glow,

cow.

Then Amycus, collecting all his might,
Rose to the stroke, resolved his foe to smite,
And by one blow the dubious war conclude.
His wary foe, the ruin to elude,

Vindictive struck his adversary's ear;

Th' interior bones his ponderous gauntlet brokeFlat fell the chief beneath his dreadful stroke. The Grecians shouted, with wild rapture fir'd, And, deeply groaning, Amycus expir'd.

A NATIVE of Assos in Asia Minor.-He was originally a common wrestler, in which capacity he visited Athens. There, having caught the spirit of knowledge so prevalent among the people, he devoted himself to study, drawing water as a common labourer during the night, that he might have means and leisure to attend the schools of philosophy by day. So great was his poverty, that he is said to have written the

heads of his master's lectures on shells and bones for want of money to procure better materials. He was a follower of Zeno, and, after his death, succeeded him in the portico. Though he wrote much, yet none of his writings have come down to us but the following hymn, which is deservedly lauded by West, as displaying such correct sentiments of duty in a heathen, and so much poetry in a philosopher.

HYMN TO JUPITER.

Most glorious of the immortal powers above!
Oh thou of many names! mysterious Jove!
For evermore almighty! Nature's source!
That govern'st all things in their order'd course!
All hail to thee! since, innocent of blame,
E'en mortal creatures may address thy name;
For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth,
Echo thy being with reflected birth-
Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound:
The universe, that rolls this globe around,
Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,
And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.
The lightnings are thy ministers of ire;
The double-fork'd, and ever-living fire;
In thy unconquerable hands they glow,
And at the flash all nature quakes below.
Thus, thunder-arm'd, thou dost creation draw,
To one immense, inevitable law:

And, with the various mass of breathing souls
Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls.
Dread genius of creation! all things bow
To thee; the universal monarch thou!
Nor aught is done without thy wise control,
On earth, or sea, or round th' ethereal pole,
Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,
Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind.
Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion to thy sight
Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright.

Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings
To one apt harmony the strife of things.
One ever-during law still binds the whole,
Though shunn'd, resisted, by the sinner's soul.
Wretches! while still they course the glittering
prize,

The law of God eludes their ears and eyes.
Life then were virtue, did they this obey;
But wide from life's chief good they headlong
stray.

Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;
Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;
Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease;
And the sweet pleasures of the body please.
With eager haste they rush the gulf within,

And their whole souls are center'd in their sin.
But, oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given!
Dweller with lightnings, and the clouds of heaven!
Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!
Father! disperse these shadows of the mind!
Give them thy pure and righteous law to know;
Wherewith thy justice governs all below.
Thus honour'd by the knowledge of thy way,
Shall men that honour to thyself repay;
And bid thy mighty works in praises ring;
As well befits a mortal's lips to sing:
More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers, can be,
Than when their songs are of thy law and

thee!

stung

With discontent, neglects his mental powers,
And energies; nor dares, courageous, aught
Of speech or action; trembling, when the rich
Appear before him: sadness and despair
Eating his very heart. While he, who swells
With proud prosperity, whom heaven endows
With riches, and with power above the crowd;
Forgets his being's nature; that his feet
Tread the low earth, and that himself was born
Of mortal parents; but, with puff'd-up mind,
Sinful in haughtiness, like Jove, he wields
The thunder; and, though small in stature, lifts
The neck, with high-rein'd head, as though he
wooed

Fair-arm'd Minerva; and had cleft a way

To high Olympus' top; that, with the gods
There number'd, he might feast in blessedness.
But lo! Destruction, running with soft feet,
Unlook'd for, and unseen, bows suddenly
The loftiest heads. Deceitfully she steals.
In unexpected forms upon their sins;
To youthful follies wears the face of age;
To aged crimes the features of a maid;
And her dread deed is pleasant in the sigh
Of Justice, and of him who rules the gods.

A LOVER'S WISH.

DEXIONICA, with a limed thread,

Her snare beneath a verdant plane-tree spread,
And caught a blackbird by the quivering wing:
The struggling bird's shrill outcries piping ring.
O God of Love! O Graces, blooming fair!
I would that I a thrush, or blackbird, were;
So, in her grasp, to breathe my murmur'd cries,
And shed a sweet tear from my silent eyes.

ON THE EXPEDITION OF FLAMINIUS.

XERXES from Persia led his mighty host,
And Titus his from fair Italia's coast.

ON HIPPONAX THE SATIRIST. THY tomb no purple clusters rise to grace, But thorns and briars choke the fearful place;

Unwholesome juices to the passer-by;
And as, Hipponax, near thy tomb he goes,
Shuddering he turns, and prays for thy repose.

ON HOMER.

THE visionary dream of life is o'er;
The bard of heroes sleeps on Ios' shore:
Fair Ios' sons their lamentations pay,
And wake the funeral dirge, or solemn lay.
O'er his pale lifeless corse and drooping head,
Ambrosial sweets the weeping Nereids shed,
And on the shore their weeping poet laid,
Beneath the towering mountain's peaceful shade.
Nor undeserved their care-his tuneful tongue
Achilles' wrath and Thetis' sorrows sung;
His strains Laërtes' son in triumph bore,
Through woes unnumbered, to his native shore.
Blest isle of Ios! On thy rocky steeps

The Star of Song-the Grace of Graces-sleeps.

ELEGY ON ADONIS.

I MOURN Adonis, fair Adonis, dead:
The Loves their tears for fair Adonis shed:
No more, oh Venus! sleep in purple vest;
Rise robed in blue: ah, sad one! smite thy breast,

O hapless Bion! Poison was thy fate;
The baneful potion circumscribed thy date
How could fell poison cause effect so strange?
Touch thy sweet lips and not to honey change?

And cry" the fair Adonis is no more!"
I mourn Adonis: him the Loves deplore:
See fair Adonis on the mountains lie;
The boar's white tusk has rent his whiter thigh:
While in vain gasps his life-breath ebbs away,
Grief's harrowing agonies on Venus prey:
Black through the snowy flesh the blood-drops

creep,

The eyes beneath his brows in torpor sleep:

The rose has fled his lips, and with him dies The kiss, that Venus, though in death, shall prize: Dear is the kiss, though life the lips have fled; But not Adonis feels it warm the dead.

I mourn Adonis: mourn the Loves around:
Ah! cruel, cruel, is that bleeding wound:
Yet Venus feels more agonising smart;
A deeper wound has pierced within her heart.
Around the youth his hounds in howlings yell;
And shriek the nymphs from every mountain
dell;

Venus, herself, among the forest-dales,
Unsandal'd, strews her tresses to the gales:
The wounding brambles, bent beneath her tread,
With sacred blood-drops of her feet are red:
She through the lengthening valleys shrieks and
cries,

'Say, where my young Assyrian bridegroom lies?"

But round his navel black the life-blood flow'd;
His snowy breast and side with purple glow'd.
Ah! Venus! ah! the Loves for thee bewail;
With that lost youth thy fading graces fail;
Her beauty bloom'd, while life was in his eyes;
Ah, woe! with him it bloom'd, with him it
dies.

The oaks and mountains "Ah! Adonis!" sigh:
The rivers moan to Venus' agony:

The mountain springs all trickle into tears:
The blush of grief on every flower appears:
And Venus o'er each solitary hill,

And through wide cities chaunts her dirges shrill.
Woe, Venus! woe! Adonis is no more:
Echoes repeat the lonely mountains o'er,
"Adonis is no more:" woe, woe is me!
Who at her grievous love dry-eyed can be?
Mute at th' intolerable wound she stood,
And saw, and knew the thigh dash'd red with
blood:

Groaning she stretch'd her arms: and "Stay!" she said,

"Stay, poor Adonis!-lift thy languid head:
Ah! let me find thy last expiring breath,
Mix lips with lips, and suck thy soul in death.
Wake but a little, for a last, last kiss:
Be it the last, but warm with life as this,
That through my lips I may thy spirit drain,
Suck thy sweet breath, drink love through every

vein :

This kiss shall serve me ever in thy stead;
Since thou thyself, unhappy one! art fled:
Thou art fled far to Acheron's drear scene,
A king abhorr'd, and an inhuman queen:
I feel the woe, yet live: and fain would be
No goddess, thus in death to follow thee.
Take, Proserpine, my spouse: all loveliest things
Time to thy realm, oh, mightier Goddess! brings:
Disconsolate, I mourn Adonis dead,
With tears unsated, and thy name I dread.
Oh thrice belov'd, thou now art dead and gone!
And all my sweet love, like a dream, is flown.
Venus sinks lonely on a widow'd bed:
The Loves with listless feet my chamber tread:
My cestus perish'd with thyself: ah, why,
Fair as thou wert, the coverts venturous try,
And tempt the woodland monster's cruelty?"

So Venus mourns: her loss the Loves deplore: Woe, Venus, woe! Adonis is no more. As many drops as from Adonis bled, So many tears the sorrowing Venus shed: For every drop on earth a flower there grows: Anemones for tears; for blood the rose.

I mourn Adonis: fair Adonis dead:
Not o'er the youth in words thy sorrows shed:
For thy Adonis' limbs a couch is strown,
That couch he presses, Venus! 'tis thy own.
There dead he lies, yet fair in blooming grace-
Still fair, as if with slumber on his face.
Haste, lay him on the golden stand, and spread
The garments that enrobed him in thy bed,
When on thy heavenly breast the livelong night
He slept, and court him, though he scare thy
sight:

Lay him with garlands and with flowers; but all
With him are dead, and wither'd at his fall.
With balms anoint him from the myrtle tree:
Or perish ointments; for thy balm was he.
Now on his purple vest Adonis lies:
The groans of weeping Loves around him rise:
Shorn of their locks, beneath their feet they
throw

The quiver plumed, the darts, and broken bow:
One slips the sandal, one the water brings
In golden ewer, one fans him with his wings.

The Loves o'er Venus' self bewail with tears, And Hymen in the vestibule appears Shrouding his torch; and spreads in silent grief The vacant wreath that twined its nuptial leaf. "Hymen!" no more: but Woe, alas!" they sing: Ah, for Adonis!" "Ah! for Hymen!" ring: The Graces for the son of Myrrha pine; And, Venus! shriek with shriller voice than thine. Muses, Adonis! fair Adonis! call,

And sing him back; but he is deaf to all. Bootless the sorrow, that would touch his sprite, Nor Proserpine shall loose him to the light: Cease, Venus! now thy wail: reserve thy tear: Again to fall with each Adonian year.

THE TEACHER TAUGHT.

As late I slumbering lay, before my sight
Bright Venus rose in visions of the night:
She led young Cupid; as in thought profound
His modest eyes were fix'd upon the ground;
And thus she spoke: "To thee, dear swain, I
bring

My little son; instruct the boy to sing."

No more she said; but vanish'd into air, And left the wily pupil to my care: I,-sure I was an idiot for my pains,Began to teach him old bucolic strains; How Pan the pipe, how Pallas form'd the flute, Phœbus the lyre, and Mercury the lute: Love, to my lessons quite regardless grown, Sung lighter lays, and sonnets of his own; Th' amours of men below, and gods above, And all the triumphs of the Queen of Love. I,-sure the simplest of all shepherd-swains,Full soon forgot my old bucolic strains; The lighter lays of love my fancy caught, And I remember'd all that Cupid taught.