendation of secrecy, Praxagora addresses her lamp, in Aristophanes, Exkλns. We may judge how fanciful they were in the use and embellishment of their lamps, from the famous symbolic Lucerna which we find in the Romanum Museum Mich. Ang. Causei, p. 127. Oh then, if earth's united power Which Heaven has made for man to use, And man should think it guilt to lose? Pleasure! thou only good on earth !3 The sage's immortality! Then far be all the wisdom hence, And all the lore, whose tame control Would wither joy with chill delays ! Alas! the fertile fount of sense, At which the young, the panting soul Drinks life and love, too soon decays! Sweet Lamp! thou wert not formed to shed Thy splendour on a lifeless pageWhate'er my blushing Lais said Of thoughtful lore and studies sage, 'Twas mockery all-her glance of joy Told me thy dearest, best employ ! And, soon as night shall close the eye Of Heaven's young wanderer in the west; When seers are gazing on the sky, To find their future orbs of rest; Hesiod, who tells us in melancholy terms of his father's flight to the wretched village of Ascra. Epy. Kai Hμep. v. 251. 3 Aristippus considered motion as the principle of happiness, in which idea he differed from the Epicureans, who looked to a state of repose as the only true voluptuousness, and avoided even the too lively agitations of pleasure, as a violent and ungraceful derangement of the senses. |