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elegant strain; the concluding verses are written with considerable beauty and softness:

wile

"Central amid the myrtle grove
That venerable temple stands
Three statues, raised by gifted hands,
Distinct with sculptured emblems fair,
His threefold influence imaged bear,
Creative, Heavenly, Earthly Love.
The first, of stone and sculpture rude,
From immemorial time has stood;
Not even in vague tradition known
The hand that raised that ancient stone.
Of brass the next, with holiest thought,
The skill of Sicyon's artist wrought.
The third, a marble form divine,
That seems to move, and breathe, and smile,
Fair Phryne to this holy shrine
Conveyed, when her propitious
Had forced her lover to impart
The choicest treasure of his art.
Her, too, in sculptured beauty's pride,
His skill has placed by Venus' side;
Nor well the enraptured gaze descries
Which best might claim the Hesperian prize.
Fairest youths and maids assembling
Dance the myrtle bowers among:
Harps to softest numbers trembling
Pour the impassioned strain along,
Where the poet's gifted song
Holds the intensely listening throng.
Matrons grave and sages gray
Lead the youthful train to pay
Homage on the opening day
Of Love's returning festival:
Every fruit and every flower
Sacred to his gentler power,
Twined in garlands bright and sweet,
They place before his sculptured feet,
And on his name they call:

From thousand lips, with glad acclaim,
Is breathed at once that sacred name;
And music, kindling at the sound,
Wafts holier, tenderer strains around:
The rose a richer sweet exhales:
The myrtle waves in softer gales;
Through every breast one influence flies;
All hate, all evil passion dies;

The heart of man, in that blest spell,
Becomes at once a sacred cell,
Where Love, and only Love, can dwell.”
Among the votarics of the Thespian
deity is a youth of Arcadia, whose per-
fections of form and feature might well
be envied by modern beaus.

"From Ladon's shores Athemion came,
Arcadian Ladon, loveliest tide
Of all the streams of Grecian name
Through rocks and sylvan hills that glide.
The flower of all Arcadia's youth
Was he such form and face, in truth,
As thoughts of gentlest maidens seek
In their day-dreams: soft glossy hair
Shadowed his forehead, snowy-fair,
With many a hyacinthine cluster:
Lips, that in silence seemed to speak,
Were his, and eyes of mild blue lustre :
And even the paleness of his check,
The passing trace of tender care,
Still showed how beautiful it were
If its own natural bloom were there."

Anthemion had left his native vale to implore for his mistress, a lovely Arcadian, the grace and favour of the god. Calliröe had long pined under the influence of a malady which baffled the powers of medicine, and even Pan had been vainly supplicated to restore the declining maiden. As Anthemion approaches the altar, he is terrified by a prodigy of an alarming and inauspicious kind. The statue of Heavenly Love regards him with a frown, but that of Earthly with a smile. "A moment, and the semblance fled;" and Anthemion gathers courage to offer his votive wreath on the altarthe wild flowers wither on the fane.

"His brain swims round, portentous fear
Across his wildered fancy flies:
Shall death thus seize his maiden dear?
Does Love reject his sacrifice?
He caught the arm of a damsel near,
And soft sweet accents smote his ear;

What ails thee, stranger? Leaves are sear,
And flowers are dead, and fields are drear,
And streams are wild, and skies are bleak,
And white with snow each mountain's peak,
When winter rules the year;

And children grieve, as if for aye
Leaves, flowers, and birds were past away:
But buds and blooms again are seen,
And fields are gay, and hills are green,
And streams are bright, and sweet birds sing;
And where is the infant's sorrowing?'

He turns, and beholds in the person addressing him, a maid of surpassing and dazzling beauty.

"Her bright hair, in the noon-beams glowing,
A rose-bud wreath above confined,
From whence, as from a fountain flowing,
Long ringlets round her temples twined,
And fell in many a graceful fold,
Streaming in curls of feathery lightness
Around her neck's marmoreal whiteness.
Love, in the smile that round her lips,
Twin roses of persuasion, played,

Nectaries of balmier sweets than sips
The Hymettian bee,-his ambush laid;
And his own shafts of liquid fire
Came on the soul with sweet surprise,
Through the soft dews of young desire
That trembled in her large dark eyes;
But in those eyes there seemed to move
A flame, almost too bright for love,
That shone, with intermitting flashes,
Beneath their long deep-shadowy lashes."

The lovely stranger continues her speech to the wondering Anthemion.

"What ails thee, youth?'- A fearful sign For one whose dear sake led me hither: Love repels me from his shrine, And seems to say; That maid divine

Like these ill-omoned flowers shall wither

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The simple and unsuspicious youth,
takes the chaplet, and places it on the
altar-it fades not! On his offering the
fascinating stranger casts her own, when
they

"Entwine and blend again,
Wreathed into one, even as they were,
Ere she, their brilliant sweets to share,
Unwove their flowery chain."

Exultation sparkles in her radiant eyes,
as she witnesses her influence over An-
themion, and (bidding him keep her
flower) she addresses him at parting in a
strain of mystic admonition to which the
poor youth listens in a sort of dumb sim-
plicity.

"His brain
Was troubled with conflicting thought:
A dim and dizzy sense of pain
That maid's surpassing beauty brought;
And strangely on his fancy wrought
Her mystic moralisings, fraught
With half-prophetic sense, and breathed
In tones so sweetly wild.

Unconsciously the flower he took,
And with absorbed admiring look
Gazed as with fascinated eye
The lone bard gazes on the sky,

Who, in the bright clouds rolled and wreathed
Around the sun's descending car,

Sees shadowy rocks sublimely piled,

And phantom standards wide unfurled,
And towers of an aerial world
Embattled for unearthly war.
So stood Anthemion, till among
The mazes of the festal throng
The damsel from his sight had past.
Yet well he marked that once she cast
A backward look, perchance to see
If he watched her still so fixedly."

They part, and Anthemion sets forth
on his return to Arcadia;-troubled by his
adventure with the beautiful unknown,
and his imagination captivated by her
charms, yet clinging with all the fond-
ness of devoted love to his tender and
languishing Callirõe, he passes on through
the crowded ways of Thespia, heedless
of the sports with which the joyous mul-

titude are celebrating the festival of the deity.

"An aged man was near,

Of rugged brow, and eye severe.
What evil,'-thus the stranger spoke,-
'Has this our city done to thee,
Ill-omened boy, that thou should'st be
A blot on our solemnity?

Or what Alastor bade thee wear
That laurel-rose, to Love profane,
Whose leaves, in semblance falsely fair
Of Love's maternal flower, contain
Art thou a scorner? dost thou throw
For purest fragrance deadliest bane?
Defiance at his power? Beware!
Full soon thy impious youth may know
What pangs his shafts of anger bear:
For not the sun's descending dart,
Nor yet the lightning-brand of Jove,
Fall like the shaft that strikes the heart
Thrown by the mightier hand of Love.'-

-Oh stranger! not with impious thought
My steps this holy rite have sought.
With pious heart and offerings due
Nor did I deem this flower profane;
I mingled in the votive train;
Nor she, I ween, its evil knew,
That radiant girl, who bade me cherish
Who, and what, and whence was she?'
Her memory till its bloom should perish.'-
A stranger till this hour to me.'-
- O youth, beware! that laurel-rose
Around Larissa's evil walls
In tufts of rank luxuriance grows,
'Mid dreary valleys, by the falls
Of haunted streams; and magic knows
No herb or plant of deadlier might,
When impious footsteps wake by night
The echoes of those dismal dells,
What time the murky midnight dew
Trembles on many a leaf and blossom,
That draws from earth's polluted bosom
Mysterious virtue, to imbue
The chalice of unnatural spells.
Oft, those dreary rocks among,
The murmurs of unholy song,
Breathed by lips as fair as hers

By whose false hands that flower was given;
The solid earth's firm breast have riven,
And burst the silent sepulchres,
And called strange shapes of ghastly fear,
To hold, beneath the sickening moon,
Portentous parle, at nights deep noon,
With beauty skilled in mysteries drear.
Oh, youth! Larissa's maids are fair;
But the dæmons of the earth and air
Their spells obey, their councils share,
And wide o'er earth and ocean bear
Their mandates to the storms that tear
The rock-enrooted oak, and sweep
With whirwind wings the labouring deep.
Roll refluent on their mountain-springs,
Their words of power can make the streams
Can torture sleep with direful dreams,
Man, beast, bird, fish, with influence strange,
And on the shapes of earthly things,
Breathe foul and fearful interchange,
And fix in marble bonds the form
Erewhile with natural being warm,
And give to senseless stones and stocks
Motion, and breath, and shape that mocks,
As far as nicest eye can scan,
The action and the life of man.

Beware! yet once again beware!
Ere round thy inexperienced mind,
With voice and semblance falsely fair,
A chain Thessalian magic bind,
Which never more, oh youth! believe,
Shall either earth or heaven unweave.'

Anthemion is alarmed by the portentous address of the old man, and recalling to his recollection the mysterious appearance and demeanour of the maid of Larissa-the frown with which the brazeu statue regarded him as he approached the altar-the withering of his chapletand the spontaneous twining with hers of his second offering;-these combining with the vague but fearful ideas of Thessalian magic which the words of the aged stranger were so well calculated to inspire in the mind of a simple youthagitate him with the most dreadful apprehensions, and he implores his venerable monitor to inform him if there be any mode of averting the threatened evil. The old man, after commenting upon the almost hopeless condition of those round whom the spells of magic have been cast, says,

"Ere close of day

Seek thou the planes, whose broad shades fall
On the stream that laves yon mountain's base:
There on thy Natal Genius call
For aid, and with averted face

Give to the stream that flower, nor look
Upon the running wave again;
For, if thou should'st, the sacred plane
Has heard thy suppliant vows in vain;
Nor then thy Natal Genius can,
Nor Phoebus, nor Arcadian Pan,
Dissolve thy tenfold chain.'-"

The stranger quits him, and he repairs to a neighbouring grove, through which flows a clear and gentle stream—

"Anthemion paused upon the shore:
All thought of magic's impious lore,
All dread of evil powers, combined
Against his peace, attempered ill
With that sweet scene; and on his mind
Fair, graceful, gentle, radiant still,
The form of that strange damsel came;
And something like a sense of shame
He felt, as if his coward thought
Foul wrong to guileless beauty wrought.
At length Oh radiant girl!'-he said,-
'If in the cause that bids me tread
These banks, the mixed injurious dread
Of thy fair thoughts, the fears of love
Must with thy injured kindness plead
My pardon for the wrongful deed.
Ye Nymphs, and Sylvan Gods, that rove
The precincts of this sacred wood!
Thou, Achelous' gentle daughter,
Bright Naiad of this beauteous water!
And thou, my Natal Genius good!

Lo! with pure hand the crystal flood
Collecting, on these altars b'est,
Libation holiest, brightest, best,
I pour. If round my footsteps dwell
Unholy sign or evil spell,

Receive me in your guardian sway;
And thou, oh gentle Naiad! bear
With this false flower those spells away,
If such be lingering there.'-"

He turns his face from the stream, according to the advice of the stranger, and casts the flower he had received from the fatal beauty into the wave-a sudden shriek assails his ear from the water-he starts, but turns not—

"Again!

of pain

It is Calliroë's cry! In vain
Could that dear maiden's cry
Strike on Anthemion s ear?
He turned to plunge into the tide,
At once, forgetting all beside,
But all again was still:

Poured his last line of crimson light,
The sun upon the surface bright
Half-sunk behind the hill:
But through the solemn plane-trees past
The pinions of a mightier blast,
And in its many-sounding sweep,
Among the foliage broad and deep,
Aerial voices seemed to sigh,
As if the spirits of the grove
Mourned, in prophetic sympathy
With some disastrous love."

The third canto (we forgot to mention that the poem is divided into seven) opens with some very pleasing verses, in which the author expresses his regret at the destruction of a religion so favourable as the Grecian to the purposes of poetry.

"By living streams, in sylvan shades,
Where winds and waves symphonious make
Sweet melody, the youths and maids
No more with choral music wake
Lone Echo from her tangled brake,
On Pan, or Sylvan Genius, calling,
Naiad or Nymph, in suppliant song:
No more by living fountain, falling
The poplar's circling bower among,
Where pious hands have carved of yore
Rude bason for its lucid store
And reared the grassy altar nigh,
The traveller, when the sun rides high,
For cool refreshment lingering there,
Pours to the Sister Nymphs his prayer.
Yet still the green vales smile: the springs
Gush forth in light: the forest weaves
Its own wild bowers; the breeze s wings
Make music in their rustling leaves;
But 'tis no spirit's breath that sighs
Among their tangled canopies:
In ocean's caves no Nereid dwells:
No Oread walks the mountain-dells:
The streams no sedge-crowned Genii roll
From bounteous urn: great Pan is dead:
The life, the intellectual soul

Of vale, and grove, and stream has fled
For ever with the creed sublime
That nursed the muse of earlier time."

As Anthemion proceeds on his way, the sounds of revelry come floating on the breeze from Thespis, but with such tones his mind is in too agitated a state to be delighted, and the contrast between the joyous scenes he had so lately left, and the disastrous circumstances and bodings attached to himself, only create a livelier sense of his unhappiness. He hurries on-through Ascra, and by the fountain of Aganippc

"The Muses' grove is nigh. He treads
Its sacred precincts. O'er him spreads
The palm's aerial canopy,

That, nurtured by perennial springs,
Around its summit broad and high
Its light and branchy foliage flings,
Arching in graceful symmetry.
Among the tall stems jagg'd and bare
Luxuriant laurel interweaves
An undershade of myriad leaves,
Here black in rayless masses, there
In partial moonlight glittering fair;
And wheresoe'er the barren rock
Peers through the grassy soil, its roots
The sweet andrachne strikes, to mock
Sterility, and profusely shoots

Its light boughs, rich with ripening fruits.
The moonbeams, through the chequering shade,
Upon the silent temple played,
The Muses' fanc. The nighingale,
Those consecrated bowers among,
Poured on the air a warbled tale,
So sweet, that scarcely from her nest,
'Where Orpheus' hallowed relics rest,
She breathes a sweeter song.

A scene, whose power the maniac sense
Of passion's wildest mood might own!
Anthemion felt its influence:

His fancy drank the soothing tone
Of all that tranquil loveliness;

And health and bloom returned to bless
His dear Callirõe, and the groves
And rocks where pastoral Ladon roves
Bore record of their blissful loves.

List there is music on the wind!
Sweet music! seldom mortal ear
On sounds so tender, so refined,

Has dwelt. Perchance some Muse is near,
Euterpe, or Polymnia bright,
Or Erato, whose gentle lyre
Responds to love and young desire!
It is the central hour of night;
The time is holy, lone, severe,
And mortals may not linger here!

Still on the air those wild notes fling
Their airy spells of voice and string,
In sweet accordance, sweeter made
By response soft from caverned shade.
He turns to where a lovely glade
Sleeps in the open moonlight's smile,
A natural fane, whose ample bound
The palm's columnar stems surround,
A wild and stately peristyle;
Save where their interrupted ring
Bends on the consecrated cave,

From whose dark arch, with tuneful wave,
Libethrus issues, sacred spring.
Beside its gentle murmuring,

VOL. IV.-No. 1.

3

A maiden, on a mossy stone,
Full in the moonlight, sits alone:
Her eyes, with humid radiance bright;
As if a tear had dimmed their light,
Are fixed upon the moon; her hair
Flows long and loose in the light soft air;
A golden Tyre her white hands bear;
Its chords, beneath her fingers fleet,
To such wild symphonies awake,
Her sweet lips breathe a song so sweet,
That the echoes of the cave repeat
Its closes with as soft a sigh,
As if they almost feared to break
The magic of its harmony.

Oh! there was passion in the sound,
Intensest passion, strange and deep;
Wild breathings of a soul, around
Whose every pulse one hope had bound,
One burning hope, which might not sleep.
But hark! that wild and solemn swell!
And was there in those tones a spell,
Which none may disobey? For lo!
Anthemion from the sylvan shade
Moves with reluctant steps and slow,
And in the lonely moonlight glade
He stands before the radiant maid."

On the approach of Anthemion she ceases her song-for a while they both remain silent: at length she asks why he has thrown away the flower she presented him at Thespis?-Anthemion ingenuously informs her-and she breaks forth into a strain of tender reproach, tells him that from that flower her own name, Rhododaphne, is borrowed—and gives the following beautiful description of the place of her birth, and the manner in which her earlier years were employed :

"Down Pindus' steep Peneus falls,
And swift and clear through hill and dale
It flows, and by Larissa's walls,
And through wild Tempe, loveliest vale:
And on its banks the cypress gloom
Waves round my father's lonely tomb.
My mother's only child am I :
Mid Tempe's sylvan rocks we dwell;
And from my earliest infancy,
The darling of our cottage-dell.
For its bright leaves and clusters fair,
My namesake flower has bound my hair.
With costly gift and flattering song,
Youths, rich and valiant, sought my love.
They moved me not. Ishunned the throng
Of suitors, for the mountain-grove
Where Sylvan gods and Oreads rove.
The Muses, whom I worship here,
Had breathed their influence on my being,
Keeping my youthful spirit clear
From all corrupting thoughts, and freeing
My footsteps from the crowd, to tread
Beside the torrent's echoing bed,
Mid wind-tost pines, on steeps aërial,
Where elemental Genii throw
Effluence of natures more ethereal
Than vulgar minds can feel or know.
Oft on those steeps, at earliest dawn,
The world in mist beneath me lay,

Whose vapory curtains, half withdrawn,
Revealed the flow of Therma's bay,
Red with the nascent light of day;
Till fall from Athos' distant height
The sun poured down his golden beams
Scattering the mists like morning dreams,
And rocks and lakes and isles and streams
Burst, like creation, into light.

In noontide bowers the bubbling springs,
In evening vales the winds that sigh
To eddying rivers murmuring by,
Have heard to these symphonious strings
The rocks and caverned glens reply.
Spirits that love the moonlight hour
Have met me on the shadowy hill:
Dream'st thou of Magic? of the power
That makes the blood of life run chill,
And shakes the world with dæmon skill?
Beany is Magic; grace and song;
Fair form, light motion, airy sound:
Frail webs! and yet a chain more strong
They weave the strongest hearts around,
Than e'er Alcides' arın unbound:
And such a chain I weave round thee,
Though but with mortal witchery.'

Anthemion is powerfully affected by the eloquent appeal of Rhododaphine. As she concludes her address, she lays her hand on his arm, and the magic touch inflames his every sense; but the progress of the delirium is checked by the remembrance of Calliröe,-palesad-and her eyes dim with weeping. He endeavours to release himself from the embrace of Rhododaphne, and wildly tells her he has "another love."

"But still she held his arm, and spoke Again in accents thrilling sweet:

In Tempe's vale a lonely oak
Has felt the storms of ages beat:
Blasted by the lightning-stroke,
A hollow, leafless, branchless trunk
It stands; but in its giant cell
A mighty sylvan power doth dwell,
An old and holy oracle.
Kneeling by that ancient tree,
I sought the voice of destiny,
And in my ear these accents sunk:
Waste not in loneliness thy bloom:
With flowers the Thespian altar dress:
The youth whom Love's mysterious doom
Assigns to thee, thy sight shall bless
With no ambiguous loveliness;
And thou, amid the joyous scene,
Shalt know him, by his mournful mien,
And by the poleness of his check,
And by the sadness of his eye,
And by his withered flowers, and by
The language thy own heart shall speak.'

The passage immediately following this, and in which the consummation of the charm is related, is conceived with brilliancy, and executed with spirit.

"She gathered up her glittering hair, And round his neck its tresses threw,

And twined her arms of beauty rare
Around him, and the light curls drew
In closer bands: ethereal dew
Of love and young desire was swimming
In her bright eyes, albeit not dimming
Their starry radiance, rather brightning
Their beams with passion's liquid lightning.
She clasped him to her throbbing breast,
And on his lips her lips she prest,
And cried the while
With joyous smile:

These lips are mine; the spells have won
them,

Which round and round thy soul I twine;
And be the kiss I print upon them
Poison to all lips but mine!"

We could instance the commencing lines of the fourth canto as a felicitous example of the author's powers of fancy and versification.

"Magic and mystery, spells Circaan,
The Siren voice, that calmed the sea,
The enchanted chalice, sparkling free
And steeped the soul in dews Lethaan:
With wine, amid whose ruby glow
Love couched, with madness linked, and wo,
Mantle and zone, whose woof beneath
Lurked wily grace, in subtle wreath
With blandishment and young desire
And soft persuasion, intertwined,
Whose touch, with sympathetic fire,
Could melt at once the sternest mind;
Young Faney's foe, and Reason chill,
Have passed away: for vestal Truth
Have chased the dreams that charmed the youth
Amid that vesta! light severe,
Of nature and the world, which still,
Our colder spirits leap to hear
Like echoes from a fairy hill.
Yet deem not so. The Power of Spells
Still lingers on the earth, but dwells
In deeper folds of close disguise,
That baffle Reason's searching eyes:
Nor shall that mystic Power resign
To Truth's cold sway his webs of guile,
Till woman's eyes have ceased to shine,
And woman's lips have ceased to smile,
And woman's voice has ceased to be
The earthly soul of melody."

Anthemion now approaches his native vale, and his heart begins to bound with joy as he proceeds through scenes and sounds of rural loveliness to a home endeared to him by every sweet remembrance of carly happiness; and though, as he draws nigh the cottage of Pheidon, the recollection of late events awakens a few faint fears for the safety of Callirõe, these are quickly banished when he beholds the venerable father sitting at the door of his simple mansion, with Calliröe by his side, blooming in renovated health and beauty. The whole scene is very sweetly related.

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