Why impart the gift of seeing What no power may turn aside, "Tis profane the cere-cloth riving Knowledge but a name for death; 'Give me back my vision bounded, With the Bride's adornment never I have served thy mournful shrine; Some friendly critic regards the phrase 'thy mouthpiece' as an inadequate rendering of deine Stimme, or as a solecism in language; but I think it a fair approximation to the sense, and permissible in form, in the same way as we may speak of Miss Harriet Martineau being in England the mouthpiece of Comte, or Professor Huxley (besides the much more besides that he is in himself) a mouthpiece of the myriad-minded Darwin. Grief my budding spring-time blighted, Youth exhaled in sighs unblessed; Every pang that near me lighted Thrilled from my responsive breast. 'Sportive joy of soul revealing, Happy in her blind delirium, In her hopes ecstatic blessed, To enclasp the dread of Ilium As a bridegroom to her breast; See my sister's heart proud swelling, Vainly struggling calm to seem; Scarce yon Gods, there o'er us dwelling, Hails she happier in her dream! 'I've too gazed on him entreating Whom my yearning heart desired, And have shared the blissful greeting By the glow of love inspired. But to nuptial dwelling never With the loved one might depart, For a Stygian shadow ever Cast its baleful gloom athwart. Spectres gaunt and shapes ungainly From the grisly bands to flee; Through the youthful sports and babble, Still the phantom troop would steal ; Shuddering grim and hideous rabble, Howe'er could I joyous feel! 'I behold the death-steel glitter, To fulfil my doom I hasten, Falling on the foemen's land.' Whilst her plaintive tones thus wander, Hark! what deafening shouts arise! At Apollo's portal yonder, Stretched a corpse, Achilles lies. Discord's gory crest proud towers, The protecting Gods are gone, Thunder breaks and darkness lowers O'er devoted Ilion. V. COMFORT IN TEARS.-Goethe. WHENCE Comes it, thou thus pensive art Too well we see, in those sad eyes ' And tho' I lonely may have wept, The tears that trickle down so sweet, Thy joyous friends beseech thee come, 'Your mirthful fancies ill divine What makes my bitter pain; Ah! no, 'tis not what I have lost, But what I cannot gain.' Wake then, and call thy courage up, With thy fresh life, man has the strength 'Ah! no, the goal I cannot win, It dwells so high, it shines so bright The stars one should not covet them, And with enraptured gaze look out Into the cloudless night. ' And with enraptured gaze I look, For weeping, leave me still the night, HAVING Since the preceding matter was in type stumbled upon the original free (I should now say, over-free) rendering of Tyrrhena regum, together with a similar one of a portion of Impios parrae (Hor. iii. 27), done at about the same period, and certain other similar effusions, I may as well take this opportunity of ridding my hands of this lumber of unconsidered trifles, which, after all, reviewing them as impartially as I (the author of their being) am able to do, seem to me not vastly inferior in sense and expression to many of the vampedup, far-fetched, transcendental inanities of some of the third-class poetasters of the day which find a ready echo in the press. If Joseph Scaliger thought himself qualified in his twice-edited Cyclometrica Elementa ' to attempt the Quadrature of the Circle, said to have been 'victoriously refuted by Vieta,' by way of teaching their business to the geometricians of his time, and * As it seems to be a womanish sort of youth (possibly, even a girl in boy's clothes) who is speaking, I have allowed more so's to stand than might otherwise have been justifiable. It ought to be expressly laid down in future editions of Mary's Grammar' that so is the feminine transcendental pluperfect form of superlative, as, ex. gr. lovely, lovelier, loveliest, so lovely, or such a love. · |