Of yon Supernal Court, from whom may flow
Or bliss eternal or eternal woe.

And, since in all this hope exalting lives,

Let virtuous toil improve what Nature gives:
Each in his sphere some glorious palm may gain,
For Heaven all-wise created naught in vain.

O task sublime, to till the human soil
Where fruits immortal crown the laborer's toil!
Where deathless flowers, in everlasting bloom,
May gales from heaven with odorous sweets perfume,
Whose fragrance still, when man's last work is done,
And hoary Time his final course has run,

Through ages back, with freshening power shall last,
Mark his long track, and linger where he passed!

THE PAINT-KING.

FAIR Ellen was long the delight of the young,

No damsel could with her compare;

Her charms were the theme of the heart and the tongue, And bards without number in ecstasies sung

The beauties of Ellen the fair.

Yet cold was the maid; and though legions advanced,
All drilled by Ovidean art,

And languished and ogled, protested and danced,
Like shadows they came, and like shadows they glanced
From the hard, polished ice of her heart.

Yet still did the heart of fair Ellen implore
A something that could not be found;

Like a sailor she seemed on a desolate shore,

With nor house, nor a tree, nor a sound but the roar Of breakers high-dashing around.

From object to object still, still would she veer,
Though nothing, alas! could she find;

Like the moon, without atmosphere, brilliant and clear,
Yet doomed, like the moon, with no being to cheer
The bright barren waste of her mind.

But, rather than sit like a statue so still

When the rain made her mansion a pound,
Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill,
And pat every stair, like a woodpecker's bill,
From the tiles of the roof to the ground.

One morn, as the maid from her casement inclined,
Passed a youth, with a frame in his hand.

The casement she closed, not the eye of her mind;
For, do all she could, no, she could not be blind;
Still before her she saw the youth stand.

"Ah, what can he do?" said the languishing maid; “Ah, what with that frame can he do?"

And she knelt to the Goddess of Secrets and prayed, When the youth passed again, and again he displayed The frame and a picture to view.

"O beautiful picture!" the fair Ellen cried,
"I must see thee again or I die."

Then under her white chin her bonnet she tied,
And after the youth and the picture she hied,

When the youth, looking back, met her eye.

"Fair damsel," said he, (and he chuckled the while,) "This picture I see you admire :

Then take it, I pray you; perhaps 't will beguile
Some moments of sorrow, (nay, pardon my smile,)
Or, at least, keep you home by the fire."

Then Ellen the gift with delight and surprise

From the cunning young stripling received. But she knew not the poison that entered her eyes, When, sparkling with rapture, they gazed on the prize ;

Thus, alas, are fair maidens deceived!

'T was a youth o'er the form of a statue inclined, And the sculptor he seemed of the stone;

Yet he languished as though for its beauty he pined, And gazed as the eyes of the statue so blind Reflected the beams of his own.

'T was the tale of the sculptor Pygmalion of old; Fair Ellen remembered and sighed :

“Ah, couldst thou but lift from that marble so cold, Thine eyes too imploring, thy arms should enfold And press me this day as thy bride."

She said when, behold, from the canvas arose
The youth, and he stepped from the frame;
With a furious transport his arms did inclose
The love-plighted Ellen; and, clasping, he froze
The blood of the maid with his flame!

She turned, and beheld on each shoulder a wing.

"O Heaven!" cried she, "who art thou?" From the roof to the ground did his fierce answer ring, As, frowning, he thundered, "I am the PAINT-KING! And mine, lovely maid, thou art now!"

Then high from the ground did the grim monster lift
The loud-screaming maid like a blast;

And he sped through the air like a meteor swift,
While the clouds, wandering by him, did fearfully drift
To the right and the left as he passed.

Now suddenly sloping his hurricane flight,
With an eddying whirl he descends;

The air all below him becomes black as night,

And the ground where he treads, as if moved with affright,

Like the surge of the Caspian bends.

"I am here!" said the fiend, and he thundering knocked At the gates of a mountainous cave;

The gates open flew, as by magic unlocked,

While the peaks of the mount, reeling to and fro, rocked Like an island of ice on the wave.

"O, mercy!" cried Ellen, and swooned in his arms; But the Paint-King, he scoffed at her pain. "Prithee, love," said the monster, "what mean these alarms?"

She hears not, see sees not, the terrible charms

That wake her to horror again.