EXTRACTS. PROPERTIUS, LIB. III. ELEG. V. V. 19. "Me juvat in primâ coluisse Helicona juventâ," etc. IMITATED. LONG as of youth the joyous hours remain, Me may Castalia's sweet recess detain, Fast by the umbrageous vale lull'd to repose, Where Aganippe warbles as it flows; Or roused by sprightly sounds from out the trance, I'd in the ring knit hands, and join the Muses' dance. Give me to send the laughing bowl around, My soul in Bacchus' pleasing fetters bound; Let on this head unfading flowers reside, There bloom the vernal rose's earliest pride; And when, our flames commission'd to destroy, Age step 'twixt Love and me, and intercept the joy ; When my changed head these looks no more shall know, And all its jetty honors turn to snow; Then let me rightly spell of Nature's ways; To Providence, to HIM my thoughts I'd raise, Who taught this vast machine its steadfast laws, That first, eternal, universal cause; Search to what regions yonder star re tires, That monthly waning hides her paly fires, And whence, anew revived, with silver light Relumes her crescent orb to cheer the dreary night: How rising winds the face of ocean sweep, Where lie the eternal fountains of the deep, And whence the cloudy magazines main tain Their wintry war, or pour the autumnal rain ; How flames perhaps, with dire confusion hurl'd, Shall sink this beauteous fabric of the world; What colors paint the vivid arch of Jove; What wondrous force the solid earth can move, When Pindus' self approaching ruin dreads, Shakes all his pines, and bows his hundred heads; Why does yon orb, so exquisitely bright, Obscure his radiance in a short-lived night; Whence the Seven-Sisters' congregated fires, And what Bootes' lazy wagon tires; How the rude surge its sandy bounds control; Who measured out the year, and bade the seasons roll; If realms beneath those fabled torments know, Pangs without respite, fires that ever glow, Earth's monster brood stretch'd on their iron bed, The hissing terrors round Alecto's head, Scarce to nine acres Tityus' bulk con fined, The triple dog that scares the shadowy kind, All angry heaven inflicts, or hell can feel, The pendent rock, Ixion's whirling wheel, Famine at feasts, or thirst amid the stream; |