WHEN first young Flora met my eye,
Unconscious of a gazer nigh,
Her hand sustain'd her pensive head;
A lock had down her bosom stray'd;
And fain a sister tress would break
Its band, to kiss her glowing cheek!
I look'd, and with enamour'd glance
Priz'd more than rubies, more than pearl,
Graces that seem'd as if by chance
To mark an artless girl.
But when my eye she caught, and rose
Fluttering, her beauties to compose,
And in a glass her form survey'd,
And, studious of relieving shade,
Each curl adjusted to a hair,
And then assum'd a wincing air,
And then to blush confusion strove
Crossing the room with measur'd step;-
"Such tricks (I cried) but frighten love!"
And left the demirep.
Written at the Devil's Bridge, Cardiganshire; on the Story of the Robber who formerly lived in a Cave under the principal Fall of the Mynach.
INVOLVED in clouds of whitening spray
Which glistens 'mid the smiling morn,
Impetuous Mynach roars;
And as he makes his furious way,
Earth's fairest gifts and flowers adorn
His steep tremendous shores.
What shriek was that, what piteous yell,
That faintly stole along the glen,
And died upon the gale?
"Twere shame the dreadful deeds to tell,
Which, far from busy haunt of men,
Pollute this guilty vale!
They say that by the torrent's side,
(They say, for who himself could dare
Such horrors to survey?)
A loathsome cavern opens wide,
Where ruthless sons of murder tear
Daily their bleeding prey!
The suffering shriek, a moment heard,
Soon as the thundering torrents swell,
Sinks in the angry din;
Fell kites with eager wing up reared,
While screams their savage raptures tell,
The bloody feast begin.
EPIGRAM
ON A PAINTED WOMAN *.
FROM THE FRENCH OF BREBEUF.
All hearts their liberty resign,
Yet to be vain of this beware,-
What thanks to you that you are fair?
Not from yourself your graces came,
'Twas Nature gave them to your frame.
But Iris justly may require
That we should wonder and admire:
By science singular and new
She's her own work and artist too:
The beauty on her face that glows,
To her own skilful hand she owes.
Conquering her destiny, the hate
She mocks of unrelenting fate;
For in a moment she repairs
The ravages of sixty years!
*This is one of a hundred and fifty-one epigrams, written by
Brebeuf, on the same subject.
ELIZA's eye of vivid blue,
Her cheek where damask roses blow,
Her glossy hair of golden hue,
Her polished brow of driven snow,
Without a sigh, Alexis viewed;
For, though he owned the nymph divine, By Beauty's power alone subdued
He scorned his freedom to resign.
And yet with praise of every charm,
Such praise as Paphos' queen might claim,
He strove her virgin heart to warm ;
And feigned a pure but cruel flame.
The God of Love with malice smiled
To see the fond presumptuous boy,
By wretched vanity beguiled,
His self-deluding arts employ :
For, while he told his tale of woe
In strains of deep dissimulation,
He caused her lifeless charms to glow,
And fell the slave of animation.
LUCAN'S PHARSALIA.
THE INVOCATION, CONTAINING THE FIRST SIXTYSIX VERSES.
TRANSLATED BY A. S. THELWALL.
AR more than civil on the Emathian plain,
Right given to crimes we sing, a powerful race
Who on their entrails turn their conquering hands;
And kindred foes: the troubles of one state,
The world, through all its realms, in common crime 5
Involving; banner 'gainst like banner rear'd :
Eagle to Eagle, pile to pile oppos'd.
What rage, O Men! what license of the steel!
To barbarous foes yielding Italian blood!
When Babylon, with Roman spoils adorn'd,
Is proud, and Crassus' ghost roams unreveng'd,
Why wage ye wars where none can wish success?
Alas! what lands and oceans might have bow'd
To legions in these civil wars destroy'd!
Where Titan rises, where Night hides the stars,
Where scorching Noon-day burns the sunimer plain,
Where frost presides, and, unrelax'd by spring,
Congeals the Scythian sea-where Serians roam
The hills, where wild Araxes flows, and realms
(If such there be) conscious of Nilus' birth.
Rome! if such love of impious war be thine, When the whole earth shall yield to Latian laws Turn on thyself; but many a foe remains Unconquer❜d.
Lo! the roofs of shattered domes Hang trembling in the Italian towns, and o'er
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