Then kissed the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferred a father's prayer :-
O thou, whose glory fills the ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers, protect my son !
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!

POPE'S HOMER.

THE PASSIONS.

WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell;
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's painting.
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of sound,
And, as they oft had heard apart,
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each (for madness ruled the hour,)
Would prove his own expressive power.

First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid,
And back recoiled, he knew not why,
E'en at the sound himself had made.

Next Anger rushed: his eyes on fire,
In lightnings owned his secret stings;
In one rude clash he struck the lyre,
And swept with hurried hand the strings.

With woeful measures wan Despair-
Low sullen sounds his grief beguiled;
A solemn, strange, and mingled air,

'Twas sad by fits, by starts 'twas wild.

But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whispered promised pleasure,

And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail!
Still would her touch the strain prolong,

And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, She called on Echo still through all the song, And when her sweetest theme she chose,

A soft responsive voice was heard at every close, And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair.

And longer had she sung-but, with a frown,
Revenge impatient rose:

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down,
And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took,
And blew a blast so loud and dread,
Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe.

And ever and anon he beat

The doubling drum with furious heat;

And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,
Dejected Pity at his side

Her soul-subduing voice applied,

Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien,

While each strained ball of sight seem'd bursting from his head.

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed,

Sad proof of thy distressful state,

Of differing themes the varying song was mixed,

And now it courted Love, now raving called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,

Pale Melancholy sat retired,

And from her wild sequestered seat,

In notes by distance made more sweet,

Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul:
And dashing soft from rocks around,

Bubbling runnels joined the sound;

Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole.

Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay,
Round a holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace and lonely musing,

In hollow murmurs died away.

But, oh! how altered was its sprightlier tone,
When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,
Her bow across her shoulder flung,
Her buskins gemmed with morning dew,

Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung,
The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known:

The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen, Satyrs and sylvan boys were seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green;

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear,

And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial;

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addrest, But soon he saw the brisk awaking viol,

Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best;
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids
Amidst the festal-sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing,
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round,
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,
And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,

Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

COLLINS.

THE PLAINS OF MARATHON.
WHERE'ER we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground!
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould!
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,

F

Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold,
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares grey Marathon.

The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same,
Unchanged in all, except its foreign lord,
Preserves alike its bounds, and boundless fame,
The Battle-field where Persia's victim-horde
First bowed beneath the brunt of Hellas' sword;
As on the morn to distant Glory dear,

When Marathon became a magic word,
Which uttered-to the hearer's eye appear,
camp,

The

the host, the fight, the conqueror's career.

The flying Mede-his shaftless broken bow!
The fiery Greek-his red pursuing spear!
Mountains above-Earth's-Ocean's plain below;
Death in the front-Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene: what now remaineth here?
What sacred trophy marks the hallow'd ground.
Recording Freedom's smile and Asia's tear?
The rifled urn, the violated mound,

The dust-thy courser's hoof, rude stranger-spurns around.

Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past,
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied throng;
Long shall the voyager, with the Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue,
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore:
Boast of the aged, lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate, and bards adore,
As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore.

The parted bosom clings to wonted home,
If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth:
He that is lonely, hither let him roam,

And gaze complacent on congenial earth.

Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth: But he whom sadness sootheth may abide, And scarce regret the region of his birth, When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek and Persian died.

THE PLEASURES OF HOPE.

BYRON.

CEASE, every joy, to glimmer on my mind,
But leave, O leave, the light of Hope behind!
What though my wingèd hours of bliss have been,
Like angel's visits, few and far between ?

Her musing mood shall every pang appease,
And charm, when pleasures lose the power to please.
But why so short is Love's delighted hour?
Why fades the dew on Beauty's sweetest flower?
Why can no hymnèd charm of music heal
The sleepless woes impassioned spirits feel?
Can Fancy's fairy hands no veil create,
To hide the sad realities of Fate?

No! not the quaint remark, the sapient rule
Nor all the pride of Wisdom's worldly school,
Have power to soothe, unaided and alone,
The heart that vibrates to a feeling tone!
When step-dame Nature every bliss recalls,
Fleet as the meteor o'er the desert falls;
When 'reft of all, yon widowed sire appears
A lonely hermit in the vale of years;
Say, can the world one joyous thought bestow
To Friendship weeping at the couch of Woe?

No! but a brighter soothes the last adieu;
Souls of impassioned mould, she speaks to you!
"Weep not," she says, at "Nature's transient pain,
Congenial spirits part to meet again!

"What plaintive sobs thy filial spirit drew;

What sorrow choked thy long and last adieu!
Daughter of Conrad! When he heard his knell,
And bade his country and his child farewell;
Doom'd the long isles of Sydney-cove to see,
The martyr of his crimes, but true to thee!