None can record their heavenly praise so well As Helen, in whose eyes ten thousand Cupids dwell.

O fair, O graceful! yet with maids enroll'd,
But whom to-morrow's sun a matron shall be-
hold!

Yet ere to-morrow's sun shall show his head,
The dewy paths of meadows we will tread,
For crowns and chaplets to adorn thy head.
Where all shall weep, and wish for thy return,
As bleating lambs their absent mother mourn.
Our noblest maids shall to thy name bequeath
The boughs of Lotos, form'd into a wreath.
This monument, thy maiden beauties' due,
High on a plane tree shall be hung to view :
On the smooth rind the passenger shall see
Thy name engrav'd, and worship Helen's tree:
Balm, from a silver box distill'd around,
Shall all bedew the roots, and scent the sacred
ground.

The balm, 't is true, can aged plants prolong,
But Helen's name will keep it ever young.
Hail bride, hail bridegroom, son-in-law to
Jove

With fruitful joys Latona bless your love!
Let Venus furnish you with full desires,
Add vigour to your wills, and fuel to your fires!
Almighty Jove augment your wealthy store,
Give much to you, and to his grandsons more!
From generous loins a generous race will
spring.

Each girl, like her, a queen; each boy, like
you, a king.

Now sleep, if sleep you can ; but while you rest,
Sleep close, with folded arms, and breast to
breast:

Rise in the morn; but oh! before you rise,
Forget not to perform your morning sacrifice.
We will be with you ere the crowing cock
Salutes the light, and struts before his feather'd
flock.

Hymen, oh, Hymen, to thy triumphs run,
And view the mighty spoils thou hast in battle

won.

THE DESPAIRING LOVER,

Her heavenly form too haughtily she priz❜d,
His person hated, and his gifts despised;
Nor knew the force of Cupid's cruel darts,
Nor fear'd his awful power on human hearts;
But either from her hopeless lover fled,
Or with disdainful glances shot him dead.
No kiss, no look, to cheer the drooping boy;
No word she spoke, she scorn'd e'en to deny.
But, as a hunted panther casts about [to scout,
Her glaring eyes, and pricks her listening ears
So she, to shun his toils, her cares employ'd,
And fiercely in her savage freedom joy'd.
Her mouth she writh'd, her forehead taught to
frown,

Her eyes to sparkle fires to love unknown:
Her sallow cheeks her envious mind did show,
And every feature spoke aloud the curstness of
a shrew.

Yet could not he his obvious fate escape;
His love still dress'd her in a pleasing shape;
And every sullen frown, and bitter scorn,
But fann'd the fuel that too fast did burn.
Long time, unequal to his mighty pain,
He strove to curb it, but he strove in vain :
At last his woes broke out, and begg'd relief
With tears, the dumb petitioners of grief:
With tears so tender, as adorn'd his love,
And any heart, but only hers, would move.
Trembling before her bolted doors he stood,
And there pour'd out the unprofitable flood:
Staring his eyes, and haggard was his look
Then, kissing first the threshold, thus he spoke.

Ah, nymph, more cruel than of human race!
Thy tigress heart belies thy angel face:
Too well thou show'st thy pedigree from stone:
Thy grandame's was the first by Pyrrha thrown
Unworthy thou be so long desir'd;
But so my love, and so my fate requir'd.
I beg not now (for 't is in vain) to live;
But take this gift, the last that I can give.
This friendly cord shall soon decide the strife
Betwixt my lingering love and loathsome life;
This moment puts an end to all my pain:
I shall no more despair, nor thou disdain.
Farewell, ungrateful and unkind! I go
Condemn'd by thee to those sad shades below.
I go the extremest remedy to prove,
To drink oblivion, and to drench my love:
There happily to lose my long desires: [fires?
But ah! what draught so deep to quench my
Farewell, ye never-opening gates, ye stones,

FROM THE TWENTY-THIRD IDYLLÍUM OF And threshold guilty of my midnight moans!

THEOCRITUS.

WITH inauspicious love, a wretched swain
Pursu'd the fairest nymph of all the plain;
Fairest indeed, but prouder far than fair,
She plung'd him hopeless in a deep despair:

What I have suffer'd here ye know too well;
What I shall do the gods and I can tell.
The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time:
The violet sweet, but quickly past the prime ;
White lilies hang their heads, and soon decay,
And whiter snow in minutes melts away:

THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND
BOOK OF LUCRETIUS.

"T is pleasant, safely to behold from shore
The rolling ship, and hear the tempest roar :
Not that another's pain is our delight;
But pains unfelt produce the pleasing sight.
"T is pleasant also to behold from far
The moving legions mingled in the war. [guide
But much more sweet thy labouring steps to
To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,
And all the magazines of learning fortified:
From thence to look below on humankind,
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind:
To see vain fools ambitiously contend
For wit and power; their last endeavours bend
To outshine each other, waste their time and
health

In search of honour, and pursuit of wealth.
O wretched man! in what a mist of life,
Inclos'd with dangers and with noisy strife,
He spends his little span; and overfeeds
His cramm'd desires with more than nature
For nature wisely stints our appetite, [needs!
And craves no more than undisturb'd delight:
Which minds, unmix'd with cares and fears ob-
A soul serene, a body void of pain.

[tain;

So little this corporeal frame requires ;
So bounded are our natural desires,
That wanting all, and setting pain aside,
With bare privation sense is satisfied.
If golden sconces hang not on the walls,
To light the costly suppers and the balls;
If the proud palace shines not with the state
Of burnish'd bowls, and of reflected plate;
If well tun'd harps, nor the more pleasing sound
Of voices, from the vaulted roofs rebound;

Yet on the grass, beneath a poplar shade,
By the cool stream our careless limbs are laid;
With cheaper pleasures innocently bless'd,
When the warm spring with gaudy flowers is
Nor will the raging fever's fire abate, [dress'd.
With golden canopies and beds of state:
But the poor patient will as soon be sound
On the hard mattrass, or the mother ground.
Then since our bodies are not eas'd the more
By birth, or power, or fortune's wealthy store,
"T is plain, these useless toys of every kind
As little can relieve the labouring mind:
Unless we could suppose the dreadful sight
Of marshal'd legions moving to the fight,
Could, with their sound and terrible array,
Expel our fears, and drive the thoughts of death
But, since the supposition vain appears, [away.
Since clinging cares, and trains of inbred fears,
Are not with sounds to be affrighted thence,
But in the midst of pomp pursue the prince,
Not aw'd by arms, but in the presence bold,
Without respect to purple, or to gold;
Why should not we these pageantries despise ;
Whose worth but in our want of reason lies?
For life is all in wand'ring errors led;
And just as children are surpris'd with dread,
And tremble in the dark, so riper years
E'en in broad daylight are possess'd with fears
And shake at shadows fanciful and vain,
As those which in the breasts of children reign.
These bugbears of the mind, this inward hell,
No rays of outward sunshine can dispel ;
But nature and right reason must display
Their beams abroad, and bring the darksome
soul to day.

THE LATTER PART OF THE THIRD
BOOK OF LUCRETIUS;

AGAINST THE FEAR OF DEATH.

WHAT has this bugbear death to frighten men,
If souls can die, as well as bodies can?
For, as before our birth we felt no pain,
When Punic arms infested land and main,
When heaven and earth were in confusion
For the debated empire of the world, [hurl'd,
Which aw'd with dreadful expectation lay,
Sure to be slaves, uncertain who should sway
So, when our mortal flame shall be disjoin'd,
The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind,
From sense of grief and pain we shall be free
We shall not feel, because we shall not be.
Though earth in seas, and seas in heaven wer

lost,

We should not move, we only should be tost.

Nay, e'en suppose when we have suffer'd fate, Or on an airy mountain's top to lie,

The soul could feel in her divided state,
What's that to us? for we are only we
While souls and bodies in one frame agree.
Nay, though our atoms should revolve by
chance,

And matter leap into the former dance;
Though time our life and motion could restore,
And make our bodies what they were before,
What gain to us would all this bustle bring?
The new-made man would be another thing.
When once an interrupting pause is made,
That individual being is decay'd.

We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part
In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart,
Which to that other mortal shall accrue,
Whom of our matter time shall mould anew.
For backward if you look on that long space
Of ages past, and view the changing face
Of matter, toss'd and variously combin'd
In sundry shapes, 't is easy for the mind [been
From thence to infer, that seeds of things have
In the same order as they now are seen:
Which yet our dark remembrance cannot trace,
Because a pause of life, a gaping space,
Has come betwixt, where memory lies dead,
And all the wandering motions from the sense
For whosoe'er shall in misfortunes live, [are fled.
Must be, when those misfortunes shall arrive;
And since the man who is not, feels not woe,
(For death exempts him, and wards off the blow,
Which we, the living, only feel and bear)
What is there left for us in death to fear
When once that pause of life has come between,
"T is just the same as we had never been.
And therefore if a man bemoan his lot,
That after death his mouldering limbs shall rot,
Or flames, or jaws of beasts devour his mass,
Know, he's an unsincere, unthinking ass.
A secret sting remains within his mind;
The fool is to his own cast offals kind.
He boasts no sense can after death remain;
Yet makes himself a part of life again;
As if some other He could feel the pain,
If, while we live, this thought molest his head,
What wolf or vulture shall devour me dead?
He wastes his days in idle grief, nor can
Distinguish 'twixt the body and the man;
But thinks himself can still himself survive;
And, what when dead he feels not, feels alive.
Then he repines that he was born to die,
Nor knows in death there is no other He,
No living He remains his grief to vent,
And o'er his senseless carcass to lament.
If after death 't is painful to be torn,
By birds, and beasts, then why not so to burn,
Or drench'd in floods of honey to be soak'd,
Imbalm'd to be at once preserv'd and chok'd;

Expos'd to cold and heaven's inclemency;
Or crowded in a tomb to be oppress'd
With monumental marble on thy breast?
But to be snatch'd from all the household joys
From thy chaste wife, and thydear prattling boys
Whose little arms about thy legs are cast,
And climbing for a kiss prevent their mothers
haste,

Inspiring secret pleasure through thy breast,
Ah! these shall be no more: thy friends op

press'd

Thy care and courage now no more shall free
Ah! wretch, thou criest, ah! miserable me!
One woful day sweeps children, friends,and wife
And all the brittle blessings of my life!
Add one thing more, and all thou say'st is true,
Thy want and wish of them is vanish'd too :
Which, well consider'd, were a quick relief
To all thy vain imaginary grief.
For thou shalt sleep, and never wake again,
And, quitting life, shalt quit thy living pain.
But we, thy friends, shall all those sorrows find,
Which in forgetful death thou leav'st behind;
No time shall dry our tears, nor drive thee from
our mind.

The worst that can befall thee, measur'd right,
Is a sound slumber, and a long good night.
Yet thus the fools, that would be thought the wits
Disturb their mirth with melancholy fits: [flow,
When healths go round, and kindly brimmers
Till the fresh garlands on their foreheads glow,
They whine, and cry, Let us make haste to live,
Short are the joys that human life can give.
Eternal preachers, that corrupt the draught,
And pall the god, that never thinks, with thought:
Idiots with all that thought, to whom the worst
Of death is want of drink, and endless thirst,
Or any fond desire as vain as these.
For, c'en in sleep, the body. wrapt in ease,
Supinely lies, as in the peaceful grave;
And, wanting nothing, nothing can it crave.
Were that sound sleep eternal, it were death
Yet the first atoms then, the seeds of breath,
Are moving near to sense; we do but shake
And rouse that sense, and straight we are
awake.

Then death to us, and death's anxiety
Is less than nothing, if a less could be.
For then our atoms, which in order lay,
Are scatter'd from their heap, and puff'd away.
And never can return into their place,
When once the pause of life has left an empty
space.
[call
And last, suppose great Nature's voice should
To thee, or me, or any of us all,
"What dost thou mean, ungrateful wretch, thou
Thou mortal thing, thus idly to complain,

[vain,

L