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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 honor of Love; and accounts, upon this supposition, for the silence of the more ancient 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, observes this author, we find Lucian and Plutarch treating, without reserve, of the Dea Syria, as well as of Isis and Osiris; and Apuleius, to whom we are indebted for the beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche, has also detailed some of the mysteries of Isis. See the Giornale di Litterati d'Italia, tom. xvii. articol. 1. See also the ob

servations 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 Psyche. They say "Pétrone fait un récit de la pompe nuptiale de ces deux amans, (Amour et Psyche) Déjà, dit-il," &c. &c. The Psyche of Petronius, however, is a servant-maid, and the marriage which he describes is that of the young Pannychis. See Spon's Recherches curieuses, &c. Dissertat. 5.

2 Allusions to Mrs. Tighe's Poem.

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Still be the song to Psyche dear,

The song, whose gentle voice was given To be, on earth, to mortal ear,

An echo of her own, in heaven.

FROM

THE HIGH PRIEST OF APOLLO

ΤΟ

A VIRGIN OF DELPHI,1

Cum digno digna . . . . .

SULPICIA.

"WHO is the maid, with golden hair, "With eye of fire, and foot of air, "Whose harp around my altar swells, "The sweetest of a thousand shells?" "Twas thus the deity, who treads

The arch of heaven, and proudly sheds Day from his eyelids-thus he spoke, As through my cell his glories broke.

Aphelia is the Delphic fair,2 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 laurell'd caverns of the god, Nor harp so soft hath ever given A sigh to earth or hymn to heaven.

"Then tell the virgin to unfold, "In looser pomp, her locks of gold, "And bid those eyes more fondly shine "To welcome down a Spouse Divine; "Since He, who lights the path of years— "Even from the fount of morning's tears

1 This poem, as well as a few others that occur afterwards, formed part of a work which I had early projected, and even announced to the public, but which, luckily perhaps for myself, had been interrupted by my visit to America in the year 1803.

Among those impostures in which the priests of the pagan temples are known to have indulged, one of the most favorite was that of announcing to some fair votary of the shrine, that the God himself had become enamored of her beauty, and would descend in all his glory, to pay her a visit within the recesses of the fane. An adventure of this description formed an episode in the classic romance which I had sketched out; and the short fragment, given above, belongs to an epistle by which the story was to have been introduced.

2 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 apologizes for telling the God what his omniscience must know so perfectly already.

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"To where his setting splendors burn
"Upon the western sea-maid's urn-
"Doth not, 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.
"Oh, he would quit his star-throned height,
"And leave the world to pine for light,

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There is a cave beneath the steep,* Where living rills of crystal weep O'er herbage of the loveliest hue That ever spring begemm'd with dew; There oft the greensward's glossy int Is brighten'd by the recent print Of many a faun and naiad's feet,Scarce touching earth, their step so fleet,That there, by moonlight's ray, had trod, In light dance, o'er the verdant sod. "There, there," the god, impassion'd, said, "Soon as the twilight tinge is fled,

"And the dim orb of lunar souls

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Ει δε γε χρη και παρ σοφον αντιφεριξαι,
Ερεω.

Αλλ' εις δαφνωδη γυαλα βήσομαι ταδε.
EURIPID. Ion. v. 76.

4 The Corycian Cave, which Pausanias mentions. The inhabitants of Parnassus held it sacred to the Corycian nymphs, who were children of the river Plistus.

5 See a preceding note, p. 81, n. 2. It should seem that lunar spirits 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 heresiarch Manes, in the same manner, imagined that the sun and moon are the residence of Christ, and that the ascension was nothing more than his flight to those orbs.

The temple of Jupiter Belus, at Babylon; in one of whose towers there was a large chapel set apart for these celestial assignations. "No man is allowed to sleep here," says Herodotus; "but the apartment is appropriated to a female, whom, if we believe the Chaldæan priests, the deity selects from the women of the country, as his favorite." Lib. i. cap. 181.

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