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To love's soft power he raised the votive strain,
And heavenly Venus doated on the swain.

Alas! the frailest flower that decks the fields,
The meanest plant prolifick nature yields,
Waked by returning spring shall reappear,
And bloom and ripen in another year.

But man, the great, the brave, the strong, the wise,
When once he falls, he falls no more to rise;
Pent in the narrow earth, and doom'd to keep
A lonely, dark, interminable sleep.
Even thou the sweetest bard that ever sung,
Thy voice is silent, and thy harp unstrung.

Ah, to thy mouth the murderous poison came,
Swelled in thy veins, and shook thy manly frame.
What poisoned draught of power so strong and strange,
Could touch thy lips, and not to honey change?
What savage hand the deadly bowl could raise,
Nor melt with pity at thy melting lays?

Unerring vengeance shall the deed o’ertake.
But I for thee the song of grief will wake ;
And had I power, like Orpheus I would go
To hear thy musick in the shades below.
Oh, when thou meet'st Proserpine the fair,
Awake some ancient, soft, Sicilian air.
For she has strayed Etnean groves among,
And knows the magick of a Dorian song.
Sure she will melt to hear the heavenly strain,
And send thee pitying to thy fields again.

Even I, had I the power like thee to sing,

Would seek the Stygian realms, and tempt the dreadful king.

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CHORUS. Sicilian muses, split your throats,

With grunts, and groans, and doleful notes,
Ye screech owls perched on old pine trees,
That hoot and howl to every breeze;
Now tune your throats for proper use,
And tell the waves of Arethuse,
Bion the old ploughjogger's dead,
And muse and harp have gone to bed.

Stymonian swans, both one and all,

Now stretch your necks, and croak and squall;
Make a worse noise for Bion's sake,

Than he himself knew how to make;
Tell all the girls he ever knew,
Fagrian and Bistonian too,

Since death has laid his clutches on him,
They'll never more set eyes upon him,

No more for beasts the lout shall play,
To lounge his precious time away ;
Nor twang his fiddle, pipe or horn,
To scare the hogs out of the corn;
For now old Pluto's got him fast,
And makes him blow a doleful blast ;
But here for once the hills are still,
And cows and pigs go where they will.

Bion, 'tis wondrous droll to hear
The noise they make about you here;
Apollo frets with all his might,
And satyrs growl by day and night;
Priapus' self has learned to bellow,
And Pan to bawl like lusty fellow.
Among the rocks miss Echo sits,

And pouts, and pines, and scowls, and frets,
Because, though sore against her will,

Her endless clack must now be still.

The trees, and fruit, and blossoms die,

And cows and honeycombs are dry.

No musick now for honey passes,
Though yours was reckoned mere molasses.

Who now will touch your dirty pipe,
Whose mouth you never thought to wipe.

Sure one must be a tasteless fool,

To smear his lips with such a tool;

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Even now it scents us half to death,

With your old quids and wheezing breath."
Even tagtail Echo stands aloof,

Quite satisfied with former proof.

If Pan can stomach, let him have it,

No god or mortal else will crave it.

Poor Galatea's quite outrageous,

Since now your tunes no more engage us;
The Cyclop never pleas'd her whim,
She stuck to you and jilted him.
Now quite forlorn and quite forsaken
At the French leave which you have taken,
To seem consistent in her preference,
She only treats your hogs with deference.

Who would have thought when you departed,
So great an uproar would be started.
There's greater noise among your cronies,
Than Venus made to lose Adonis.

Even Meles' horse-pond boils and blubbers,
To lose so soon two favourite lubbers,
Who to its banks did oft repair,
To fish for frogs and tadpoles there.
The first was Homer, known of old
For lying stories sung and told,
'Bout how Achilles try'd to slay us,
To please one bully Menelaus.
The next was Bion, simple loon,
He kept to quite a different tune;
Instead of wars and bloody noses,

He sung "the prophets," and "Vicar and Moses;"

Venus would never venture near him,

And none but brutes would stay to hear him.

'Tis strange that every weed that grows,
Is killed by winter's frosts and snows,
Yet thawed by spring it straight revives,
And seems, cat-like, to have nine lives.
But man, poor, honest, clever soul,
When once he goes, goes for the whole;
And when the clods have pressed his snout,
He'll have good luck to get it out.

Even thou, old Clodpole, on thy back,

Has ceas'd thy everlasting clack.

—and wheezing breath.-The original is xa, to gov aclue,

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O Bior, brandy did it all!

That lurch for grog produc'd thy fall!
Why was not thy allowance shorter,
With less of rum and more of water?
Or what vile wretch, his grog shop hid in,
Could sell thee rum when thrice forbidden ?

But law shall catch the rascal soon-
And I meanwhile will catch thy tune;
And if like Orpheus I could reach thee,
I'd go to hear old Pluto teach thee.
But, sirrah, if thou playest there,
As thou wast wont in upper air,
Dame Proserpine will take offence,
And pack thee off post haste from thence.

E'en I should like to stand without

The door to see them kick thee out;

Nay, even I'd lend a hand, if able,

And lug the base, while you squeal treble.

THE

BOSTON REVIEW,

FOR

JUNE, 1811.

Librum tuum legi, et quam diligentissime potui annotavi quae commutanda, quae eximenda arbitrarer. Nam ego dicere verum assuevi. Neque ulli patientius reprehenduntur, quam qui maxime laudari merentur.

Plin.

ARTICLE 28.

Review of Griesbach's New Testament.

(Concluded from page 114.)

We sincerely regret, that a passage in our review of Gries

bach's Greek Testament was so expressed, as to convey a sense, to the minds of many of our readers, different from our real meaning. For if it be understood, as it has been interpreted by the writer in the Panoplist for the last month, it fixes upon us the reproach either of great ignorance, or great base"ness. No man, who has so much as dipped his feet in sacred criticism, can be rash enough to place the common reading of the three texts in Acts, Timothy, and John's 1 Epistle on a level in point of authority; and yet, from the words of the following passage in our review, we may be thought to have done this.

"It has always struck us with astonishment, that many of those who maintain the most rigid notions of inspiration, and exclaim most vehemently against the glosses, evasions, and forced interpretations of hereticks, should have discovered so little solicitude to ascertain the true text even of the New Testament, and have felt no more dread, than they seem to have done, of adding to the word of God. To what is it to be attributed that even at the present day, 1 John v. 7. is quoted in proof of the doctrine of the Trinity, and even taken as a text of discourses; when it ought to be known, that it has not more authority in its favour than the famous reading of the seventh

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