There’s much of rapture in those favored hours,
When o’er the mind a magic influence steals,
That tunes to poetry and song its powers,
And melts in music all a warm heart feels.
There is a blissfulness that lifts the soul
Far from the paltry cares and toils of time,
In venting feelings that defy control,
In lofty-measured strains or tuneful rhyme.
The summer’s shower that wets the deep-seared earth,
And decks her burning surface new in green,
And saves the land from pestilence and dearth,
Comes not more joyous than the spirit dream,
Steals o’er the poet’s troubled soul, and gives
The rapture-speaking voice and tone!
He rises to another sphere--he lives
For a short season in a world alone!
Alone!--oh no! there Fancy groups her forms
More lovely far than earth presents to view;
More beauteous garniture that land adorns--
The skies assume a deeper, brighter blue.
Manning.
GREEK ANTHOLOGY.--No. IV.
Pray, accept a cold dish for a desert--a crab apple, as it were, and a
glass of water, to wash down previous articles and assist digestion. I
have purposely excluded all brightnesses; for temperance is the vogue,
and after so diversified and incongruous a meal, the cracking of a
joke might be as pernicious to your mind as the cracking of a bottle
would be deleterious to your body. You may, if you choose, apply to me
the Latin cant phrase, “ab ovo usque ad mala,” meaning by ‘_mala_,’
not ‘_apples_,’ but ‘_evils_;’ yet will I meet the thrust with
calmness--proudly reflecting that I myself suggested the sarcastical
_equivoque_.
Agathias’ narrative of the little _ruse_, whereby he tore the veil of
feminine hypocrisy from the heart of his mistress. Let _some_ of my
condisciples improve upon the hint.
Eager to know my place in Cynthia’s heart,
I probed her hidden soul with cunning art.
“To a far land, my Cynthia, while I go,
Oh, let mine image to thy memory grow!”
Groaning she sprang in anguish from her chair,
Beat her fair face and tore her shining hair.
With tears my stay the suppliant beauty prayed,
Till, slow, I yielded to the lovely maid.
Ye gods! how bless’d! since what my heart did crave,
That, as a favor, to my love I gave.
Minerva once saw Venus all in arms,
With beamy casque, and wavy plume array’d--
“Thus dar’st thou meet the trial of our charms,
My Cyprian rival?” said the awful maid.
Smiling she spoke, “How, when I take the shield,
If _weaponless_, my beauty gained the field?”[3]
[3] The contest before Paris, on Mt. Ida.
Many an old man, whose limbs are as heavy as if the gold he had spent
years to amass, were gliding, molten, through his veins, can join
bitterly in the following lament, and many a young man, who forsakes
the heights of Parnassus for the vale of Mammon, may find, too late,
that the chase for riches is, in an evil sense, its own “exceeding
great reward.”
When young, I was poor--now I’m old, I am wealthy--
Thus my life has been all but a goose-chase of pleasure--
I had not a copper, when buoyant and healthy,
But, past its enjoyment, I’ve mountains of treasure.
There has been in all ages a prejudice against step-mothers, and the
feeling, if unjust, is yet natural. When the hearts of children are yet
sore with sorrow for the loss of their _own_ dear mother, it creates
dislike to have another, whom as a stranger, they cannot view with
love, _step_ over their heads, and assume the reins of command. If
kind, yet the contrast is strange, if not disgusting--the tones may
be soft, but they are not those which sealed their infant eyes, and
soothed their infant woes--if overbearing, her tyranny is intolerable.
Thinking her nature with her life was gone,
No more to household tyranny a slave,
A youth was crowning once the chiseled stone,
That rose columnar o’er his step-dame’s grave.
But as he leaned against its marble base,
The pillar crushed him, toppling from its place.
Ye step-sons, who would flee his wretched doom,
Beware approaching e’en a step-dame’s _tomb_.
Here is a thing or two, appertaining to love and women, and so forth,
just as such things have been described since Adam first gazed in
pleased astonishment upon Eve,
“That would be woo’d, and not unsought be won,”
“The amorous bird of night
Sung spousal, and bid haste the evening star
On his hill-top to light the bridal lamp.”
A maiden kissed me at the evening hour
With dewy lip--how honied was the kiss!
Her mouth breathed nectar, and its balmy power
Hath made me drunk with love’s bewildering bliss.
I would I were a rose--that thy sweet hand
Might gently place me on thy snowy breast--
Or sighing gale--for then my spirit bland
On thy soft bosom would securely rest.
Here follow a few melancholy breathings of that better part, which
shone bright and burning while it lasted, though its food was error,
and its end was death. Their aspirations after immortality were few
and faint--for the very existence of another world was merely an
assumption--a matter of speculation. An immortality of fame, to the
sober eye, was not merely worthless, if acquired, but its acquisition
was a thing of toil, and danger, and doubt. Robbed of the high
aims and hopes for which it was made, “the chainless spirit of the
eternal mind,” would stoop to no medium flight, but sunk in hopeless
despondence, and like guilty Adam,
“On the cold earth it lay,
Oft cursing its Creator.”
The light of reason did but make known their darkness, and ignorant of
the unseen and the future, they clung with deep devotion to the visible
and the present.
Drink and be glad: for what’s to-morrow’s sun,
Or what the future? No one knows--not one.
Haste not, nor toil: but, as thou can’st be kind,
Give, eat, deem all things mortal in thy mind.
To live, or not to live--it’s an equal state,
For life’s a feather in the scales of fate.
Seize it--’tis thine--but if thou die--then what?--
Another has thine all--it matters not.
How came I here? Whence am I, and for what?
To go again. How know I, knowing nought?
Nought before birth, I shall be such again,
For less than nothing are the sons of men.
But bring me wine--that fountain of relief--
That sparkling soother of distressing grief.
Oh! swiftly flies the blooming hue,
That doth the rose adorn,
And then unto thy searching view,
The rose is but a thorn.
Gray Time flies swiftly by, and steals the breath
Of vocal men. Himself unseen the while,
He shrouds the visible in the dust of death,
And brings to light the lowly and the vile.
Oh! thou of life the undetermined end,
Thy steps do daily unto darkness tend.
Hermeneutes.