The dismal clamour through the court resounds:
Then, spreading, rages through the city's bounds.
With female cries and howlings of lament
The streets reecho, and the skies are rent.
Not less than if, beneath the storming foe,
Carthage or venerable Tyre should bow:
O'er towers and temples roll the tide of fire;
And a whole people in one blaze expire.

Half dead and horror-struck, the sister caught
The dreadful tidings by the tumult brought.
Raving she beats her breast and tears her cheeks;
And, wildly as the obstructing crowd she breaks,
Calls on the dying: Couldst thou this intend?
Ah! Sister! couldst thou thus betray thy friend
Were then these altars, fires, and pyre design'd
To cheat my feelings and mislead my mind?
Deserted as I am,-undone and lost,

Of what shall I complain the first and most?
Hast thou then scorn'd me with thy latest breath?
Denied me e'en the partnership of death?
Ah! equal, surely, should have been our doom;
And the same pang have sent us to the tomb.
And did I then this fatal pile prepare,
Invoke my gods with mockery of prayer,
To find thee thus ?-Ah me! this frantic blow
Has laid thy sister, senate, people, low-
Has overturn'd thy state !-Haste! let me lave
Her gory bosom with the living wave:

If yet she breathe, my lips to hers apply,
And catch the etherial spirit ere it fly.'

Speaking, the summit of the pyre she press'd; And warm'd her dying sister in her breast: Groan'd, and with softest hand her robe applied To dry the black drops trickling down her side.

The expiring queen essays to lift with pain
Her heavy lids, but soon they fall again.
Deep in her bosom stream'd the inflicted wound;
And the torn vessels yield a bubbling sound.
Thrice, on her elbow raised, she heaves her head;
And, fainting, thrice relapses on the bed:

With wandering vision strives to gain the light;
Finds it at length, and sighs, and loathes the sight.

But heaven's great Empress saw her labouring
Detain'd in anguish by suspended death; [breath
And, pitying, sent fleet Iris from the skies,
To free the soul that struggled with its ties.
For, since not Nature's death, or struck for crime
She died, but fell by frenzy ere her time,
Proserpina had yet not shorn her head

Of the due lock, and doom'd her to the dead.
Now therefore, radiant with a thousand dyes
Drawn from the sun, the dewy Iris flies;
And, o'er her head-This I, as Heaven commands,
To Pluto bear, and loose thy mortal bands;'
Says, and divides the lock. At once expires
Life's spark; and into air the unbodied soul re-

tires.

SYMMONS.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE SHADES.

FROM THE LATIN OF VIRGIL.

YE Gods, who rule the shades with awful might! Chaos! and Phlegethon! and silent Night! Grant me unblamed to speak what Fame has told; And your deep world of darkness to unfold.

O'er shadowy realms,controll'd by Pluto's sway, Through the dun gloom they press their lonely way:

Like him who traverses the forest shade,

By the false moon not lighted, but betray'd:
When Jove in clouds withdraws the heavens from
And Night robes Nature in one sable hue. [view;
On hell's black threshold, by its yawning gate,
Sorrows and vengeful Cares reclining wait.
There wan Diseases dwell and mournful Age:
There Fear and Want and ghastly Famine rage;
Forms dire to sight! and there, of kindred race,
Pale Death and Sleep,with Labor, hold their place:
There too the Joys of mind that spring from guilt;
And War, all horrid in the blood he spilt.
There stand the Furies' iron beds, and there
Discord with gory bands compels her snaky hair.
High in the midst an elm expands its arms,
Old, dark, immense; beneath whose boughs in

swarms

Cluster light dreams, the mockeries of sleep;
And by each leaf their fluttering station keep.
The region teems with monsters huge and foul:
There Centaurs stable; twofold Scyllas howl;
Vast Briareus his hundred-arm'd assault
Threats; and fell Hydra's hisses shake the vault:
Chimæra pours her flames: dire Gorgons glare:
The wings of Harpyies rend the lurid air;
And, grandly in his pomp of might display'd,
Scowls, with dark rage, the fierce tricorporate
shade*.

Here, suddenly alarm'd, the hero's hand

Shook his broad falchion at the monstrous band:

And, unadmonish'd by his sapient guide

That the vain lives in forms of shadow glide,

* Geryon.

Madly his rage had dealt its blows around;
And at impassive phantoms aim'd the wound.
Hence leads their path to Acheron's dark waves.
Turbid and foul the flood in eddies raves;
And with fierce influx on Cocytus pours.
Guard of the stream and master of the shores,
In squalid horror Charon here attends.
Clustering in tangled hoariness, descends
His mass of beard: his eyes are fix'd in flame :
A rusty garb hangs foully on his frame.
With a protruded pole and canvass spread,
He works the sable bark that wafts the dead.
Old, but without decay, the god is seen,
In age's winter, vivid still and green.

Here rush to gain the bank, a bloodless throng,
Matrons, men, boys, and chiefs in battle strong;
Maidens, and youths, the prey of funeral fires
In the sad view of their distracted sires:
As numerous as the leaves in forest glades,
When boisterous autumn shatters first their shades:
Or thick as birds, when their assembled host
In fluttering myriads settle on the coast;
O'er seas prepared for sunny realms to steer,
And fly the rigors of the wintry year.
The crowds, with longing for the further shore,
Press for their passage, and with prayers implore,
Now these, now those the surly boatman takes;
But drives the rest to distance from the lakes.

SYMMONS.

TARTARUS.

FROM THE LATIN OF VIRGIL.

He spoke, and turn'd his step: when stretch'd immense,

With bulwarks circled and a triple fence,
A mighty structure, whose enormous mounds
With flaming torrents Phlegethon surrounds,
Rose on the left; and, as Æneas threw
His glance around, broke sudden on his view,
Its massy gates on adamant sustain'd,
The assault of men or gods alike disdain'd;
And near, high-raised, an iron fortress stood.
On the dread threshold, in a robe of blood,
Tisiphone, with eyes that never slept,

By day, by night, her vengeful station kept, Hence groans are heard, and torture's horrid strains;

The steel whip's clangor, and the clash of chains. Aghast the hero stands; and, as he draws

With trembling ears the sounds, inquires their

cause:

'Say, holy Virgin! whence this rending peal? What the dire crimes, and what the pains they feel?' 'Illustrious chief of Troy!' the priestess said, 'That guilty threshold no chaste foot must tread: But, when great Hecate's distinguish'd love Enthroned me priestess of the Avernian grove, She led me through yon regions of affright; And show'd me all the gods' avenging might. Those realms of woe stern Rhadamanthus awes: Hears and determines by eternal laws:

Wrings the black secret from the grasping breast: And bares the villain till he stands confess'd: