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Dear shall be the day we met,

Oh! that Love's celestial dream you

In all its purity would know, Let not the senses' ardent beam

Too strongly through the vision glow!

Love sweetest lies conceal'd in night,

The night where Heaven has bid him lie; Oh! shed not there unhallow'd light,

Or, Psyche knows the boy will fly!

Dear Psyche! many a charmed hour, Through many a wild and magic waste, To the fair fount and blissful bower'

Thy mazy foot my soul hath traced!

Where'er thy joys are number'd now,
Beneath whatever shades of rest,
The Genius of the starry brow3

Has chain'd thee to thy Cupid's breast;

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1 See the story in APULEIUS. With respect to this beautiful allegory of Love and Psyche, there is an ingenious idea suggested by the senator BUONAROTTI, in his Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi. He thinks the fable is taken from some very occult mysteries, which had long been celebrated in honour of Love; and he accounts, upon this supposition, for the silence of the more an

cient authors upon the subject, as it was not till towards the decline

of Pagan superstition that writers could venture to reveal or discuss such ceremonies; accordingly, he observes, we find Lucian and Plutarch treating, without reserve, of the Dea Syria, and Isis and Osiris; and APULEIUS, who has given us the story of Cupid and Psyche, has also detailed some of the mysteries of Isis.-See the Giornale di Litterati d'Italia, tome xxvii, articol. 1. See also the Observations upon the ancient gems in the Museum Florentinum, vol. i, P. 156.

I cannot avoid remarking here an error into which the French Encyclopédistes have been led by M. Spon, in their article Psyché.— They say, Petron fait un récit de la pompe nuptiale de ces deux amans (Amour et Psyché). Déjà, dit-il, etc. etc. The Psyche of PETRONICS, however, is a servant-maid, and the marriage which he describes is that of the young Pannychis. See SPox's Recherches Curieuses, etc. dissertat. 5.

Allusions to Mrs T-Gas's poem.

3 Constancy.

And dear shall be the night we parted!

Oh! if regrets, however sweet,

Must with the lapse of time decay, Yet still, when thus in mirth you meet, Fill high to him that's far away!

Long be the flame of memory found
Alive within your social glass;
Let that be still the magic round
O'er which oblivion dares not pass!

EPISTLE VIII.

TO THE HONOURABLE W. R. SPENCER.

Nec venit ad duros musa vocata Getas.
OVID. ex Ponto, lib. i, ep. 5.

FROM BUFFALO, UPON LAKE ERIE.

THOU oft hast told me of the fairy hours
Thy heart has number'd, in those classic bowers
Where fancy sees the ghost of ancient wit
'Mid cowls and cardinals profanely flit,
And pagan spirits, by the Pope unlaid,
Haunt
every stream and sing through every shade!
There still the bard, who (if his numbers be
His tongue's light echo) must have talk'd like thee,
The courtly bard, from whom thy mind has caught
Those playful, sunshine holidays of thought,
In which the basking soul reclines and glows,
Warm without toil and brilliant in repose.
There still he roves, and laughing loves to see
How modern monks with ancient rakes agree;
How mitres hang where ivy wreaths might twine,
And heathen Massic 's damn'd for stronger wine!
There too are all those wandering souls of song
With whom thy spirit hath communed so long,
Whose rarest gems are every instant hung
By memory's magic on thy sparkling tongue.
But here, alas! by Erie's stormy lake,
As far from thee my lonely course I take,
No bright remembrance o'er the fancy plays,
No classic dream, no star of other days
Has left that visionary glory here,

That relic of its light, so soft, so dear,
Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene,
The humblest shed, where genius once has been!

All that creation's varying mass assumes
Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms;
Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow,
Bright lakes expand, and conquering' rivers flow;
Mind, mind alone, without whose quickening ray,
The world's a wilderness, and man but clay,

'This epithet was suggested by CHARLEVOIX's striking description of the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi :- I believe this is the finest confluence in the world. The two rivers are much of the same breadth, each about half a league; but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waves to the opposite shore without mixing them: afterwards it gives its colour to the Missis

By this image the Platonists expressed the middle state of the sippi, which it never loses again, but carries quite down to the sea.» soul between sensible and intellectual existence.

-Letter xxvih

Mind, mind alone, in harren, still repose,
Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows!
Take Christians, Mohawks, Democrats, and ali
From the rude wig-wam to the congress-hall,
From man the savage, whether slaved or free,
To man the civilized, less tame than he!
T is one dull chaos, one unfertile strife
Betwixt half-polish'd and half-barbarous life;
Where every ill the ancient world can brew
Is mix'd with every grossness of the new;
Where all corrupts, though little can entice,
And nothing 's known of luxury, but vice!

Is this the region, then, is this the clime
For golden fancy! for those dreams sublime,
Which all their miracles of light reveal

To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?
No, no-the Muse of inspiration plays
O'er every scene; she walks the forest-maze,
And climbs the mountain; every blooming spot
Burns with her step, yet man regards it not!
She whispers round, her words are in the air,
But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,
Without one breath of soul, divinely strong,
One ray of heart to thaw them into song!

Yet, yet forgive me, oh you sacred few!
Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;
Whom, known and loved through many a social eve,
'T was bliss to live with, and 't was pain to leave!
Less dearly welcome were the lines of yore
The exile saw upon the sandy shore,
When his lone heart but faintly hoped to find
One print of man, one blessed stamp of mind!
Less dearly welcome than the liberal zeal,
The strength to reason, and the warmth to feel,
The manly polish and the illumined taste,
Which, 'mid the melancholy, heartless waste
My foot has wandered, oh you sacred few!
I found by Delaware's green banks with you.
Long may you hate the Gallic dross that runs
O'er fair country
your
and corrupts its sons;
Long love the arts, the glories which adorn
Those fields of freedom, where your sires were born;
Oh! if America can yet he great,

If, neither chain'd by choice, nor damn'd by fate
To the mob-mania which imbrutes her now,
She yet can raise the bright but temperate brow
Of single majesty, can grandly place
An empire's pillar upon Freedom's base,
Nor fear the mighty shaft will feebler prove
For the fair capital that flowers above!-
If yet, released from all that vulgar throng,
So vain of dullness and so pleased with wrong,
Who hourly teach her, like themselves, to hide
Folly in froth, and barrenness in pride,

In the society of Mr Dennie and his friends, at Philadelphia, I passed the few agreeable moments which my tour through the States afforded me. Mr Dennie has succeeded in diffusing through this elegant little circle that love for good literature and sound politics, which he feels so zealously himself, and which is so very rarely the characteristic of his countrymen. They will not, I trust, accuse me of illiberality for the picture which I have given of the ignorance and corruption that surround them. If I did not hate, as I ought, the rabble to which they are opposed, I could not value, as I do, the spirit with which they defy it; and in learning from them what Americans can be, I but see with the more indignation what Americans are.

She yet can rise, can wreathe the attic charms
Of soft refinement round the pomp of arms,
And see her poets flash the fires of song,
To light her warriors' thunderbolts along!
It is to you, to souls that favouring Heaven
Has made like yours, the glorious task is given-
Oh! but for such Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quicken'd without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,

Her fruits would fall, before her spring were o'er!

Believe me, Spencer, while I wing'd the hours
Where Schuylkill undulates through banks of flowers,
Though few the days, the happy evenings few,
So warm with heart, so rich with mind they flew,
That my full soul forgot its wish to roam,
And rested there, as in a dream of home!
And looks I met, like looks I loved before,
And voices too, which, as they trembled o'er
The chord of memory, found full many a tone
Of kindness there in concord with their own!
Oh! we had nights of that communion free,
That flush of heart, which I have known with thee
So oft, so warmly; nights of mirth and mind,
Of whims that taught, and follies that refined:
When shall we both renew them? when, restored
To the pure feast, and intellectual board,
Shall I once more enjoy with thee and thine
Those whims that teach, those follics that refine?
Even now, as, wandering upon Erie's shore,
I hear Niagara's distant cataract roar,

I sigh for England-oh! these weary feet
Have many a mile to journey ere we meet!
Ω πατρίς, ως σου καρτα νυν μνείαν έχω.

ΤΟ

A WARNING.

On fair as Heaven and chaste as light!
Did Nature mould thee all so bright,
That thou shouldst ever learn to weep
O'er languid Virtue's fatal sleep,
O'er shame extinguish'd, honour fled,
Peace lost, heart wither'd, feeling dead?

No, no! a star was born with thee,
Which sheds eternal purity!
Thou hast within those sainted eyes
So fair a transcript of the skies,
In lines of fire such heavenly lore,
That man should read them and adore!
Yet have I known a gentle maid
Whose early charms were just array'd
In Nature's loveliness like thine,
And wore that clear, celestial sign,
Which seems to mark the brow that's fair
For Destiny's peculiar care!

Whose bosom too was once a zone
Where the bright gem of Virtue shone;
Whose eyes were talismans of fire
Against the spell of man's desire!
Yet, hapless girl, in one sad hour

Her charms have shed their radiant flower;

The gem has been beguiled away;
Her eyes have lost their chastening ray;
The simple fear, the guiltless shame,
The smiles that from reflection came,
All, all have fled, and left her mind
A faded monument behind!

Like some wave-beaten, mouldering stone,
To memory raised by hands unknown,
Which, many a wintry hour, has stood
Beside the ford of Tyra's flood,

To tell the traveller, as he cross'd,
That there some loved friend was lost;
Oh!'t was a sight I wept to see-
Heaven keep the lost-one's fate from thee!

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Whose harp around my altar swells, The sweetest of a thousand shells?.

'T was thus the deity, who treads
The arch of Heaven, and grandly sheds
Day from his eye-lids!—thus he spoke,
As through my cell his glories broke:

Who is the maid, with golden hair, With eyes of fire and feet of air, Whose harp around my altar swells, The sweetest of a thousand shells?»

Aphelia is the Delphic fair,
With eyes of fire and golden hair,
Aphelia's are the airy feet,
And hers the harp divinely sweet;

For foot so light has never trod
The laurel'd caverns 2 of the god,
Nor harp so soft has
ever given
A strain to earth or sigh to Heaven!

Then tell the virgin to unfold, In looser pomp, her locks of gold, And bid those eyes with fonder fire Be kindled for a god's desire; 3 Since He, who lights the path of yearsEven from the fount of morning's tears, To where his setting splendours burn Upon the western sea-maid's urnCannot, in all his course, behold Such eyes of fire, such hair of gold! Tell her he comes in blissful pride, His lip yet sparkling with the tide That mantles in Olympian bowls, The nectar of eternal souls! For her, for her he quits the skies, And to her kiss from nectar flies.

nation towards any fair visitor of the shrine, and at the same time felt a diffidence in his own powers of persuasion, he had but to proclaim that the God himself was enamoured of her, and had signified his divine will that she should sleep in the interior of the temple. Many a pious husband connived at this divine assignation, and even declared himself proud of the selection with which his family had been distinguished by the deity. In the temple of Jupiter Belus there was a splendid bed for these occasions. In Egyptian Thebes the same mockery was practised; and at the oracle of Patara in Lycia, the priestess never could prophecy till an interview with the deity was allowed her. The story which we read in JOSEPHUS (lib. xviii, cap. 3) of the Roman matron Paulina, whom the priests of Isis, for a bribe, betrayed in this manner to Mundus, is a singular instance of the impudent excess to which credulity suffered these impostures to be carried. This story has been put into the form of a little novel, under the name of La Pudicitia Schernita, by the licentious and unfortunate PALLAVICINO. See his Opere Scelte, tom. i.-I have made my priest here prefer a cave to the temple.

In the 9th Pythic of Pindar, where Apollo, in the same manner, requires of Chiron some information respecting the fair Cyrene, the Centaur, in obeying, very gravely apologises for telling the god what his omniscience must know so perfectly already :

Ει δε γε χρη και παρ σοφον αντιφεριξαι
Ερεω.

3 Αλλ' εις δάφνωση γυαλα βήσομαι ταδε.--ΕπIPID.

Ion. v. 76.

Ne deve partorir ammiratione ch' egli si pregiasse di haver una Deità concorrente nel possesso della moglie; mentre anche noi nei nostri secoli, non ostante così rigorose legge d'onore, trovasi chi s'ascrive à gloria il veder la moglie honorata da gl' amplessi di un Principe.-PALLAVICINO.

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The Corycian Cave, which PAUSANIAS mentions. The inhabitants of Parnassus held it sacred to the Corycian nymphs, who were chil dren of the river Plistus.

See a preceding note, page 91. It should seem that lunar spi rits were of a purer order than spirits in general, as Pythagoras was said by his followers to have descended from the regions of the moon. The beresiarch Manes too imagined that the sun and moon are the residence of Christ, and that the ascension was nothing more than his flight to those orbs.

3 Temple of Jupiter Belus, at Babylon, which consisted of several chapels and towers. In the last tower (says HERODOTUS) is a large chapel, in which there lies a bed, very splendidly ornamented, and beside it a table of gold; but there is no statue in the place. No man is allowed to sleep here, but the apartment is appropriated to a female, whom, if we believe the Chaldean priests, the deity selects from the women of the country, as his favourite.-Lib. i, cap. 181. The poem now before the reader, and a few more in the present collection, are taken from a work, which I rather prematurely announced to the public, and which, perhaps very luckily for myself, was interrupted by my voyage to America. The following fragments from the same work describe the effect of one of these invitations of Apollo upon the mind of a young enthusiastic girl.

Delphi heard ber shrine proclaim,
In oracles, the guilty flame.
Apollo loved my youthful charms,
Apollo woo'd me to his arms!--
Sure, sure when man so oft allows
Religion's wreath to bind his brows,
Weak wondering woman must believe,
Where pride and zeal at once deceive,
When flattery takes a holy vest,
Oh! 't is too much for woman's breast!

How often ere the destined time,
Which was to seal my joys sublime,
How often did I trembling ran
To meet, at morn, the mounting sun,
And, while his fervid beam be threw
Upon my lips luxuriant dew,

I thought-alas! the simple dream—-
There burn'd a kiss in every beam;
With parted lips inhaled their heat,
And sigh'd, Oh God! thy kiss is sweet!.

Tell him, when to his midnight loves

In mystic majesty he moves,
Lighted by many an odorous fire,
And hymn'd by all Chaldæa's choir-
Oh! tell the godhead to confess,

The pompous joy delights him less
(Even though his mighty arms infold
A priestess on a couch of gold)
Than when in love's unholier prank,
By moonlight cave or rustic bank,
Upon his neck some wood-nymph lies,
Exhaling from her lip and eyes
The flame and incense of delight,
To sanctify a dearer rite,

A mystery, more divinely warm'd
Than priesthood ever yet perform'd!»

Happy the maid, whom Heaven allows
To break for Heaven her virgin vows!
Happy the maid!-her robe of shame
Is whiten'd by a heavenly flame,
Whose glory, with a lingering trace,
Shines through and deifies her race!

Oh, virgin! what a doom is thine!
To-night, to-night a lip divine
In every kiss shall stamp on thee
A seal of immortality!

Fly to the cave, Aphelia, fly;

There lose the world and wed the sky!

Oft too, at day's meridian hour,
When to the Naiad's gleamy bower
Our virgins steal, and, blushing, hide
Their beauties in the folding tide,

If, through the grove, whose modest arms
Were spread around my robeless charms,
A wandering sunbeam wanton fell
Where lovers' looks alone should dwell,
Not all a lover's looks of flame
Could kindle such an amorous shame.
It was the sun's admiring glance,
And, as I felt its glow advance
O'er my young beauties, wildly flush'd,
I burn'd and panted, thrill'd and blush'd!

No deity at midnight came:
The lamps, that witness'd all my shame,
Reveal'd to these bewilder'd eyes
No other shape than earth supplies;
No solar light, no nectar'd air,
All, all, alas! was human there:
Woman's faint conflict, virtue's fall
And passion's victory, human all!
How gently must the guilt of love
Be charm'd away by Powers above,
When men possess such tender skill
In softening crime and sweetening ill!
'Twas but a night, and morning's rays
Saw me, with fond, forgiving gaze,
Hang o'er the quiet slumbering breast
Of him who ruin'd all my rest;
Him, who had taught these eyes to weep
Their first sad tears, and yet could sleep!

FONTENELLE, in his playful rifacimento of the learned materials of Van-Dale, has related in his own inimitable manner an adventure of this kind which was detected and exposed at Alexandria.-See [Histoire des Oracles, seconde dissertat. chap. vii. CREBILlon, 100, in one of his most amusing little stories, has made the Génie MangeTaupes, of the Isle Jonquille, assert this privilege of spiritual beings in a manner very formidable to the husbands of the island. He says, however, Les maris ont le plaisir de rester toujours dans le doute; en pareil cas, c'est une ressource,»

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Let me but see that snowy arm

Once more upon the dear harp lie, And I will cease to dream of harm, Will smile at fate, while thou art nigh!

Give me that strain, of mournful touch,
We used to love long, long ago,
Before our hearts had known as much
As now, alas! they bleed to know!

Sweet notes! they tell of former peace,
Of all that look'd so rapturous then,
Now wither'd, lost-oh! pray thee, cease,
I cannot bear those sounds again!

Art thou too wretched? yes, thou art;
I see thy tears flow fast with mine-
Come, come to this devoted heart,
'Tis breaking, but it still is thine!

A VISION OF PHILOSOPHY.

'T WAS on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met
The venerable man: a virgin bloom
Of softness mingled with the vigorous thought
That tower'd upon his brow; as when we see
The gentle moon and the full radiant sun
Shining in heaven together. When he spoke,
'T was language sweeten'd into song-such holy sounds
As oft the spirit of the good man hears,
Prelusive to the harmony of heaven,

When death is nigh! 2 and still, as he unclosed
His sacred lips, an odour, all as bland
As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers
That blossom in Elysium,3 breathed around!
With silent awe we listen'd while he told
Of the dark veil which many an age had hung
O'er nature's form, till by the touch of Time
The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous,
And half the goddess beam'd in glimpses through it!
Of magic wonders, that were known and taught
By him (or Cham or Zoroaster named)
Who mused, amid the mighty cataclysm,

In PLUTARCH'S Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with, after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year this supernatural personage appeared to mortals, and conversed with them: the rest of his time he passed among the Genii and the Nymphs. Περί την ερυθραν θάλασσαν εύρον, ανθρώποις ανα πάν ετος άπαξ εντυγχάνοντα, τ' αλλα δε συν ταις νυμφαις, νόμασι και δαίμοσι, ώς έφασκε. He spoke in a tone not far removed from singing, and whenever he opened his lips, a fragrance filled the place: Seguero de τον τόπον ευωδία κατείχε, του ςόματος ήδιςον απο TIYEQYTOS. From him Cleombrotus learned the doctrine of a plurality of worlds.

2 The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before his death, imagined that he heard a strain of music in the air. See the poem of HEINSIUS . In harmoniam quam paulo ante obitum audire sibi visus est Dousa. Page 501.

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