Pure, as an Eleusinian veil
Hangs o'er the mysteries!*

*the brow of Juno flush'd

Love bless'd the breeze!

The Muses blush'd,

*

And every cheek was hid behind a lyre,

While every eye was glancing through the strings.

Drops of ethereal dew,

That-burning gush'd,

As the great goblet flew

From Hebe's pearly fingers through the sky! Who was the spirit that remember'd Man

In that voluptuous hour?

And with a wing of love

Brush'd off your scatter'd tears,
As o'er the spangled heaven they ran,
And sent them floating to our orb below?†

Essence of immortality!

* The arcane symbols of this ceremony were deposited in the cista, where they lay religiously concealed from the eyes of the profane. They were generally carried in the procession by an ass; and hence the proverb, which one may so often apply in the world, "asinus portat mysteria." See the Divine Legation, Book ii, sect. 4.

† In the Geoponica, Lib. ii, cap. 17, there is a fable somewhat like this descent of the nectar to earth. Ev spava Twy Dear ευωχέμενον, και το νέκταρος πολλές παρακειμεν8, ανασκίρτησαι χορεία τον Έρωτα και συσσείσαι τω πτερω τε κρατήρες την βάσιν, και περιτρέψαι μεν αυτον· το δε νεκταρ εις την γην εκχυθεί %, T. A. Vid. Autor. de Re Rust. edit. Cantab. 1704

The shower

Fell glowing through the spheres;
While all around new tints of bliss,
New perfumes of delight,
Enrich'd its radiant flow!

Now, with a humid kiss,
It thrill'd along the beamy wire
Of Heaven's illumin❜d lyre,*
Stealing the soul of music in its flight!
And now, amid the breezes bland,
That whisper from the planets as they roll,
The bright libation, softly fann'd
By all their sighs, meandring stole!
They who, from Atlas' height,
Beheld the rill of flame

Descending through the waste of night,
Thought 'twas a planet, whose stupendous frame
Had kindled, as it rapidly revolv'd

Around its fervid axle, and dissolv'd
Into a flood so bright!

The child of day,

Within his twilight bower,

* The constellation Lyra. The astrologers attribute great virtues to this sign in ascendenti, which are enumerated by Pontano, in his Urania:

-Ecce novem cum pectine chordas

Emodulans, mulcetque novo vaga sidera cantu,
Quo captæ nascentum animæ concordia ducunt
Pectora, &c.

Lay sweetly sleeping

On the flush'd bosom of a lotos-flower;*
When round him, in profusion weeping,
Dropp'd the celestial shower,

Steeping

The rosy clouds, that curl'd

About his infant head,

Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed!
But when the waking boy

Wav'd his exhaling tresses through the sky,
O morn of joy!

The tide divine,

All glittering with the vermil dye
It drank beneath his orient eye,
Distill'd in dews, upon the world,

And every drop was wine, was heavenly WINE!

Blest be the sod, the flow'ret blest,

That caught, upon their hallow'd breast,

* The Egyptians represented the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a lotos. Είτε Αιγυπτες έωρακως αρχήν ανατολής παιδίον νεογνόν γράφοντας επι λωτα καθεζόμενον. Plutarch. TEPE TE fen pay quμsтp. See also his treatise de Isid. et Osir. Observing that the lotos shewed its head above water at sunrise, and sank again at his setting, they conceived the idea of consecrating it to Osiris, or the sun.

This symbol of a youth sitting upon a lotos, is very frequent on the Abraxases, or Basilidian stones. See Montfaucon, tom. ii, planche 158, and the Supplement, &c. tom. ii, lib. vii, chap. 5.

The nectar'd spray of Jove's perennial springs!
Less sweet the flow'ret, and less sweet the sod,
O'er which the Spirit of the rainbow flings.
The magic mantle of her solar god!*

TO ******* **: ***.

THAT wrinkle, when first I espied it,
At once put my heart out of pain,
Till the eye, that was glowing beside it,
Disturb'd my ideas again!

Thou art just in the twilight at present,
When woman's declension begins,
When, fading from all that is pleasant,
She bids a good night to her sins!

Yet thou still art so lovely to me,

I would sooner, my exquisite mother!
Repose in the sunset of thee,

Than bask in the noon of another!

* The ancients esteemed these flowers and trees the sweetest upon which the rainbow had appeared to rest; and the wood they chiefly burned in sacrifices was that which the smile of Iris had consecrated. Plutarch. Sympos. lib. iv, cap. 2, where (as Vossius remarks) xa1801, instead of zaλ801, is undoubtedly the genuine reading. See Vossius, for some curious particularities of the rainbow, De Origin. et Progress. Idololat. lib. iii, cap. 13.

ANACREONTIC.

SHE never look'd so kind before

"Yet why the wanton's smile recal? "I've seen this witchery o'er and o’er, "'Tis hollow, vain, and heartless all!”

Thus I said, and, sighing, sipp'd

The wine which she had lately tasted; The cup, where she had lately dipp'd Breath, so long in falsehood wasted.

I took the harp, and would have sung
As if 'twere not of her I sang;
But still the notes on LAMIA hung-
On whom but LAMIA could they hang?

That kiss, for which, if worlds were mine, A world for every kiss I'd give her; Those floating eyes, that floating shine, Like diamonds in an eastern river!

That mould so fine, so pearly bright,

Of which luxurious heaven hath cast her, Through which her soul doth beam as white As flame through lamps of alabaster!