Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

Perhaps, indifference has not chill'd it,
Haply, it yet a throb may give→
Yet no-perhaps, a doubt has kill'd it!
Oh, CARA!-does the infant live?

TO CARA,

ON THE DAWNING OF A NEW YEAR'S DAY. WHEN midnight came to close the year,

We sigh'd to think it thus should take The hours it gave us-hours as dear

As sympathy and love could make
Their blessed moments! every sun
Saw us, my love, more closely one!

But, CARA, when the dawn was nigh
Which came another year to shed,
The smile we caught from eye to eye
Told us those moments were not fled;
Oh no! we felt some future sun
Should see us still more closely one!

[blocks in formation]

As mortal as ever were tasted or press'd!
But I will not believe them-no, science! to you
I have long bid a last and a careless adieu :
Still flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring its cause,
You forget how superior, for mortals below,

Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know.
Oh! who, that has ever had rapture complete,
Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;
How rays are confused, or how particles fly
Through the medium refin'd of a glance or a sigh!
Is there one, who but once would not rather have
known it,

Than written, with HARVEY, whole volumes upon it?

No, no-but for you, my invisible love,

I will swear, you are one of those spirits that rove
By the bank where, at twilight, the poet reclines,
When the star of the west on his solitude shines,
And the magical fingers of fancy have hung
Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue!
Oh! whisper him then, 'tis retirement alone
Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone;
Like you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen,

1 This and the subsequent poem have appeared in the public prints.

And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres,
Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears!
Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love,
In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,
To have you for ever invisibly nigh,

Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh!
'Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of

care

I might sometimes converse with my nymph of the

air,

And turn with disgust from the clamorous crew,
To steal in the pauses one whisper from you.

Oh! 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 is weigh'd down and the eyelid is
light,

You shall come to my pillow and tell me of love,
Such as angel to angel might whisper above!
Oh Spirit!-and then, could you borrow the tone
Of that voice, to my ear so bewitchingly known,
The voice of the one upon earth, who has twin'd
With her essence for ever my heart and my mind!
Though lonely and far from the light of her smile,
And exile and weary and hopeless the while,
Could you shed for a moment that voice on my ear,
I will think at that moment my CARA is near,
That she comes with consoling enchantment to speak,
And kisses my eyelid and sighs on my cheek,
And tells me, the night shall go rapidly by,
For the dawn of our hope, of our heaven is nigh!
Sweet Spirit! if such be your magical power,
And let Fortune's realities frown as they will,
It will lighten the lapse of full many an hour;
Hope, Fancy, and CARA may smile for me still.

PEACE AND GLORY.
WRITTEN AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THR
PRESENT WAR.

WHERE now is the smile that lighten'd
Every hero's couch of rest?
Where is now the hope that brightened
Honour'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 pluck'd again?

Passing hour of sunny weather,

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

Wander'd through the blessed isle;
And the eyes of Peace would glisten,
Dewy as a morning sun,

When the timid maid would listen
To the deeds her chief had done.
Is the hour of dalliance over?
Must the maiden's trembling feet
Waft her from her warlike lover
To the desert's still retreat?

[blocks in formation]

To be the theme of every hour
The heart devotes to fancy's power,
When her soft magic fills the mind
With friends and joys we've left behind,
And joys return, and friends are near,
And all are welcom'd with a tear-
In the mind's purest seat to dwell,
To be remember'd oft and well

By one whose heart, though vain and wild,
By passion led, by youth beguil'd,

Can proudly still aspire to know
The feeling soul's divinest glow!
If thus to live in every part

Of a lone weary wanderer's heart;
If thus to be its sole employ

Can give thee one faint gleam of joy,
Believe it, Mary! oh! believe
A tongue that never can deceive,
When passion doth not first betray
And tinge the thought upon its way!
In pleasure's dream or sorrow's hour,
In crowded hall or lonely bower,
The business of my life shall be,
For ever to remember thee!

And though that heart be dead to mine,
Since love is life and wakes not thine,
I'll take thy image, as the form

Of something I should long to warm,
Which, though it yield no answering thrill,
Is not less dear, is lovely still!
I'll take it, wheresoe'er I stray,
The bright, cold burthen of my way!
To keep this semblance fresh in bloom,
My heart shall be its glowing tomb,
And love shall lend his sweetest care,
With memory to embalm it there!

SONG.

TAKE back the sigh, thy lips of art
In passion's moment breath'd to me!
Yet, no-it must not, will not part,
Tis now the life-breath of my heart,
And has become too pure for thee!
Take back the kiss, that faithless sigh
With all the warmth of truth imprest;
Yet, no-the fatal kiss may lie:
Upon thy lip its sweets would die,

Or bloom to make a rival blest!

Take back the vows that, night and day,

My heart receiv'd, I thought, from thine; Yet, no-allow them still to stay; They might some other heart betray, As sweetly as they've ruin'd mine!

A BALLAD.

THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP. WRITTEN AT NORFOLK, IN VIRGINIA.

"They tell of a young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterwards heard of. As he had frequently said, in his ravings, that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger or been lost in some of its dreadful morasses."-Anon.

"La Poésie a ses monstres comme la nature."

D'Alembert

"THEY made her a grave, too cold and damp

For a soul so warm and true;

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,' Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

"And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of death is near!"
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds-
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before!

And when on the earth he sunk to sleep,

If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay, where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep

The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake,

And the copper-snake breath'd in his ear, Till he starting cried, from his dream awake, "Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake,

And the white canoe of my dear?"
He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface play'd-
"Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light
And the dim shore echoed, for many a night,
The name of the death cold maid!

Till he hollow'd a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;

Far he follow'd the meteor spark,

"י!

The wind was high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat return'd no more.

But oft from the Indian hunter's camp
This lover and maid so true

1 The Great Dismal Swamp is ten or twelve miles distant from Norfolk, and the lake in the middle of it (about seven miles long) is called Drummond's Pond.

Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake by a fire-fly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe!

EPISTLE III.

TO THE

MARCHIONESS DOWAGER OF D-LL. FROM BERMUDA, JANUARY 1804. LADY, where'er you roam, whatever beam Of bright creation warms your mimic dream; Whether you trace the valley's golden meads, Where mazy Linth his lingering current leads ;' Enamour'd catch the mellow hues that sleep, At eve on Meillerie's immortal steep; Or musing o'er the Lake, at day's decline, Mark the last shadow on the holy shrine,2 Where, many a night, the soul of Tell complains Of Gallia's triumph and Helvetia's chains; Oh! lay the pencil for a moment by, Turn from the tablet that creative eye, And let its splendour, like the morning ray Upon a shepherd's harp, illume my lay!

Yet, Lady! no-for song so rude as mine, Chase not the wonders of your dream divine; Still, radiant eye! upon the tablet dwell; Still, rosy finger! weave your pictur'd spell; And, while I sing the animated smiles Of fairy nature in these sun-born isles, Oh! might the song awake some bright design, Inspire a touch, or prompt one happy line, Proud were my soul, to see its humble thought On painting's mirror so divinely caught, And wondering Genius, as he learn'd to trace The faint conception kindling into grace, Might love my numbers for the spark they threw, And bless the lay that lent a charm to you.

Have you not oft, in nightly vision, stray'd
To the pure isles of ever-blooming shade,
Which bards of old, with kindly magic, plac'd
For happy spirits in th' Atlantic waste?3
There, as eternal gales, with fragrance warm,
Breath'd from elysium through each shadowy form
In eloquence of eye, and dreams of song,*
They charm'd their lapse of nightless hours along!
Nor yet in song, that mortal ear may suit,
For every spirit was itself a lute,

Where Virtue wakened with elysian breeze,
Pure tones of thought and mental harmonies
Believe me, Lady, when the zephyrs bland
Floated our bark to this enchanted land,
These leafy isles upon the ocean thrown,
Like studs of emerald o'er a silver zone;

1 Lady D., supposed, was at this time still in Switzerand, where the powers of her pencil must have been frequently awakened.

2 The chapel of William Tell, on the Lake of Lucerne. 3 M. Gebelin says, in his Monde Primitif, "Lorsque StraDon crut que les anciens théologiens et Poëtes placaient les Champs Elysées dans 'es Isles de l'Océan Atlantique, il n'entendit rien à leur doctrine." M. Gebelin's supposition, I have no doubt, is the more correct; but that of Strabo is, in the present instance, most to my purpose.

Not all the charm, that ethnic fancy gave
To blessed arbours o'er the western wave,
Could wake a dream, more soothing or sublime,
Of bowers etherial and the spirit's clime!

The morn was lovely, every wave was still,
When the first perfume of a cedar-hill
Sweetly awak'd us, and with smiling charms,
The fairy harbour woo'd us to its arms'
Gently we stole, before the languid wind,
Through plantain shades, that like an awning twis'd
And kiss'd on either side the wanton sails,
Breathing our welcome to these vernal vales;
While, far reflected o'er the wave serene,
Each wooded island sheds so soft a green,
That the enamour'd keel, with whispering play,
Through liquid herbage seem'd to steal its way i
Never did weary bark more sweetly glide,
Or rest its anchor in a lovelier tide!
Along the margin, many a brilliant dome,
White as the palace of a Lapland gnome,
Brightened the wave; in every myrtle grove
Secluded, bashful, like a shrine of love,
Some elfin mansion sparkled through the shade;
And, while the foliage interposing play'd,
Wreathing the structure into various grace,
Fancy would love in many a form to trace
The flowery capital, the shaft, the porch,2
And dream of temples, till her kindling torch
Lighted me back to all the glorious days
Of Attic genius; and I seem'd to gaze
On marble, from the rich Pentalic mount,
Gracing the umbrage of some Naiad's fount.

Sweet airy being ! who, in brighter hours,
Liv'd on the perfume of these honied bowers,
In velvet buds, at evening, lov'd to lie,
And win with music every rose's sigh!
Though weak the magic of my humble strain,
To charm your spirit from its orb again,
Yet, oh! for her, beneath whose smile I sing,
For her, (whose pencil, if your rainbow wing
Were dimm'd or ruffled by a wintry sky,
Could smooth its feather and relume its dye,)
A moment wander from your starry sphere,
And if the lime-tree grove that once was dear,

1 Nothing can be more romantic than the little harbour of St. George. The number of beautiful islets, the singular clearness of the water, and the animated play of the graceful little boats, gliding for ever between the islands, and seeming to sail from one cedar grove into another, form, all together, the sweetest miniature of nature that can be imagined.

2 This is an illusion which, to the few who are fanciful enough to indulge in it, renders the scenery of Bermuda particularly interesting. In the short but beautiful twilight of their spring evenings, the white cottages, scattered over the islands, and but partially seen through the trees that surround them, assume often the appearance of little Grecian temples, and fancy may embellish the poor fisherman's hut with columns which the pencil of Claude might imitate. I had one favourite object of this kind in my walks, which the hospitality of its owner robbed me of, by asking me to visit him. He was a plain good man, and received me well and warmly, but I never could turn his house into a Grecian temple again.

3 Ariel. Among the many charms which Bermuda has for a poetic eye, we cannot for an instant forget that it is the scene of Shakspeare's Tempest, and that here he conjured up the "delicate Ariel," who alone is worth the whole heaven of ancient mythology.

The sunny wave, the bower, the breezy hill,
The sparkling grotto, can delight you still,
Oh! take their fairest tint, their softest light,
Weave all their beauty into dreams of night,
And, while the lovely artist slumbering lies,
Shed the warm picture o'er her mental eyes;
Borrow for sleep her own creative spells,
And brightly show what song but faintly tells!

THE GENIUS OF HARMONY.

AN IRREGULAR ODE.

Ad harmoniam canere mundum.

Cicero de Nat. Deor. Lib. 3.

There lies a shell beneath the waves,
In many a hollow winding wreath'd
Such as of old,

Echoed the breath that warbling sea-maids breath'd;
This magic shell

From the white bosom of a syren fell,

As once she wander'd by the tide that laves
Sicilia's sand of gold.

It bears

Upon its shining side, the mystic notes
Of those entrancing airs,'

The genii of the deep were wont to swell,

When heaven's eternal orbs their midnight music roll'd!

Oh! seek it, wheresoe'er it floats;

And, if the power

Of thrilling numbers to thy soul be dear,
Go, bring the bright shell to my bower,
And I will fold thee in such downy dreams,
As lap the spirit of the seventh sphere,

When Luna's distant tone falls faintly on his ear!2
And thou shalt own,

That, through the circle of creation's zone,

1 In the "Historie Naturelle des Antilles," there is an account of some curious shells, found at Curacoa, on the back of which were lines, filled with musical characters, so distinct and perfect, that the writer assures us a very charming trio was sung from one of them. "On le nomme musical, parce qu'il porte sur le dos des lignes noirâtres pleines de notes, qui ont une espèce de clé pour les mettre en chant, de sorte que l'on dirait qu'il ne manque que la lettre à cette tablature naturelle. Ce curieux gentilhomme (M. du Montel) rapporte qu'il en a vu qui avaient cinq lignes, une clé et des notes, qui formaient un accord parfait. Quelqu'un y avait ajouté la lettre, que la nature avait oubliée, et la faisait chanter en forme de trio, dont l'aire était fort agréable." Chap. 19. Art. 11. The author adds, a poet might imagine that these shells were used by the syrens at their

concerts.

2 According to Cicero, and his commentator, Macrobius, the lunar tone is the gravest and faintest on the planetary heptachord. "Quam ob causam summus ille cœli stellifer cursus, cujus conversio est concitatior, acuto et excitato movetur sono: gravissimo autem hic lunaris atque infimus." -Somn. Scip. Because, says Macrobius, "spiritu ut in extremitate languescente jam volvitur, et propter angustias quibus penultimus orbis arctatur impetu leniore convertitar."-In Somn. Scip. Lib. 2. Cap. 4. It is not very easy to understand the ancienta in their musical arrangement of the heavenly bodies. See Ptolem. Lib. 3.

Leone Hebreo, pursuing the idea of Aristotle, that the heavens are animal, attributes their harmony to perfect and reciprocal love. "Non però manca fra loro il perfetto e reciproco amore: la causa principale, che ne mostra il loro amore, è la lor amicizia harmoniaca e la concordanza, che perpetuamente si trova in loro."-Dialog. 2. di Amore, p. 58. This "reciproco amore" of Leone is the OTS of the ancient Empedocles, who seems, in his Love and Hate af the Elements, to have given a glimpse of the principles

Where matter darkles or where spirit beams;
From the pellucid tides,' that whirl
The planets through their maze of song,
To the small rill, that weeps along

Murmuring o'er beds of pearl;
From the rich sigh

Of the sun's arrow through an evening sky,"
To the faint breath the tuneful osier yields
On Afric's burning fields;3

Oh! thou shalt own this universe divine
Is mine!

That I respire in all, and all in me,
One mighty mingled soul of boundless harmony!

Welcome, welcome mystic shell!
Many a star has ceas'd to burn*
Many a tear has Saturn's urn

O'er the cold bosom of the ocean wept,"
Since thy aerial spell

Hath in the waters slept!
I fly,

With the bright treasure to my choral sky,
Where she, who wak'd its early swell,
The syren, with a foot of fire,

Walks o'er the great string of my Orphic Lyre,
Or guides around the burning pole

The winged chariot of some blissful soul!"
While thou!

Oh, son of earth! what dreams shall rise for thee! Beneath Hispania's sun,

Thou'lt see a streamlet run,

Which I have warm'd with dews of melody;
Listen!-when the night-wind dies

Down the still current, like a harp it sighs!

of attraction and repulsion. See the fragment to which I

allude in Laertius, Αλλοτε μεν φιλότητα, συνερχομεν. κ.τ Lib. 8. Cap. n. 12.

[ocr errors]

1 Leucippus, the atomist, imagined a kind of vortices in the heavens, which he borrowed from Anaxagoras, and possibly suggested to Descartes.

2 Heraclides, upon the allegories of Homer, conjectures that the idea of the harmony of the spheres originated with this poet, who in representing the solar beams as arrows, supposes them to emit a peculiar sound in the air.

3 In the account of Africa which d'Ablancourt has translated, there is mention of a tree in that country, whose branches when shaken by the hand produce very sweet sounds. "Le même auteur (Abenzégar) dit, qu'il y a uncertain arbre, qui produit des gaules comme d'osier, et qu'en les prenant à la main et les branlant, elles font une espèce d'harmonie fort agréable," etc. etc.-L'Afrique de Marmol. 4 Alluding to the extinction, or at least the disappearance of some of those fixed stars, which we are taught to consider as suns, attended each by its system. Descartes thought that our earth might formerly have been a sun, which became obscured by a thick incrustation over its surface. This probably suggested the idea of a central fire.

5 Porphyry says, that Pythagoras held the sea to be a tear. Tv JATTY MAY xxx sx sxxpuor. De Vit, and some one else, if I mistake not, has added the planet Saturn as the source of it. Empedocles, with similar affectation, called the sea "the sweat of the earth" parα TAS 7ns. See Rittershusius upon Porphyry, Num. 41.

6 The system of harmonized orbs was styled by the ancients, the Great Lyre of Orpheus, for which Lucian accounts, η δε Λύρη επταμιτος ενσα την των κινημένων αστρων αρμονίαν συνεβάλλετο, κ. τ. λ. in Astrolog.

Η Διοίλο ψυχής ισαριθμός τους αστροις, ένειμε 9' εκαστ την προς εκαστον, και έμβιβάσας ΩΣ ΕΙΣ ΟΧΗΜΑ. Για ton. Timaus.

8 This musical river is mentioned in the romance of Achilles Tatius. ETI TOTEμN *** v 88 2××02 JEANS TH vdaros ACANTOS. The Latin version, in supplying the hia tus, which is in the original, has placed the river in Hispania. "In Hispania quoque fluvius est, quem primo as pectu," etc. etc.#

A liquid chord in every wave that flows,
An airy plectrum every breeze that blows!!
There, by that wondrous stream,
Go, lay thy languid brow,

And I will send thee such a godlike dream,
Such-mortal! mortal! hast thou heard of him,2
Who, many a night with his primordial lyre,3
Sat on the chill Pangæan mount,4

And, looking to the orient dim,

Watch'd the first flowing of that sacred fount,
From which his soul had drunk its fire!
Oh! think what visions, in that lonely hour,
Stole o'er his musing breast!

What pious ecstasy

Wafted his prayer to that eternal Power,

Whose seal upon this world imprest
The various forms of bright divinity!

Or, dost thou know what dreams I wove,
'Mid the deep horror of that silent bower,"
Where the rapt Samian slept his holy slumber?
When, free

From every earthly chain,

From wreaths of pleasure and from bonds of pain,
His spirit flew through fields above,

Drank at the source of nature's fontal number,*
And saw, in mystic choir, around him move

The stars of song, Heaven's burning minstrelsy!
Such dreams, so heavenly bright,

I swear

By the great diadem that twines my hair,
And by the seven gems that sparkle there,"

1 These two lines are translated from the words of Achilles Tatius. Εαν γαρ ολίγος ανεμος εις τας δίνας εμπέση, το μεν ύδωρ ως χορδή κρύεται, το δε πνεύμα το υδατος πλεκ προν γίνεται το ρεύμα δε ως κιθαρα λαλει. Lib. 2.

2 Orpheus.

3 They called his lyre αρχαιότροπον επτάχορδον Ορφεως. See a curious work by a professor of Greek at Venice, entitled" Hebdomades, sive septem de septenario libri." Lib. 4. Cap. 3. p. 177.

4 Eratosthenes, telling the extreme veneration of Orpheus for Apollo, says that he was accustomed to go to the Pangæan mountain at day-break, and there wait the rising of the sun, that he might be the first to hail its beams. ET!γειρόμενος το της νυκτός, κατά την εωθινήν επι το όρος το καλεμένου Παγγαίον, προσεμενε τας ανατολας, ίνα ίδη τον Ηλιον πρωτον. Καταστερισμ. 24.

5 There are some verses of Orpheus preserved to us, which contain sublime ideas of the unity and magnificence of the Deity. As those which Justin Martyr has produced: Ουτός μεν χαλκείον ες ερανόν εστήρικται Χρυσείω ενι χρόνω, κ. τ. λ.

Ad Græc. cohortat. It is thought by some, that these are to be reckoned amongst the fabrications which were frequent in the early times of Christianity. Still it appears doubtful to whom we should impute them; they are too pious for the Pagans, and too poetical for the Fathers.

6 In one of the Hymns of Orpheus, he attributes a figured seal to Apollo, with which he imagines that deity to have stamped a variety of forms upon the universe.

Mingling their beams

In a soft Iris of harmonious light,

Oh, mortal! such shall be thy radiant dreams!

EPISTLE IV.

TO GEORGE MORGAN, ESQ.

of Norfolk, VIRGINIA.'

FROM BERMUDA, JANUARY 1804.

ΚΕΙΝΗ Δ' ΗΝΕΜΟΕΣΣΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΤΡΟΠΟΣ, ΟΙΑ Θ' ΑΛΙΠ
ΛΗΞ, ΑΙΘΥΙΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΜΑΛΛΟΝ ΕΠΙΔΡΟΜΟΣ ΗΕΠΕΡ
ΙΠΠΟΙΣ, ΠΟΝΤΩ ΕΝΕΣΤΗΡΙΚΤΑΙ.

Callimach, Hymn. in Del. v. ii.

OH! what a tempest whirl'd us hither!?
Winds, whose savage breath could wither
All the light and languid flowers
That bloom in Epicurus' bowers!

Yet think not, George, that Fancy's charm
Forsook me in this rude alarm.
When close they reef'd the timid sail,
When, every plank complaining loud,
We labour'd in the midnight gale,

And e'en our haughty main-mast bow'd!
The muse, in that unlovely hour,
Benignly brought her soothing power,
And, midst the war of waves and wind,
In songs elysian lapp'd my mind!
She open'd, with her golden key,

The casket where my memory lays
Those little gems of poesy,

Which time has sav'd from ancient days!
Take one of these, to LAIS sung-

I wrote it while my hammock swung,
As one might write a dissertation
Upon "suspended animation!"

Cassiodorus, whose idea I may be supposed to have borrowed, says, in a letter upon music to Boetius, "Ut diade ma oculis, varia luce gemmarum, sic cythara diversitate soni, blanditur auditui." This is indeed the only tolerable thought in the letter. Lib. 2. Variar.

Norfolk. His talents are worthy of a much higher sphere, 1 This gentleman is attached to the British consulate at but the excellent dispositions of the family with whom he resides, and the cordial repose he enjoys amongst some of the kindest hearts in the world, should be almost enough to atone to him for the worst caprices of fortune. The consul himself, Colonel Hamilton, is one among the very few instances of a man, ardently loyal to his king, and yet beloved by the Americans. His house is the very temple of hospitality, and I sincerely pity the heart of that stranger, who, warm from the welcome of such a board, and with the taste of such Madeira still upon his lips, "col dolce in bocca," could sit down to write a libel on his host, in the true spirit of a modern philosophist. See the Travels of the Duke de

7 Alluding to the cave near Samos, where Pythagoras devoted the greater part of his days and nights to medita-la Rochefoucault Liancourt, Vol. 2. tion and the mysteries of his philosophy. Jamblich. de Vit. 2 We were seven days on our passage from Norfolk to This, as Holstenius remarks, was in imitation of the Magi. Bermuda, during three of which we were forced to lay-to 8 The tetractys, or sacred number of the Pythagoreans, in a gale of wind. The Driver, sloop of war, in which I on which they solemnly swore, and which they called ya went, was built at Bermuda, of cedar, and is accounted an asvas quos, "the fountain of perennial nature." Lucian excellent sea-boat. She was then commanded by my very has ridiculed this religious arithmetic very finely in his Sale | regretted friend, Captain Compton, who in July last was of Philosophers. killed aboard the Lilly, in an action with a French priva9 This diadem is intended to represent the analogy beteer. Poor Compton! he fell a victim to the strange imtween the notes of music and the prismatic colours. We policy of allowing such a miserable thing as the Lilly to find in Plutarch a vague intimation of this kindred harmony remain in the service: so small, so crank, and unmanagein colours and sounds. O TO XI axoy, MIT Uns Table, that a well-manned merchantman was at any time CMI OWTES THE PROVINE Siivo. De Musica. match for her.

« ForrigeFortsæt »