And strong to wield the spear.' Sush praise is justly thine, O Syracusan peer, For of a gentle blood thy race is sprung, As she shall truly tell, the muse of honeyed tongue. Then yoke the mules of winged pace, Unbar the gates of song, unbar,— She, mournful nymph, and nursing long (Dark as the violet's darkest shade,) In solitary sorrow bare. Then to her nurse the infant maid She weeping gave, and bade convey To high Phersana's hall away: Where woman-grown, and doomed to prove In turn a god's disastrous love, Her charms allured the lord of day. Nor long the months, ere, fierce in pride, Her foster-father sternly eyed, Fruit of the furtive god's embrace. But she, beneath the greenwood spray, But, who the mother's pang can tell, When ministers of heaven's decree, (Dire nurses they and strange to see,) Two scaly snakes of azure hue Watched o'er his helpless infancy, And, rifled from the mountain bee, Bare on their forky tongues a harmless honey dew.. Swift roll the wheels! from Delphos home Arcadia's car-borne chief is come; But, ah, how changed his eye !— His wrath is sunk, and past his pride, 'Where is Evande's babe,' he cried, "Child of the deity? 'T was thus the augur god replied, And power beyond the sons of men But, vainly, from his liegemen round, Was moistened with the sparkling dew Where morn her watery radiance threw, From that dark bed of breathing bloom And Iamus, through years to come, Will live in lasting fame; Who when the blossom of his days, Had ripened on the tree, From forth the brink where Alpheus strays, Invoked the god whose sceptre sways The hoarse resounding sea; And, whom the Delian isle obeys, The archer deity. Alone amid the nightly shade, Beneath the naked heaven he prayed, So in the visions of his sire, he went Where Cronium's scarred and barren brow Was red with morning's earliest glow, Though darkness wrapt the nether element. There, in a lone and craggy dell, A double spirit on him fell, Th' unlying voice of birds to tell, By Jove's high altar evermore to dwell, Prophet and priest!-From him descend Whose chariots whirling twelve times round Arcadian! Yes, a warmer zeal Shall whet my tongue thy praise to tell. Of kindred love ;-a Theban I, |