Down into Lemnos, through the gate of Heav'n.
Thou also, with precipitated wheels,
Phoebus! thy own son's fall shalt imitate,
With hideous ruin shalt impress the deep
Suddenly, and the flood shall reek, and hiss,
At the extinction of the lamp of day.
Then too shall Hæmus, cloven to his base,
Be shattered, and the huge Ceraunian hills,
Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immers'd
In Erebus, shall fill himself with fear.
No. The Almighty Father surer laid His deep foundations, and providing well For the event of all, the scales of Fate Suspended, in just equipoise, and bade His universal works, from age to age, One tenor hold, perpetual, undisturb'd.
Hence the prime mover wheels itself about
Continual, day by day, and with it bears
In social measure swift the heav'ns around.
Not tardier now is Satan than of old,
Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars.
Phoebus, his vigour unimpair'd, still shows
Th' effulgence of his youth, nor needs the god
A downward course, that he may warm the vales;
But, ever rich in influence, runs his road,
Sign after sign, through all the heav'nly zone.
Beautiful, as at first, ascends the star
From odorif'rous Ind, whose office is
To gather home betimes th' ethereal flock,
To pour them o'er the skies again at eve,
And to discriminate the night and day.
Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes, and wanes, Alternate, and with arms extended still,
She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams.
Nor have the elements deserted yet
Their functions; thunder, with as loud a stroke
As erst, smites through the rocks, and scatters them.
The east still howls, still the relentless north
Invades the shudd'ring Scythian, still he breathes
The winter, and still rolls the storms along.
The king of ocean, with his wonted force,
Beats on Pelorus, o'er the deep is heard
The hoarse alarm of Triton's sounding shell,
Nor swim the monsters of the Ægean sea
In shallows, or beneath diminish'd waves.
Thou too, thy ancient vegetative pow'r
Enjoy'st, O earth! Narcissus still is sweet,
And, Phœbus! still thy favourite, and still
Thy fav'rite Cytherea! both retain
Their beauty, nor the mountains, ore-enrich'd
For punishment of man, with purer gold
Teem'd ever, or with brighter gems the Deep.
Thus, in unbroken series, all proceeds; And shall, till wide involving either pole, And the immensity of yonder heav'n, The final flames of destiny absorb
The world consum'd in one enormous pyre
AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE.
YE sister pow'rs, who o'er the sacred groves
Preside, and thou, fair mother of them all,
Mnemosyne! and, thou, who in thy grot
Immense, reclin'd at leisure, hast in charge
The archives, and the ord'nances of Jove,
And dost record the festivals of heav'n,
Eternity!-Inform us who is He,
That great original by nature chos'n
To be the archetype of human kind,
Unchangeable, immortal, with the poles
Themselves coæval, one, yet ev'ry where,
An image of the god, who gave him being?
Twin-brother of the goddess born from Jove.
He dwells not in his father's mind, but, though
Of common nature with ourselves, exists
Apart, and occupies a local home.
Whether, companion of the stars, he spend
Eternal ages, roaming at his will
From sphere to sphere the tenfold heav'ns, or dwell
On the moon's side that nearest neighbours earth,
Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit
Among the multitude of souls ordain'd
To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance)
That vast and giant model of our kind
In some far distant region of this globe
Sequester'd stalk, with lifted head on high
O'ertow'ring Atlas, on whose shoulders rest
The stars, terrific even to the gods.
Never the Theban seer, whose blindness prov'd
His best illumination, him beheld
In secret vision; never him the son
Of Pleione, amid the noiseless night
Descending, to the prophet-choir reveal'd;
Him never knew th' Assyrian priest who yet
The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,
And Belus, and Osiris, far renown'd;
Nor even thrice great Hermes, although skill'd So deep in myst'ry, to the worshippers
Of Isis show'd a prodigy like him.
And thou, who hast immortaliz'd the shades Of Academus, if the schools receiv'd
This monster of the fancy first from thee,
Either recall at once the banish'd bards
To thy republic, or thyself evinc'd
A wilder fabulist, go also forth.
OH that Pieria's spring would thro' my breast Pour its inspiring influence, and rush
No rill but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable Father's sake,
All meaner themes renounc'd, my muse, on wings
Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain.
For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please,
She frames this slender work, nor know I aught
That may thy gifts more suitably requite;
Though to requite them suitably would ask
Returns much nobler, and surpassing far
The meagre stores of verbal gratitude:
But, such as I possess, I send thee all,
This page presents thee in their full amount
With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought;
Nought, save the riches that from airy dream
In secret grottos, and in laurel bow'rs,
I have, by golden Clio's gift, acquir'd.
Verse is a work divine; despise not thou Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more) Man's heavenly source, and which, retaining still Some scintillations of Promethean fire,
Bespeaks him animated from above.
The Gods love verse; the infernal pow'rs themselves
Confess the influence of verse, which stirs
The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains
Of adamant both Pluto and the Shades.
In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale
Tremulous Sybil, make the future known,
And he who sacrifices on the shrine
Hangs verse,both when he smites the threat'ning bull
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