But oh!

Sweet Hebe, what a tear

And what a blush were thine,
When, as the breath of every Grace
Wafted thy fleet career

Along the studded sphere,

With a rich cup for Jove himself to drink,
Some star, that glittered in the way,
Raising its amorous head
To kiss so exquisite a tread,
Checked thy impatient pace!
And all Heaven's host of eyes
Saw those luxuriant beauties sink
In lapse of loveliness, along the azure skies!1
Upon whose starry plain they lay,
Like a young blossom on our meads of gold,
Shed from a vernal thorn

Amid the liquid sparkles of the morn!
Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade,
The myrtled votaries of the queen behold
An image of their rosy idol, laid
Upon a diamond shrine !

The wanton wind,

Which had pursued the flying fair,
And sweetly twined

Its spirit with the breathing rings

Of her ambrosial hair

Soared as she fell, and on its ruffling wings
(Oh, wanton wind!)

Wafted the robe whose sacred flow
Shadowed her kindling charms of snow,
Pure, as an Eleusinian veil

Hangs o'er the mysteries !?

the brow of Juno flushed—
Love blessed the breeze!

The Muses blushed,

And every cheek was hid behind a lyre,

than any other mortals, passed their whole time in music and dancing, etc. etc. But the most extravagant fiction related of them is that to which the two lines preceding allude. It was imagined that, instead of our vulgar atmosphere, the Hyperboreans breathed nothing but feathers! According to Herodotus and Pliny, this idea was suggested by the quantity of snow which was observed to fall in those regions.

Mr. O'Halloran, and some other Irish antiquarians, have been at great expense of learning to prove that the strange country, where they took snow for feathers, was Ireland, and that the famous Abaris was an Irish Druid. Mr. Rowland, however, will have it that Abaris was a Welshman, and that his name is only a corruption of Ap Rees.

1 I believe it is Servius who mentions this un

lucky trip which Hebe made in her occupation of cup-bearer; and Hoffman tells it after him: 'Cum Hebe pocula Jovi administrans, perque lubricum minus caute incedens, cecidisset, revolutisque vestibus'-in short, she fell in a very awkward manner; and though (as the Encyclopédistes think) it would have amused Jove at any other time, yet, as he happened to be out of temper on that day, the poor girl was dismissed from her employment.

2 The arcane symbols of this ceremony were deposited in the cista, where they lay religiously concealed from the eyes of the profane. They were generally carried in the procession by an ass; and hence the proverb, which one may so often apply in the world, asinus portat mysteria.' See the Divine Legation, book ii, sec, 4.

While every eye was glancing through the strings.
Drops of ethereal dew,
That burning gushed,

As the great goblet flew

From Hebe's pearly fingers through the sky!
Who was the spirit that remembered Man
In that voluptuous hour?

And with a wing of Love
Brushed off your scattered tears,
As o'er the spangled heaven they ran,
And sent them floating to our orb below?
Essence of immortality!
The shower

Fell glowing through the spheres,
While all around, new tints of bliss,
New perfumes of delight,
Enriched its radiant flow!
Now, with a humid kiss,
It thrilled along the beamy wire
Of heaven's illumined lyre,
Stealing the soul of music in its flight!
And now, amid the breezes bland

That whisper from the planets as they roll,
The bright libation, softly fanned
By all their sighs, meandering stole !
They who, from Atlas' height,
Beheld the rill of flame
Descending through the waste of night,
Thought 'twas a planet whose stupendous frame
Had kindled as it rapidly revolved
Around its fervid axle, and dissolved
Into a flood so bright!

The child of day,

Within his twilight bower,

Lay sweetly sleeping

.1

On the flushed bosom of a lotos-flower :1

When round him, in profusion weeping,
Dropped the celestial shower,
Steeping

The rosy clouds that curled

About his infant head,

Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed!
But, when the waking boy

Waved his exhaling tresses through the sky,
O morn of joy!
The tide divine,

1 The Egyptians represented the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a lotos. Observing that the lotos showed its head above water at sunrise, and sank again at his setting, they conceived the idea of consecrating it to Osiris, or the sun.

This symbol of a youth sitting upon a lotos is very frequent on the Abraxases, or Basilidian stones.-See MONTFAUCON, tom. ii. planche 158; and the Supplément, etc. tom. ii. lib. vii. chap. 5.

All glittering with the vermeil dye
It drank beneath his orient eye,
Distilled in dews upon the world,

And every drop was wine, was heavenly wINE!

Blest be the sod, the floweret blest,
That caught upon their hallowed breast
The nectared spray of Jove's perennial springs!
Less sweet the floweret, and less sweet the sod,
O'er which the Spirit of the rainbow flings
The magic mantle of her solar god!1

ΤΟ

THAT Wrinkle, when first I espied it,
At once put my heart out of pain,
Till the eye that was glowing beside it
Disturbed my ideas again!

Thou art just in the twilight at present,
When woman's declension begins,
When, fading from all that is pleasant,
She bids a good night to her sins!

Yet thou still art so lovely to me,

I would sooner, my exquisite mother!
Repose in the sunset of thee

Than bask in the noon of another!

ANACREONTIC.

'SHE never looked so kind before-
Yet why the wanton's smile recall?
I've seen this witchery o'er and o'er,
'Tis hollow, vain, and heartless all !'

Thus I said, and sighing sipped

The wine which she had lately tasted;
The cup where she had lately dipped
Breath, so long in falsehood wasted.

I took the harp, and would have sung
As if 'twere not of her I sang;

But still the notes on Lamia hung

On whom but Lamia could they hang?

The ancients esteemed those flowers and trees the sweetest upon which the rainbow had appeared to rest; and the wood they chiefly burned in sacrifices was that which the smile of Iris had consecrated.

That kiss for which, if worlds were mine,
A world for every kiss I'd give her;
Those floating eyes, that floating shine
Like diamonds in an eastern river?

That mould, so fine, so pearly bright,

Of which luxurious Heaven hath cast her,
Through which her soul doth beam as white
As flame through lamps of alabaster!

Of these I sung, and notes and words
Were sweet as if 'twas Lamia's hair
That lay upon my lute for chords,

And Lamia's lip that warbled there!
But when, alas! I turned the theme,
And when of vows and oaths I spoke,
Of truth and hope's beguiling dream-
The chord beneath my finger broke!
False harp! false womau !-such, oh! such
Are lutes too frail and maids too willing;
Every hand's licentious touch

Can learn to wake their wildest thrilling!

And when that thrill is most awake,

And when you think Heaven's joys await you,
The nymph will change, the chord will break-
Oh Love, oh Music! how I hate you!

TO MRS.

ON SOME CALUMNIES AGAINST HER CHARACTER.

Is not thy mind a gentle mind?

Is not thy heart a heart refined?

Hast thou not every blameless grace,

That man should love or Heaven can trace?

And oh art thou a shrine for Sin
To hold her hateful worship in?
No, no, be happy-dry that tear-
Though some thy heart hath harboured near
May now repay its love with blame;
Though man, who ought to shield thy fame,
Ungenerous man, be first to wound thee;
Though the whole world may freeze around thee,
Oh! thou'lt be like that lucid tear 1
Which, bright, within the crystal's sphere

This alludes to a curious gem, upon which Claudian has left some pointless epigrams. It was a drop of pure water enclosed within a piece of crystal. See Claudian. Epigram. de Chrystallo cui aqua inerat. Addison mentions a curiosity of this kind at Milan; he also says: It is such

a rarity as this that I saw at Vendôme in France, which they there pretend is a tear that our Saviour shed over Lazarus, and was gathered up by an angel, who put it in a little crystal vial, and made a present of it to Mary Magdalen.'Addison's Remarks on several parts of Italy.

In liquid purity was found,

Though all had grown congealed around;
Floating in frost, it mocked the chill,
Was pure, was soft, was brilliant still!

HYMN OF A VIRGIN OF DELPHI,

AT THE TOMB OF HER MOTHER.

OH! lost for ever lost!-no more
Shall Vesper light our dewy way
Along the rocks of Crissa's shore,
To hymn the fading fires of day!
No more to Tempé's distant vale
In holy musings shall we roam,
Through summer's glow and winter's
gale,
To bear the mystic chaplets home!
'Twas then my soul's expanding zeal,
By Nature warmed and led by thee,
In every breeze was taught to feel
The breathings of a deity!
Guide of my heart! to memory true,

Thy looks, thy words, are still my own

I see thee raising from the dew

Some laurel, by the wind o'erthrown,
And hear thee say, 'This humble bough
Was planted for a doom divine,
And, though it weep in languor now,
Shall flourish on the Delphic shrine !
Thus in the vale of earthly sense,

Though sunk a while the spirit lies,
A viewless hand shall cull it thence,
To bloom immortal in the skies!'

Thy words had such a melting flow,
And spoke of truth so sweetly well,
They dropped like heaven's serenest snow,
And all was brightness where they fell!
Fond soother of my infant tear!

Fond sharer of my infant joy!

Is not thy shade still lingering here?
Am I not still thy soul's employ?
And oh as oft at close of day,

When meeting on the sacred mount,

1 The laurel, for the common uses of the temple, and Plutarch says, in his Dialogue on Music, for adorning the altars and sweeping the pave-The youth who brings the Tempic laurel to ment, was supplied by a tree near the fountain of Delphi is always attended by a player on the Castalia, but upon all important occasions they fute. Αλλα μην και τῳ κατακομιζοντι παιδι την sent to Tempé for their laurel. We find in Pau- Τεμπικην δαφνην εις Δελφους παρομαρτει αυληsanias that this valley supplied the branches τns. of which the temple was originally constructed;

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