Such feelings nature prompts, and hence your rites, Domestic gods! arose. When for his son With ceaseless grief Syrophanes bewailed, Mourning his age left childless, and his wealth Heapt for an alien, he with fixed eye Still on the imaged marble of the dead Dwelt, pampering sorrow. Thither from his wrath, A safe asylum, fled the offending slave, And garlanded the statue, and implored His young lost lord to save: remembrance then Softened the father, and he loved to see The votive wreath renewed, and the rich smoke Curl from the costly censer slow and sweet. From Egypt soon the sorrow-soothing rites Divulging spread; before your idol forms By every hearth the blinded pagan knelt, Pouring his prayers to these, and offering there Vain sacrifice or impious, and sometimes With human blood your sanctuary defiled: Till the first Brutus, tyrant-conquering chief, Arose; he first the impious rites put down; He fitliest, who for freedom lived and died, The friend of human kind. Then did your Frequent recur and blameless; and when came The solemn festival, whose happiest rites Emblemed equality, the holiest truth! Crowned with gay garlands were your statues seen, To you the fragrant censer smoked, to you The rich libation flowed: vain sacrifice! For nor the poppy wreath nor fruits nor wine Ye ask, Penates! nor the altar cleansed With many a mystic form; ye ask the heart Made pure, and by domestic peace and love, Hallowed to you. feasts Hearken your hymn of praise, Penates! to your shrines I come for rest, There only to be found. Often at eve, Amid my wanderings I have seen far off The lonely light that spake of comfort there; It told my heart of many a joy of home, And my poor heart was sad. When I have gazed From some high eminence on goodly vales And cots and villages embowered below, The thought would rise that all to me was strange It is a mystic circle that surrounds Comforts and virtues never known beyond Let fall thy thunder! Household deities! Then only shall be happiness on earth When man shall feel your sacred power, and love Amid the ruins of the palace pile The olive grow; there shall the tree of peace Strike its roots deep and flourish. This the state Meantime, all hoping and expecting all SAPPHO. A MONODRAMA. Scene-the Promontory of Leucadia. says Lie still, thou coward heart! this is no time To shake with thy strong throbs the frame convulsed. To die, to be at rest,-oh, pleasant thought! Perchance to leap and live; the soul all still, And the wild tempest of the passions husht In one deep calm; the heart, no more diseased By the quick ague fits of hope and fear, Quietly cold; Presiding powers, look down! In vain to you I poured my earnest prayers, In vain I sung your praises: chiefly thou, Venus, ungrateful goddess, whom my lyre Hymned with such full devotion! Lesbian groves, Witness how often, at the languid hour Of summer twilight, to the melting song Ye gave your choral echoes. Grecian maids, Who hear with downcast look and flushing cheek That lay of love, bear witness! and ye youths, Who hang enraptured on the empassioned strain, Gazing with eloquent eye, even till the heart Sinks in the deep delirium! and ye, too, Ages unborn, bear witness ye, how hard Her fate who hymn'd the votive hymn in vain! Ungrateful goddess! I have hung my lute In yonder holy pile: my hand no more Shall wake the melodies that failed to move The heart of Phaon—yet when rumour tells How from Leucadia Sappho hurled her down A self-devoted victim, he may melt O haunt his midnight dreams, black Nemesis! And shapeless death, from that more monstrous birth How the sea Far distant glitters as the sun-beams smile Phoebus shines forth, nor wears one cloud to mourn I supplicate no more. How many a day, O pleasant Lesbos! in thy secret streams Tremendous height! [She throws herself from the precipice. D D TRANSLATION OF A GREEK ODE ON Written for the prize at Cambridge, 1793. HAIL venerable night! O first-created hail! Thou who art doom'd in thy dark breast to veil Around thine ebon brow, Holy are the blue graces of thy zone! For then to the celestial palaces The goddess who alone Stands by the blazing throne, The host of stars, à beauteous throng, |