And copying from their moral pages
Fine recipes for making sages;
Though long with those divines at school,
Who think to make us good by rule;
Who, in methodic forms advancing,
Teaching morality like dancing,
Tell us, for Heaven or money's sake,
What steps we are through life to take:
Though thus, my friend, so long em-
ployed,

With so much midnight oil destroyed,
I must confess, my searches past,
I've only learned to doubt at last.
I find the doctors and the sages
Have differed in all climes and ages,
And two in fifty scarce agree
On what is pure morality.

"T is like the rainbow's shifting zone,
And every vision makes its own.

"Wisdom and she were both designed "To make the senses more refined, "That man might revel, free from cloying, "Then most a sage when most enjoy. ing!"

Is this morality?—Oh, no! Even I a wiser path could show. The flower within this vase confined, The pure, the unfading flower of mind, Must not throw all its sweets away Upon a mortal mould of clay: No, no, its richest breath should rise In virtue's incense to the skies.

But thus it is, all sects we see
Have watchwords of morality:
Some cry out Venus, others Jove;
Here 't is Religion, there 't is Love.
But while they thus so widely wander,
While mystics dream and doctors ponder;
And some, in dialectics firm,
Seek virtue in a middle term;
While thus they strive, in Heaven's de-
fiance,

To chain morality with science;
The plain good man, whose actions teach
More virtue than a sect can preach,
Pursues his course, unsagely blest,
His tutor whispering in his breast;
Nor could he act a purer part,
Though he had Tully all by heart.
And when he drops the tear on woe,
He little knows or cares to know
That Epictetus blamed that tear,
By Heaven approved, to virtue dear!

Oh! when I've seen the morning beam
Floating within the dimpled stream;
While Nature, wakening from the night,
Has just put on her robes of light,
Have I, with cold optician's gaze,
Explored the doctrine of those rays?
No, pedants, I have left to you
Nicely to separate hue from hue.
Go, give that moment up to art,
When Heaven and nature claim the heart;
And, dull to all their best attraction,
Go measure angles of refraction.
While I, in feeling's sweet romance,
Look on each daybeam as a glance
From the great eye of Him above,
Wakening his world with looks of love!

THE TELL-TALE LYRE. I'VE heard, there was in ancient days A Lyre of most melodious spell; 'T was heaven to hear its fairy lays,

If half be true that legends tell.

'T was played on by the gentlest sighs, And to their breath it breathed again In such entrancing melodies

As ear had never drunk till then!

Not harmony's serenest touch

So stilly could the notes prolong; They were not heavenly song so much As they were dreams of heavenly song!

If sad the heart, whose murmuring air Along the chords in languor stole, The numbers it awakened there

Were eloquence from pity's soul.

Or if the sigh, serene and light,

Was but the breath of fancied woes, The string, that felt its airy flight,

Soon whispered it to kind repose.

And when young lovers talked alone,
If, mid their bliss that Lyre was near,
It made their accents all its own,

And sent forth notes that heaven might
hear.

There was a nymph, who long had loved,

But dared not tell the world how well: The shades, where she at evening roved, Alone could know, alone could tell.

'T was there, at twilight time, she stole, When the first star announced the night,

With him who claimed her inmost soul, To wander by that soothing light.

It chanced that, in the fairy bower Where blest they wooed each other's smile,

This Lyre, of strange and magic power, Hung whispering o'er their heads the while.

And as, with eyes commingling fire,

They listened to each other's vow, The youth full oft would make the Lyre A pillow for the maiden's brow:

And, while the melting words she breathed
Were by its echoes wafted round,
Her locks had with the chords SO
wreathed,

One knew not which gave forth the sound.

Alas, their hearts but little thought,

While thus they talked the hours away, That every sound the Lyre was taught Would linger long, and long betray.

So mingled with its tuneful soul
Were all their tender murmurs grown,
That other sighs unanswered stole,

Nor words it breathed but theirs alone.

Unhappy nymph! thy name was sung
To every breeze that wandered by;
The secrets of thy gentle tongue
Were breathed in song to earth and sky.

The fatal Lyre, by Envy's hand

Hung high amid the whispering groves, To every gale by which 't was fanned, Proclaimed the mystery of your loves.

Nor long thus rudely was thy name

To earth's derisive echoes given; Some pitying spirit downward came, And took the Lyre and thee to heaven. There, freed from earth's unholy wrongs, Both happy in Love's home shall be; Thou, uttering naught but seraph songs, And that sweet Lyre still echoing thee!

PEACE AND GLORY.

WRITTEN ON THE APPROACH OF WAR.

WHERE is now the smile, that lightened
Every hero's couch of rest?

Where is now the hope, that brightened
Honor's eye and Pity's breast?
Have we lost the wreath we braided
For our weary warrior men?

Is the faithless olive faded?

Must the bay be plucked again?

Passing hour of sunny weather,

Lovely, in your light awhile, Peace and Glory, wed together,

Wandered through our blessed isle. And the eyes of Peace would glisten, Dewy as a morning sun,

Oh happy time, when laws of state When all that ruled the country's fate, Its glory, quiet, or alarms,

Was planned between two snow-white arms!

Blest times! they could not always

last

And yet, even now, they are not past.
Though we have lost the giant mould,
In which their men were cast of old,
Woman, dear woman, still the same,
While beauty breathes through soul or
frame,

While man possesses heart or eyes,
Woman's bright empire never dies!

No, Fanny, love, they ne'er shall say, That beauty's charm hath past away; Give but the universe a soul Attuned to woman's soft control, And Fanny hath the charm, the skill, To wield a universe at will.

THE GRECIAN GIRL'S DREAM OF THE BLESSED ISLANDS.1

TO HER LOVER.

- ἧχι τε καλὸς

Πυθαγόρης, ὅσσοι τε χόρον στήριξαν ἔρωτος. Απόλλων περί Πλωτίνου.

"Oracul. Metric. a Joan.

Opsop. collecta."

WAS it the moon, or was it morning's ray, That call'd thee, dearest, from these arms away?

Scarce hadst thou left me, when a dream of night

Came o'er my spirit so distinct and bright,
That, while I yet can vividly recall
Its witching wonders, thou shalt hear
them all.

Methought I saw, upon the lunar beam, Two winged boys, such as thy muse migh dream,

Descending from above, at that still hour, And gliding, with smooth step, into my bower.

1 It was imagined by some of the ancients that there is an ethereal ocean above us, and that the sun and moon are two floating, luminous islands, in which the spirits of the blest reside. Accordingly we find that the word wκeavós was sometimes synonymous with anp, and death was not unfrequently called ὠκεανοῖο πόρος, or " the passage of the ocean.'

Thou knowest, that, far beyond our nether sky,

And shown but dimly to man's erring eye, A mighty ocean of blue ether rolls,2

1 Eunapius, in his life of Iamblichus, tells us of two beautiful little spirits or loves, which Iamblichus raised by enchantment from the warm springs at Gadara; " dicens astantibus (says the author of the "Dii Fatidici," p. 160) illos esse loci Genios: " which words, however, are not in Eunapius.

I find from Cellarius, that Amatha, in the neighborhood of Gadara, was also celebrated for its warm springs, and I have preferred it as a more poetical name than Gadara. Cellarius quotes Hieronymus. "Est et alia villa in vicinia Gadareæ nomine Amatha, ubi calidæ aquæ erumpunt." Geograph. Antiq." lib. iii. cap.

13.

2 This belief of an ocean in the heavens, or 66 waters above the firmament," was one of the many physical errors in which the early fathers bewildered themselves. Le P. Baltus, in his Défense des Saints Pères accusés de Platoisme," taking it for granted that the ancients were more correct in their notions (which by no means appears from what I have already quoted), adduces the obstinacy of the fathers, in this whimsical opinion, as a proof of their repugnance to even truth from the hands of the philosophers. This is a strange way of defending the fathers, and attributes much more than they deserve to

Gemmed with bright islands, where the chosen souls,

Who 've past in lore and love their earthly hours,

Repose for ever in unfading bowers.
That very moon, whose solitary light
So often guides thee to my bower at night,
Is no chill planet, but an isle of love,
Floating in splendor through those seas
above,

And peopled with bright forms, aërial grown,

Nor knowing aught of earth but love alone.

Thither, I thought, we winged our airy

way:

Mild o'er its valleys streamed a silvery day,

While, all around, on lily beds of rest, Reclined the spirits of the immortal Blest.3

Oh! there I met those few congenial maids,

Whom love hath warmed, in philosophic shades;

There still Leontium,1 on her sage's breast,

the philosophers. For an abstract of this work of Baltus, (the opposer of Fontenelle, Van Dale, etc. in the famous Oracle controversy,) see "Bibliothèque des Auteurs Ecclésiast. du 18me siècle, part 1. tom. ii."

3 There were various opinions among the ancients with respect to their lunar establishment; some made it an elysium, and others a purgatory; while some supposed it to be a kind of entrepôt between heaven and earth, where souls which had left their bodies, and those that were on their way to join them, were deposited in the valleys of Hecate, and remained till further orders. τοῖς περὶ σελήνην ἄερι λέγειν αὐτὰς κατοικεῖν, καὶ ἀπ ̓ αὐτῆς κάτω χωρεῖν εἰς τὴν πeрiyeιov Yéveσɩv.—Stob. lib.i. "Eclog. Physic."

4 The pupil and mistress of Epicurus, who called her his "dear little Leontium 22 (Λεοντάplov), as appears by a fragment of one of his letters in Laertius. This Leontium was a woman of talent; "she had the impudence (says Cicero) to write against Theophrastus;" and Cicero, at the same time, gives her a name which is neither polite nor translatable. "Meretricula etiam Leontium contra Theophrastum scribere ausa est."-"De Natur. Deor." She left a daughter called Danae, who was just as rigid an Epicurean as her mother; something like Wieland's Danae in Agathon.

It would sound much better, I think, if the name were Leontia, as it occurs the first time in Laertius; but M. Ménage will not hear of this reading.