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V.

O! whilst on earth she bends her modest eye,
That I could gaze upon those blushing cheeks!
That I could, fix'd in silent rapture by,

Fondly devour each nectar'd word she speaks!

VI.

O ineffectual vows! O cruel doom!

From all my soul holds dear, so soon to part? Meantime, perhaps, some lovelier youth may come And drive me hopeless from my Marian's heart.

VII.

Yet rest, too credulous heart! my Marian swears, That none, but me, shall in her bosom reign; Farewell then, now farewell to all my cares! Farewell to love-lorn Hammond's plaintive strain.

EPIGRAM.

TO A DULL STORY-TELLER.

YOU'RE proud, because when you relate
Your dull, long-winded stories,
From those who chance to hear you prate
Of laughter loud the roar is.

But check your pride, egregious calf!
Believe my words are true-

It is not at your tale they laugh,
They only laugh at you.

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RUINS OF ATHENS.

BY THE REV. HENRY BOYD,

TRANSLATOR OF DANTE

ARGUMENT.

Introduction. General proposition and division of the subject. Situations most favourable to freedom. Origin of Athenian Liberty. Effects of the Republican Spirit. Causes of the corruption of their Orators, Poets, and Philosophers, with its influence on their moral opinions.

OH! for a voyage to th' Antipodes,
Where over day's fair eye her flimsy toils
* The giant spider of Iberia spreads !
To see him trembling for the pendent woof,
And watching anxious, on the waving verge
Of his detested snares, with blood distain'd
Of poor Peruvian flies, lest with bold plume
The British eagle, soaring to the sun,
Should wing too near his long aerial flight
And sweep his meshes to the winds away!
Ye Equinoctial Isles! Taprobanè

, And Java! send, Oh send your opiate drugs

* Written in the summer of 1790, at the time of the dispute

with the Spaniards, about the trade of Nootka Sound.

Of drowsiest potency, the minds to lull
Of these fallen tribes, lest from their torpid trance
Britannia's thunder wake them! Envious night
Oh! draw your wide Cimmerian curtain round
Tenfold, lest on the optics of the soul
Deep-seal'd, the day star send her glance afar
And trouble their repose! For in the beam
Those phantoms flutter with unwelcome wing,
Which, like the forms that haunt the assassin's dream,
Proud Despotism abhors,-The sense of wrong,
Vindictive zeal and anger, manly scorn

Of adulation, love of equity,

And feeling for th' opprest; for these expand
The mind's infantine powers, and bid them grow
Soon to gigantic size, like the blest touch
Of bright Ithuriel's spear, by Milton sung.

With amorous ditties, such as Hindoo's God Breathes in sweet magic o'er the softened clime, Compose their slumbers! Her enervate notes The Gallic muse will lend, which sooth'd the swains Of Narbonne and Tolosa's tribes of yore.

* They can be spar'd, for now the Gallic muse Flings by the Lydian flute, and thro' the trump Breathes the long Eleutherian strain, that wakes The startled nations round, to royal ears Discordant, as the screech owl's fatal dirge Which sung the fall of † DUNCAN. Oh! what change!

Some warm expressions in favour of the aspect which, in 1790, the Gallic revolution seemed to exhibit will, perhaps, be pardoned by those who contemplated it nineteen years ago.

+ Macbeth.

walls

The royal Pedagogue has lost his rod !
His school is all broke loose! the very
Long echoing to his pupils' groans, are laid
Flat as the battlements of Jericho!
Ah ill-starr'd tutor, was it then for thee
To let thy train forsake thy rigid lore,
To join the Saturnalia of the West

And catch contagion from that * madding band,
Which claim'd a right of gamboling, unknown
To thee and thine? And now, like swarming bees
They "sport amid the liquid noon."

Elate

With most triumphant minstrelsie, they scorn
The DUST abundant by thy minions flung
To check their wild excursions, and allure
The rebels to their hives. The tinkling tones
Redoubling from SEQUANA, and the din
From Liger's banks they scorn! for hark, afar
The Belgian swarm has burst away! no more
They dread the winged harbingers of ill.
Ah! may the rovers find the genuine flowers
That give the rich, mellifluous store, belov'd
By gods and men! for much I fear, the love
Of freedom long deny'd, may lead them on
To taste their bane in those seducing fields
Where grow the venom-breathing flowers, adorn'd
With lovely petals, whose alluring scent
Spread desolation thro' the Attic hives
And laid Hymettus waste! Oh for the muse
Of Maro, to direct your roving flight

Where no, gay blossom lures the busy kind,
To vegetable poison, for the sweets

Of the wild-breathing thyme! Had he but liv'd
These wonders to behoid, to spy the rise

The Americans.

Of Freedom in the west, while Tyranny,
Terrific Dog star! rising with the sun,
And blasting half the zones, with lamp revers'd
And half extinguish'd fires, sullen retreats
To set in Ind.an seas, and shun the breath
Of the sweet balmy Zephyrèan morn,
His lyre had then no gentle pæans tun'd
To CEPIAS, nor his consecrating spell
Embalm'd a man of blood. Yet still from him
Why may not we his lucid order learn
At least, altho' his raptures be deny'd ?
Why may not we, tho' with a rustic hand
Limn a rude sketch of his didactic strain-
Iis theme must yield to ours, for cultur'd fields
Are less than cultur'd minds.

Alas! the want
Of one whose song could dignify the theme!
Yet we may tell beneath what genial star
(As the majestic long Platonic year
Circled her constellations) in the soil
Of the prolific mind, the lib'ral seed

Was sown with sapient hand; how tall it grew
And mantled o'er the Attic Hills; how soon
The kindly germs of intellectual growth
With genial coalescence grafted there,
Acknowledg'd the paternal stock, elate

With Amaranthine blooms; what care produc'd
The legislator and the soldier's breed
Renown'd for patriot valour; how, at last
Fair Freedom's lamp went out; what genial cause
Its splendor best relumes, (as Maro's + swain
By immolated steers the swarms renew'd
Which Nemesis destroy'd ;) what cautious skill
The propagation, tendence, nutriment

Aristaeus, see Virg. Geo.

* Augustus.

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