I had forestalled this dear and deep rebuke, 2. If I do feign, O, let me in my present wildness die, And never live to show the incredulous world And thus upbraided it:-The care on thee depending Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold; Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, Preserving life in medicine potable ;* But thou, most fine, most honored, most renowned. 3. Thus, royal liege, Accusing it, I put it on my head, To try with it-(as with an enemy, That had before my face murdered my father) The quarrel of a true inheritor. But if it did affect my blood with joy, Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride, If Did with the least affection of a welcome That doth with awe and terror kneel to it! *An opinion long prevailed that gold has medicinal virtues, and that when taken into the system it communicates its own incorruptibility. So current was this belief, that the charlatans of old pretended, among other frauds, to make gold potable. LESSON CLXVI. The Paint King.-W. ALLSTON. 1. FAIR Ellen was long the delight of the young, No damsel could with her compare ; Her charms were the theme of the heart and the tongue, And bards without number in ecstasies sung The beauties of Ellen the fair. 2. Yet cold was the maid"; and, though legions advanced, All drilled by Ovidean art, And languished and ogled, protested and danced, Like shadows they came, and like shadows they glanced From the hard, polished ice of her heart. 3. Yet still did the heart of fair Ellen implore A something that could not be found; Like a sailor she seemed on a desolate shore, With nor house nor a tree, nor a sound but the roar 4. From object to object, still, still would she veer, Though nothing, alas! could she find; Like the moon, without atmosphere, brilliant and clear, 5. But, rather than sit like a statue so stil!, When the rain made her mansion a pound, Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill, From the tiles of the roof to the ground. 6. One morn, as the maid from her casement inclined; Passed a youth, with a frame in his hand. The casement she closed, not the eye of her mind, Still before her she saw the youth stand. 7. "Ah, what can he do?" said the languishing maid "Ah, what with that frame can he do?" And she knelt to the goddess of secrets, and prayed, 8. "O, beautiful picture!" the fair Ellen cried, Then under her chin her white bonnet she tied, 9. "Fair damsel," said he (and he chuckled the wh "This picture, I see, you admire : Then take it, I pray you; perhaps 't will beguile 10. Then Ellen the gift, with delight and surprise, From the cunning young stripling received. But she knew not the poison that entered her eyes, When, sparkling with rapture, they gazed on her prize ; Thus, alas, are fair maidens deceived! 11. 'T was a youth o'er the form of a statue inclined, And the sculptor he seemed of the stone; Yet he languished as though for its beauty he pined, 12. 'T was the tale of the sculptor Pygmalion* of old, Fair Ellen remembered, and sighed : "Ah, could'st thou but lift from that marble, so cold, Thine eyes too imploring, thine arms should enfold, And press me this day as thy bride." 13. She said: when, behold, from the canvas arose The love-plighted Ellen; and, clasping, he froze 14. She turned, and beheld on each shoulder a wing. “O heaven!” cried she, "who art thou?" From the roof to the ground did his fierce answer ring, As frowning, he thundered, "I am the Paint King! And mine, lovely maid, thou art now!" *This was not Pygmalion the brother of Dido, the founder of Carthage, but a celebrated statuary of Cyprus. The licentious conduct of his country-women gave him so great an aversion to the sex, that he resolved never to marry. He afterwards became enamored of a beautiful statue of marble, which he himself had made, and which, according to the mythologists, was changed by Venus, the goddess of beauty, into a woman, whom he married. + It is a good rule, that a poet should ever bear in mind, that poetry is, in fact, mental painting; and that no such mixture of metaphors, or of plain and figurative language, can be allowed, as cannot fairly and legitimately be represented to the eye. Mr. Allston, the author of this piece, was one of the most distinguished historical painters of his age; but, how he could picture to his own mind, to say nothing of those of his readers, 66 a flame as " freezing," or the means of freezing, cannot easily be seen. If, however, this, and other expressions in the piece, may legitimately be obnoxious to criticism, there are other points about it which make it valuable as an exercise in reading. 15. Then high from the ground did the grim monster lift The loud-screaming maid like a blast; And he sped through the air like a meteor swift, While the clouds, wandering by him, did fearfully drift 16. Now suddenly sloping his hurricane flight, With an eddying whirl he descends; The air all below him becomes black as night, And the ground where he treads, as if moved with affright, Like the surge of the Caspian bends. 17. "I am here!" said the fiend, and he thundering knocked At the gates of a mountainous cave; The gates open flew, as by magic unlocked, While the peaks of the mount, reeling to and fro, rocked 18. " O, mercy!" cried Ellen, and swooned in his arms: But the Paint King, he scoffed at her pain. "Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?' She hears not, she sees not, the terrible charms That work her to horror again. 19. She opens her lids, but no longer her eyes Behold the fair youth she would woo: Now appears the Paint King in his natural guise ; Black and white, red and yellow, and blue. 20. On the skull of a Titan, that Heaven defied, Sat the fiend like the grim giant Gog, While aloft to his mouth a huge pipe he applied, 21. And anon, as he puffed, the vast volumes were seen, In horrid festoons on the wall, Legs, arms, heads, and bodies, emerging between, Like the drawing-room grim of a Scotch Sawney Beane, 22. "Ah me!” cried the damsel, and fell at his feet, "Must I hang on these walls to be dried?" O, no," said the fiend, while he sprang from his seat; "A far nobler fortune thy person shall meet; Into paint will I grind thee, my bride!" 23. Then seizing the maid by her dark auburn hair, An oil-jug he plunged her within. Seven days, seven nights, with the shrieks of despair, 24. On the morn of the eighth, on a huge sable stone, Then Ellen, all reeking, he laid; With a rock for his muller, he crushed every bone, 25. Now reaching his palette, with masterly care, Each tint on its surface he spread; The blue of her eyes, and the brown of. her hair, 26. Then, stamping his foot, did the monster exclaim, "Now I brave, cruel fairy, thy scorn!" When, lo! from a chasm wide-yawning, there came By a team of ten glow-worms upborne. 27. Enthroned in the midst, on an emerald bright, Fair Geraldine sat without peer; Her robe was a gleam of the first blush of light, 28. In an accent that stole on the still charméd air, Like the first gentle language of Eve, Thus spake from her chariot the fairy so fair: 29. "T is true," said the monster, "thou queen of Thy portrait I oft have essayed ; Yet ne'er to the canvas could I with my art my heart, 30. " Now I * * by the light of the Comet King's tail," And he towered with pride as he spoke,— "If again with these magical colors I fail, The crater of Etna shall hence be my jail, And my food shall be sulphur and smoke. 31. "But if I succeed, then, oh fair Geraldine, Thy promise with justice I claim, And thou, queen of fairies, shalt ever be mine, * Muller, a stone used by painters for grinding paint. It is used also by apothecaries for mixing their drugs. An oval board, which painters hold in their hand, on which they mix their paints, as they are wanted, to obtain any particular hue or shade. |