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The instant I have got the whim in,
Off I fly with nuns and women,
Like epic poets, ne'er at ease
Until I've stol'n "in medias res!"
So have I known a hopeful youth
Sit down, in quest of lore and truth,
With tomes sufficient to confound him,
Like Tohu Bohu, heap'd around him,
Mamurra' stuck to Theophrastus,
And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus !2
When lo! while all that's learn'd and wise
Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes,
And, through the window of his study
Beholds a virgin, fair and ruddy,
With eyes as brightly turn'd upon him, as
The angel's were on Hieronymus,
Saying, 'twas just as sweet to kiss her-oh!
Far more sweet than reading Cicero !
Quick fly the folios, widely scatter'd,
Old Homer's laurell'd brow is batter'd,
And Sappho's skin to Tully's leather,
All are confus'd and tost together!
Raptur'd he quits each dozing sage,
Oh woman! for thy lovelier page :
Sweet book! unlike the books of art,
Whose errors are thy fairest part;
In whom, the dear errata column
Is the best page in all the volume.4
But, to begin my subject rhyme-
'Twas just about this devilish time,
When scarce there happen'd any frolics
That were not done by Diabolics,

A cold and loveless son of Lucifer,

Who woman scorn'd, nor knew the use of her,
A branch of Dagon's family,
(Which Dagon, whether He or She,
Is a dispute that vastly better is
Referr'd to Scaliger' et cæteris,)
Finding that in this cage of fools,
The wisest sots adorn the schools,
Took it at once his head Satanic in,
To grow a great scholastic mannikin,
A doctor, quite as learn'd and fine as
Scotus John or Tom Aquinas,2
Lully, Hales irrefragabilis
Or any doctor of the rabble is!
In languages, the Polyglots,
Compared to him, were Babel sots;
He chatter'd more than ever Jew did,
Sanhedrim and Priest included;
Priest and holy Sanhedrim

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Were one-and-seventy fools to him!
But chief the learned demon felt a
Zeal so strong for gamma, delta,
That, all for Greek and learning's glory,"
He nightly tippled "Græco more,'
And never paid a bill or balance
Except upon the Grecian Kalends,
From whence your scholars, when they want tick
Say, to be At-tick 's to be on tick!

1 Scaliger. de Emendat. Tempor.-Dagon was thought by others to be a certain sea-monster, who came every day out of the Red Sea to teach the Syrians husbandry. See Jacques Gaffarel's Curiosités inouies, Chap. i. He says he thinks this story of the sea-monster carries little show of probability with it."

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2 I wish it were known with any degree of certainty whether the Commentary on Boethius, attributed to Thomas Aquinas, be really the work of this Angelic Doctor. There are some bold assertions hazarded in it: for instance, he says that Plato kept school in a town called Academia, and that Alcibiades was a very beautiful woman whom some of Aristotle's pupils fell in love with.

"Alcibiades mulier

1 Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about any thing, except who was his father. "Nulla de re unquam præterquam de patre dubitavit." In vit. He was very learned-"Là dedans, (that is, in his head when it was opened,) le Punique heurte le Persan, l'Hébreu choque l'Arabique, pour ne point parler de la mauvaise intelligence du Latin avec le Grec," etc. See l'Histoire de Montmaur, fuit pulcherrima, quam videntes quidam discipuli Aristotetom. ii. page 91. 2 Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar lis," etc.-See Freytag. Adparat. Litterar. Art. 86. tom.i. 3 The following compliment was paid to Laurentius and quack Paracelsus. "Philippus Bombastus latet sub Valla, upon his accurate knowledge of the Latin language: splendido tegmine Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi," Stasays delius de circumforanea Literatorum vanitate.-He used to fight the devil every night with the broad-sword, to the no small terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. (See Oporin. Vit. apud Christian. Gryph. Vit. Select. quorundam Eruditissimorum, etc.) Paracelsus had but a poor opinion of Galen. "My very beard (says he in his Paragrænum) has more learning in it than either Galen or Avicenna."

Nunc postquam manes defunctus Valla petivit,
Non audet Pluto verba Latina loqui.
Since Val arrived in Pluto's shade,
His nouns and pronouns all so pat in,
Pluto himself would be afraid

"Master

To ask even "what's o'clock" in Latin! These lines may be found in the Auctorum Censio of Du 3 The angel, who scolded St. Jerom for reading Cicero, Verdier (page 29,) an excellent critic, if he could have either as Gratian tells the story in his Concordantia discordantium felt or understood any one of the works which he criticises. Canonum, and says that for this reason bishops were not 4 It is much to be regretted that Martin Luther, with all allowed to read the Classics. "Episcopus Gentilium libros his talents for reforming, should yet be vulgar enough to non legat.-Distinct. 37. But Gratian is notorious for ly-laugh at Camerarius for writing to him in Greek. ing-besides, angels have got no tongues, as the illustrious Joachim," says he, "has sent me some dates and some raipupil of Pantenus assures us. Oux' we nμin Tawτα, OUTWs sins, and has also written me two letters in Greek. As soon εκείνοις η γλώττα· ουδ' αν οργανα τις δων φωνης αγγελοις. as I am recovered, I shall answer them in 'Turkish, that he too -Clem. Alexand. Stromat. Now, how an angel could may have the pleasure of reading what he does not underscold without a tongue, I shall leave the angelic Mrs. - stand."-"Græca sunt, legi non possunt," is the ignorant to determine. speech attributed to Accursius; but very unjustly-far from 4 The idea of the Rabbins about the origin of woman is asserting that Greek could not be read, that worthy jurissingular. They think that man was originally formed with consult upon the law 6. D. de Bonor. possess. expressly says, a tail, like a monkey, but that the Deity cut off this appen-Græcæ literæ possunt intelligi et legi." (Vide Nov. Libdage behind, and made woman of it. Upon this extraordi- ror. Rarior. Collection. Fasciculi IV.)-Scipio Carteromanary supposition the following reflection is founded:

If such is the tie between women and men,
The ninny who weds is a pitiful elf,
For he takes to his tail, like an idiot, again,
And he makes a deplorable ape of himself.
Yet, if we may judge as the fashions prevail,
Every husband remembers the original plan,
And, knowing his wife is no more than his tail,
Why he leaves her behind him as much as he can.

chus seems to think that there is no salvation out of the pale
of Greek literature: "Via prima salutis Graia pandetur ab
urbe." And the zeal of Laurentius Rhodomannus cannot
be sufficiently admired, when he exhorts his countrymen
"per gloriam Christi, per salutem patriæ, per reipublica
decus et emolumentum," to study the Greek language. Nor
must we forget Phavorinus, the excellent Bishop of Nocera,
who, careless of all the usual commendations of a Christian
required no further eulogium on his tomb than "Here lieth
a Greek Lexicographer."

In logics, he was quite Ho Panu !'

If boy the baby chance to be, Knew as much as ever man knew.

He cries OA!--if girl, OE! He fought the combat syllogistic

These are, says he, exceeding fair hints With so much skill and art eristic,

Respecting their first sinful parents ;. That though you were the learned Stagyrite, “ Oh Eve!” exclaimeth little madam, At once upon the hip he had you right !

While little master cries, “ O Adam !"} Sometimes indeed his speculations

In point of science astronomical, Were view'd as dangerous innovations.

It seem'd to him extremely comical, As thus--the Doctor's house did harbour a

That, once a year, the frolic sun Sweet blooming girl, whose name was Barbara : Should call at Virgo's house for fun, Oft, when his heart was in a merry key,

And stop a month and blaze around her, He taught this maid his esoterica,

Yet leave her Virgo, as he found her! And sometimes, as a cure for hectics,

But, 'twas in Optics and Dioptricks, Would lecture her in dialectics.

Our dæmon play'd his first and top tricks : How far their zeal let him and her go

He held that sunshine passes quicker Before they came to sealing Ergo,

Through wine than any other liquor ; Or how they placed the medius terminus,

That glasses are the best utensils Our chronicles do not determine us;

To catch the eyes bewilder'd pencils ; But so it was—by some confusion

And though he saw no great objection In this their logical prælusion,

To steady light and pure reflection, The Doctor wholly spoil'd, they say,

He thought the aberrating rays, The figure of young Barbara ;

Which play about a bumper's blaze, And thus, by many a snare sophistic,

Were by the Doctors look’d, in common, on, And enthymeme paralogistic,

As a more rare and rich phenomenon! Beguild a maid, who could not give,

He wisely said that the sensorium To save her life, a negative."

Is for the eyes a great emporium, In music, though he had no ears

To which those noted picture stealers Except for that among the spheres,

Send all they can, and meet with dealers. (Which most of all, as he averr'd it,

In many an optical proceeding He dearly lov'd, 'cause no one heard it,)

The brain, he said, show'd great good breeding; Yet aptly he, at sight, could read

For instance, when we ogle women, Each tuneful diagram in Bede,

(A trick which Barbara tutor'd him in,) And find, by Euclid's corollaria,

Although the dears are apt to get in a The ratios of a jig or aria.

Strange position on the retina, But, as for all your warbling Delias,

Yet instantly the modest brain
Orpheuses, and Saint Cecilias,

Doth set them on their legs again !2
He own'd he thought them much surpass'd Our doctor thus with“ stuff'd sufficiency”
By that redoubted Hyaloclast*

Of all omnigenous omnisciency,
Who still contriv'd by dint of throttle,

Began (as who would not begin
Where'er he went to crack a bottle !

That had, like him, so much within ?)
Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he, To let it out in books of all sorts,
On things unknown in physiology,

Folios, quartos, large and small sorts ;
Wrote many a chapter to divert us,

Poems, so very deep and sensible, Like that great little man Albertus,

That they were quite incomprehensible, Wherein he show'd the reason why,

Prose, which had been at learning's Fair, When children first are heard to cry,

And bought up all the trumpery there, 1 O IANY. The introduction of this language into English poetry has a good effect, and ought to be more universally adopted. A word or two of Greek, in a stanza bertus de Secretis, etc.— I have not the book by me, or I

1 This is translated almost literally from a passage in Alwould serve as a ballast to the most “ light o' love" verses.

would transcribe the words. Ausonius, among the ancients, may serve as a model: Ου γαρ μοι θεμις εστιν in hac regione μενοντι

2 Alluding to that habitual act of the judgment, by which, Αξιον ab nostris επιδευε α esse καμηναις.

notwithstanding the inversion of the image upon the retina, Rosnard, the French poet, has enriched his sonnets and a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the senodes with many an exquisite morsel from the Lexicon. His sorium. Chère Entelechie, in addressing his mistress, is admirable, 3 Under this description, I believe," the Devil among the and can be only matched by Cowley's Antiperistasis. Scholars” nay be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the

2 The first figure of simple syllogisms, to which Barbara uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secrebelongs, together with Celarent, Darii, and Ferio.

tary to a society of philosophers at Nuremberg, merely for 3 Because the three propositions in the mood of Barbara his merit in writing a cabalistical letter, one word of which are universal affirmatives.—The poet borrowed this equi- neither they nor himself could interpret. See the Eloge voque upon Barbara from a curious Epigram which Mencke- Historique de M. de Leibnitz, l'Europe Savante. --- People nius gives in a note upon his Essays de Charlataneria of all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find Cicero Eruuitorum. In the Nuptiæ Peripateticæ of Caspar Bar- thanking Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion læus, the reader will find some facetious applications of the "ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod inter nos liceat dicere) terms of logic to matrimony. Crambe's Treatise on Syllo- millesimam partem vix intelligo." Lib. 2. Epist. 4. And gisms, in Martinus Scriblerus, is borrowed chiefly from the we know that Avicen, the learned Arabian, read Aristotle's Nuptiæ Peripateticæ of Barlæus.

Metaphysics forty times over, for the supreme pleasure of 4'Or, Glass-Breaker.-Morhofius has given an account of being able to inform the world that he could not comprehend this extraordinary man, in a work published 1682. "De one syllable throughout them.-Nicolas Mossa in Vit vitreo csypho fracto," etc.

Avicen.

3

To you.

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The tatter'd rags of every vest,

Worse than M***'s Latin, In which the Greeks and Romans drest,

Or the smooth codicil And o'er her figure, swoln and antic,

To a witch's will, where she brings her cat in ! Scatter'd them all with airs so frantic,

I treat my goddess ill, That those, who saw the fits she had,

(My muse I mean) to make her speak 'em ; Declar'd unhappy prose was mad!

Like the Verbum Græcum, Epics he wrote, and scores of rebusses,

Spermagorajolekitholakanopolides,' All as neat as old Turnebus's ;

Words that ought only be said upon holidays, Eggs and altars, cyclopædias,

When one has nothing else to do. Grammars, prayer-books--oh! 't were tedious,

But, dearest George, though every bone is aching Did I but tell the half, to follow me;

After this shaking,
Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy,
No-nor the hoary Trismegistus,

And trying to regain the socket,

From which the stage thought fit to rock it, (Whose writings all, thank Heaven! have miss'd us,) Ere fill'd with lumber such a ware-room

I fancy I shall sleep the better

For having scrawld a kind of letter As this great “porcus literarum !"

It seems to me like--"George, good-night!"

Though far the spot I date it from;

To which I fancy, while I write,
FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL.

Your answer back—“Good night t'ye Tom."
TO G. M. ESQ.

But do not think that I shall turn all

Sorts of quiddities, FROM FREDERICKSBURGH, VIRGINIA,? JUNE 2D.

And insipidities,
DEAR George! though every bone is aching,

Into my journal;
After the shaking

That I shall tell you the different prices
I've had this week, over ruts and ridges,»

Of eating, drinking, and such other vices,
And bridges,

To “contumace your appetite's acidities !""2
Made of a few uneasy planks,

No, no; the Muse too delicate bodied is
In open ranks,

For such commodities !
Like old women's teeth, all loosely thrown

Neither suppose, like fellow of college, she Over rivers of mud, whose names alone

Can talk of conchology,
Would make the knees of stoutest man knock,

Or meteorology ;
Rappahannock,

Or, that a nymph, who wild as comet errs,
Occoquan—the heavens may harbour us!

Can discuss barometers, Who ever heard of names so barbarous ?

Farming tools, statistic histories, 1 These fragments form but a small part of a ridiculous Geography, law, or such like mysteries, medley of prose and doggerel, into which, for my amuse- For which she does'nt care thee skips of ment, I threw some of the incidents of my journey. If it Prettiest flea, that e'er the lips of were even in a more rational form, there is yet much of it Catharine Roache look'd smiling upon, too allusive and too personal for publication.

2 Having remained about a week at New-York, where I When bards of France all, one by one, saw Madame Jerome Bonaparte, and felt a slight shock of Declar'd that never did hand approach an earthquake, (the only things that particularly awakened my attention,) I sailed again in the Boston for Norfolk, from Such flea as was caught upon Catharine Roache ! whence I proceeded on my tour to the northward, through Williamsburgh, etc. At Richmond there are a few men of considerable talents. Mr. Wickham, one of their celebrated Sentiment, George, I'll talk when I've got any, legal characters, is a gentleman whose manners and mode of life would do bonour to the most cultivated societies. Oh! Linnæus has made such a prig o'me,

And botany, Judge Marshall, the author of Washington's Life, is another very distinguished ornament of Richmond. These Cases I'll find of such polygamy gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at

Under every bush, present unpopular party, the Federalists.

3 What Mr. Weld says of the continual necessity of As would make the “shy curcuma''4 blush ;
balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of
the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated.
"The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the 1 Σπερμαγοραιολεκιθoλαχανοπωλιδες.

From the Lyo stage, to lean out of the carriage, first at one side, then at sistrata of Aristophanes, v. 458. the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts 2 This phrase is taken verbatim from an account of an ex with which the road abounds! Now gentlemen, to the pedition to Drummond's Pond, by one of those many Ameright;' upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies ricans who profess to think that the English language, as it half way out of the carriage, to balance it on that side. has been hitherto written, is deficient in what they call re

Now gentlemen, to the left;' and so on."--Welds Tra- publican energy. One of the savans of Washington is far vels, Letter iii.

advanced in the construction of a new language for the 4 Before the stage can pass one of these bridges, the United States, which is supposed to be a mixture of Hebrew driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks of and Mikmak. which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his 3 Alluding to a collection of poems, called “La Puce des ideas of safety: and, as the planks are again disturbed by grands-jours de Poitiers." They were all written upon a the passing of the coach, the next travellers who arrive Hea, which Stephen Pasquier found on the bosom of the have of course a new arrangement to make. Mahomet famous Catharine des Roaches, one morning during the (as Sale tells us) was at some pains to imagine a precarious grands-jours of Poitiers. I ask pardon of the learned kind of bridge for the entrance of paradise, in order to en-Catharine's memory, for my vulgar alteration of her most hance the pleasures of arrival: a Virginian bridge, I think, respectable name. would have answered his purpose completely.

“Curcuma, cold and shy."-Darwin.

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1 "Observed likewise in these savannas abundance of the ludicrous Dionæa Muscipula."-Bartram's Travels in North America. For his description of this "carniverous vegetable," see Introduction, p. 13.

2 This philosophical Duke, describing the view from Mr. Jefferson's house, says, "the Atlantic might be seen, were it not for the greatness of the distance, which renders that prospect impossible." See his Travels.

3 Polygnotus was the first painter, says Pliny, who showed the teeth in his portraits. He would scarcely, I think, have been tempted to such an innovation in America.

liamsburgh! But when he wrote, his countrymen had not yet introduced the "doctrinam deos spernentem" into America.

1 John Smith, a famous traveller, and by far the most enterprising of the first settlers in Virginia. How much he was indebted to the interesting young Pocahuntas, daughter of King Powhatan, may be seen in all the histories of this colony. In the dedication of his own work to the Dutchess of Richmond, he thus enumerates his bonnes fortunes: "Yet my comfort is, that heretofore honourable and vertuous ladies, and comparable but among themselves, have offered me rescue and protection in my greatest dangers. Even in forraine parts I have felt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous lady Trabigzanda, when I was a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. When I overcame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable lady Callamata supplyed my necessities. In the utmost of my extremities, that blessed Pocahuntas, the great King's daughter of Virginia oft saved my life."

Davis, in his whimsical Travels through America, has manufactured into a kind of romance the loves of Mr. Rolfe with this "opaci maxima mundi," Pocahuntas. 2 For the Sonnet, see page 121.

4 The Marquis de Chastellux, in his wise letter to Mr. Madison, Professor of Philosophy in the College of William and Mary at Williamsburgh, dwells with much earnestness on the attention which should be paid to dancing. See his Travels. This college, the only one in the state of Virginia, and the first which I saw in America, gave me but a melancholy idea of republican seats of learning. That contempt for the elegancies of education, which the American democrats affect, is no where more grossly conspicuous than in Virginia: the young men, who look for advancement, study rather to be demagogues than politicians; and as every thing that distinguishes from the multitude is supposed to be invidious and unpopular, the levelling system is applied to 3 "The American stages are the true political carriages." education, and has had all the effect which its partizans could-Brissot's Travels, Letter 6th.-There is nothing more desire, by producing a most extensive equality of ignorance. The Abbé Raynal, in his prophetic admonitions to the Americans, directing their attention very strongly to learned establishments, says, "When the youth of a country are seen depraved, the nation is on the decline." I know not what the Abbé Raynal would pronounce of this nation now, were be alive to know the morals of the young students at Wil-menti caperet!

amusing than the philosophical singeries of these French travellers. In one of the letters of Clavière, prefixed to those of Brissot, upon their plan for establishing a republic of philosophers in some part of the western world, he intreats Brissot to be particular in choosing a place where there are no musquitoes:" forsooth, ne quid respublica detri

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TO A FRIEND. When next you see the black-ey'd Caty, The loving languid girl of Hayti,' Whose finger so expertly plays Amid the ribbon's silken maze, Just like Aurora, when she ties A rainbow round the morning skies ! Say, that I hope, when winter 's o'er,

On Norfolk's bank again to rove, And then shall search the ribbon store

For some of Caty's softest love.
I should not like the gloss were past,

Yet want it not entirely new;
But bright and strong enough to last

About-suppose a week or two.
However frail, however light,
'Twill do, at least, to wear at night ;
And so you'll tell our black-ey'd Caty-
The loving, languid girl of Hayti!

FROM THE GREEK." I've prest her bosom oft and oft ;

In spite of many a pouting cheek, Have touch'd her lip in dalliance soft,

And play'd around her silvery neck. But, as for more, the maid's so coy,

That saints or angels might have seen us ; She's now for prudence, now for joy,

Minerva half, and half a Venus. When Venus makes her bless me near,

Why then, Minerva makes her loth; And-oh the sweet tormenting dear!

She makes me mad between them both !

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" Errare malo cum Platone, quam cum aliis recte sentire."

Cicero. I would rather think wrongly with Plato, than rightly with

any one else.

ON A BEAUTIFUL EAST-INDIAN. If all the daughters of the sun

Have loving looks and eyes of flame, Go, tell me not that she is one

'Twas from the wintry moon she came! And yet, sweet eye! thou ne'er wert given

To kindle what thou dost not feel; And yet, thou flushing lip—by heaven!

Thou ne'er wert made for Dian's seal! Oh! for a sunbeam, rich and warm

From thy own Ganges' fervid haunts, To light thee up, thou lovely form!

To all my soul adores and wants : To see thee burn—to faint and sigh

Upon that bosom as it blaz'd, And be myself the first to die,

Amid the flame myself had rais'd!

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TO-
I KNOW that none can smile like thee,

But there is one, a gentler one,
Whose heart, though young and wild it be,

Would ne'er have done as thine has done. When we were left alone to-day,

When every curious eye was fled, And all that love could look or say, .

We might have look’d, we might have said: Would she have felt me trembling press,

Nor trembling press to me again? Would she have had the power to bless,

Yet want the heart to bless me then? Her tresses, too, as soft as thine Would she have idly paus'd to twine Their scatter'd locks, with cold delay, While oh! such minutes pass'd away,

I NE'ER on that lip for a minute have gaz'd,

But a thousand temptations beset me, And I've thought, as the dear little rubies you rais'a,

How delicious 'twould be—if you'ddet me! Then be not so angry for what I have done,

Nor say that you've sworn to forget me; They were buds of temptation too pouting to shun,

And I thought that-you could not but let me! When your lip with a whisper came close to my cheek,

Oh think how bewitching it met me!
And, plain as the eye of a Venus could speak,

Your eye seem'd to say-you would let me! Then forgive the transgression, and bid me remain,

For, in truth, if I go you'll regret me;
Or, oh !-let me try the transgression again,

And I'll do all you wish-will you let me?

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1 Among the West-Indian French at Norfolk, there are some very interesting Saint Domingo girls, who, in the day, sell millinery, etc. and at night assemble. in little cotillion parties, where they dance away the remembrance of their unfortunate country, and forget the miseries which "les mis des noirs" have brought upon them.

1 Μαζους χερσιν εχω, στοματι στομα, δεπερι δειρην

Ασχετα λυσσωων βοσκομαι αργυρεην
Ουπω δ' αφρογενειαν ολην ελον· αλλ' ετι καμνων

Παρθενον αμφιεπον λεκρον αναινομενην
Ημισυ γαρ Παφιη, το δ' αρ' ημισυ δωκεν Αθηνη
Αυταρ εγω μεσσος τηχομαι αμφοτερων.

Paulus Silentiarius

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