To Neptune's rape a daughter fair,

From that dark bed of breathing bloom Evadne of the glossy hair,

His mother gave his name; (Dark as the violet's darkest shade,)

And lamus, through years to come, In solitary sorrow bare.

Will live in lasting fame; Then to her nurse the infant maid

Who, when the blossom of his days, She weeping gave, and bade convey

Had ripened on the tree, To high Phersana's hall away:

From forth the brink where Alpheus strays, Where woman-grown, and doomed to prove Invoked the god whose sceptre sways In turn a god's disastrous love,

The hoarse resounding sea; Her charms allured the lord of day.

And, whom the Delian isle obeys,

The archer deity.Nor long the months, ere, fierce in pride,

Alone amid the nightly shade, The painful tokens of disgrace

Beneath the naked heaven he prayed, Her foster-father sternly eyed,

And sire and grandsire called to aid; Fruit of the furtive god's embrace.

When lo, a voice that loud and dread He spake not, but, with soul on flame,

Burst from the horizon free; He sought th' unknown offender's name,

“ Hither!" it spake, “to Pisa's shore! At Phæbus' Pythian dwelling place.

“My voice, oh son, shall go before, But she, beneath the greenwood spray,

"Beloved, follow me!"Her zone of purple silk untied; And Aung the silver clasp away

So, in the visions of his sire, he went That rudely pressed her heaving side ;(15)

Where Cronium's scarred and barren brow While, in the solitary wood,

Was red with morning's earliest glow Lucina's self to aid her stood,

Though darkness wrapt the nether element.And fate a secret force supplied. —

There, in a lone and craggy dell,

A double spirit on him fell, But, who the mother's pang can tell

Th' unlying voice of birds to tell, As sad and slowly she withdrew,

And, (when Alcmena's son should found And bade her babe a long farewell,

The holy games in Elis crowned,) Laid on. a bed of violets blue?

By Jove's high altar evermore to dwell, When ministers of Heaven's decree,

Prophet and priest !–From him descend (Dire nurses they and strange to see,)

The fathers of our valiant friend, Two scaly snakes of azure hue

Wealthy alike and just and wise, Watched o'er his helpless infancy,

Who trod the plain and open way; And, rifled from the mountain bee,

And who is he that dare despise Bare on their forky tongues a harmless honeydew.

With galling taunt the Cronian prize, Swift roll the wheels! from Delphos home Or their illustrious toil gainsay, Arcadia's car-borne chief is come;

Whose chariots whirling twelve times round But, ah, how changed his eye!

With burning wheels the Olympian ground His wrath is sunk, and past his pride,

Have gilt their brow with glory's ray ? Where is Evadne's babe,” he cried,

For, not the steams of sacrifice "Child of the deity?

From cool Cyllene's height of snow,(16) "T was thus the augur god replied,

Nor vainly from thy kindred rise "Nor strove his noble seed to hide ;

• The heaven-appeasing litanies "And to his favoured boy, beside,

To Hermes, who to men below, "The gift of prophecy,

Or gives the garland or denies :“And power beyond the sons of men

By whose high aid, Agesias, know, “The secret things of fate to ken,

And his, the thunderer of the skies, “His blessing will supply.”—

The olive wreath hath bound thy brow! -
But, vainly, from his liegemen round,
He sought the noble child;

Arcadian! Yes, a warmer zeal
Who, naked on the grassy ground,

Shall whet my tongue thy praise to tell ! And nurtured in the wild,

I feel the sympathetic flame Was moistened with the sparkling dew

Of kindred love;-a Theban I, Beneath his hawthorn bower;

Whose parent nymph from Arcady Where morn her wat'ry radiance threw, (Metope's daughter, Thebe) came.Now golden bright, now deeply blue,

Dear fountain goddess, warrior maid, Upon the violet flower.

By whose pure rills my youth hath played;

66

Who now assembled Greece among,

Note 2, page 29, col. 1. To car-borne chiefs and warriors strong,

Car-borne Pisa's royal maid. Have wove the many-coloured song.

Enomaus, king of Pisa, had promised his daughThen, minstrel! bid thy chorus rise

ter, the heiress of his states, in marriage to any

warrior who should excel him in the chariot race, To Juno, queen of deities (17)

on condition however that the candidates should Parthenian lady of the skies !

stake their lives on the issue. Thirteen had essayFor, live there yet who dare defame With sordid mirth our country's name;

ed and perished before Pelops. Who tax with scorn our ancient line,

Note 3, page 29, col. 2.
And call the brave Bæotians swine;-

Sleeps beneath the piled ground.
Yet, Æneas, sure thy numbers high
May charm their brutish enmity;

Like all other very early tombs, the monument Dear herald of the holy muse,

of Pelops was a barrow or earthen mound. I know And teeming with Parnassian dews,

not whether it may still be traced. The spot is Cup of untasted harmony !

very accurately pointed out, and such works are That strain once more !—The chorus raise not easily obliterated. To Syracusa's wealthy praise,

Note 4, page 29, col. 2.
And his the lord whose happy reign
Controls T'rincria's ample plain,

God who beholdeth thee and all thy deeds.
Hiero, the just, the wise,

The solemnity of this prayer contrasted with Whose steamy offerings rise

its object, that Hiero might again succeed in the To Jove, to Ceres, and that darling maid,

chariot race, is ridiculous to modern ears. I do Whom, rapt in chariot bright,

not indeed believe that the Olympic and other And horses silver-white,

games had so much importance attached to them Down to his dusky bower the lord of hell conveyed by the statesmen and warriors of Greece, as is pre

tended by the sophists of later ages; but where the Oft hath he heard the muses' string resound manners are most simple, public exhibitions, it His honoured name; and may his latter days,

should be remembered, are always most highly esWith wealth and worth, and minstrel garlands timated, and religious prejudice combined with the crowned,

ostentation of wealth to give distinction to the Mark with no envious ear a subject praise,(18)

Olympic contests. Wbo now from fair Arcadia's forest wide

Note 5, page 30, col. 1. To Syracusa, homeward, from his home

The flower of no ignoble race. Returns, a common care, a common pride,(And, whoso darkling braves the ocean foam,

Theron was a descendant of Edipus, and con May safeliest moored with twofold anchor ride.) sequently of Cadmus. His family had, through Arcadia, Sicily, on either side

a long line of ancestors, been remarkable, both in Guard him with prayer; and thou who rulest the Greece and Sicily, for misfortune; and he was deep,

himself unpopular with his subjects and engaged Fair Amphitrite's lord! in safety keep

in civil war.

Allusions to these circumstances ofHis tossing keel, -and evermore to me

ten occur in the present ode. No meaner theme assign of poesy !

Note 6, page 30, col. 2. ·

-He whom none may name.
NOTES.

In the original "TIS," "a certain nameless per

son.” The ancients were often scrupulous about Note 1, page 28, col. 2.

pronouncing the names of their gods, particularly

those who presided over the region of future hopes The fourth with that tormented three.

and fears; a scruple corresponding with the RabThe three were Sisyphus, Tityus, and Ixion. binical notions of the ineffable word. The picThe author of the Odyssey, or, at least, of that stures which follow present a striking discrepancy passage which describes the punishments of Tan-to the mythology of Homer, and of the general talus, assigns him an eternity of hunger, thirst, and herd of Grecian poets, whose Zeus is as far infedisappointment. Which of these opinions is most rior to the one supreme divinity of Pindar, as the ancient, is neither very easy nor very material to religion of Pindar himself falls short of the clear. decide. The impending rock of Pindar is perhaps ness and majesty of Revelation. The connexion a less appropriate, but surely, a more picturesque of these Eleusinian doctrines with those of Hinmode of punishment.

dustan, is in many points sufficiently striking.

Southey and Pindar might seem to have drunk atsayne, till the discovery of America peopled the the same source.

western ocean with something less illusive.

W

Note 7, page 31, col. 1.

Note 10, page 32, col. 1.
Nor Jove has Thecis' prayer denied.

Old Atlas' daughter hallowed.
I know not why, except for his brutality to the

Taygeta. body of Hector, Achilles is admitted with so much difficulty into the islands of the blessed. That

Note 11, page 32, col. 2. this was considered in the time of Pindar as suffi

To Lemnos' laughing dames of yore, cient to exclude him without particular interces

Such was the proof Ernicus bore. sion, shows at least that a great advance had been

Ernicus was one of the Argonauts, who distinmade in moral feeling since the days of Homer. guished himself in the games celebrated at Lem

nos by its hospitable queen Hypsipile, as victor in Note 8, page 31, col. 1.

the foot-race of men clothed in armour. He was Trained in study's formal hour,

prematurely gray-headed, and therefore derided by There are who hate the minstrel's power. the Lemnian women before he had given this proof It was not likely that Pindar's peculiarities of his vigour. It is not impossible that Psaumis had should escape criticism, nor was his temper such the same singularity of appearance. as to bear it with a very even mind. He treats There is a sort of playfulness in this ode, which his rivals and assailants with at least a sufficient would make us suspect that Pindar had no very portion of disdain as servile adherents to rule, and sincere respect for the character of Psaumis. Permere students without genius. Some of their sar- haps he gave offence by it; for the following poem casms passed however into proverbs. “Soos Koper- to the same champion is in a very different style. Jos," an expression in ridicule of Pindar's perpetual recurrence to mythology and antiquities, is

Note 12, page 33, col. 1. preserved in the Phædon: while his occasional

Rearing her goodly towers on high. mention of himself and his own necessities, is pa- Camarina had been lately destroyed by fire, and rodied by Aristophanes. I can not but hope, how- rebuilt in a great measure by the liberality of Psauever, that the usual conduct of Pindar himself, mis. was less obtrusive and importunate than that of the Dithyrambic poet who intrudes on the festival

Note 13, page 33, col. 2. of Nephelocoggugia, like the Gælic bard in “Christ's

Such praise as good Adrastus bore kirk o' the green.”

To him the prophet chief.

The prophet chief is Amphiaraus, who was Note 9, page 31, col. 2.

swallowed up by the earth before the attack of Pa Whose sapling rout from Scythian down lynices and his allies on Thebes, either because And Ister's fount Alcides bare.

the gods determined to rescue his virtues from the There seems to have been, in all countries, a stain of that odious conflict; or according to the disposition to place a region of peculiar happiness sagacious Lydgate, because, being a sorcerer and and fertility among inaccessible mountains, and at a pagan" byshoppe," the time of his compact was the source of their principal rivers. Perhaps, in- expired, and the infernal powers laid claim to him. deed, the Mount Meru of Hindustan, the blameless Ethiopians at the head of the Nile, and the

Note 14, page 33, col. 2. happy Hyperborean regions at the source of the

Then yoke the mules of winged pace, Ister, are only copies of the garden and river of God in Eden. Some truth is undoubtedly mixed Agesias had been victor in the Apene or chariot, with the tradition here preserved by Pindar. The drawn by mules; Phintis was, probably, his chaolive was not indigenous in Greece, and its first rioteer. specimens were planted near Pisa. That they ascribed its introduction to the universal hero, Her

Note 15, page 34, col. 1. cules, and derived its stock from the land of the

And flung the silver clasp away blessed, need not be wondered at by those who

That rudely prest her heaving side. know the importance of such a present. The Hy- I venture in the present instance to translate perborean or Atlantic region, which continually "Xanti" a clasp, because it was undoubtedly used receded in proportion as Europe was explored, still for the stud or buckle to a horse's bit, as “xantadur" seems to have kept its ground in the fancies of the signifies to run by a horse's side holding the bridle. vulgar, under the names of the island of St. Bran- The“ mamu" too, appended to the belt of Hercu-' dan, of Flath Innis, or the fortunate land of Cock- les, which he left with his Scythian mistress, should

And Phintis climb the car with me.

and wane;

seem, from the manner in which Herodotus men-| Why thy strength of tyrant beauty thus, with seemtions it, to have been a clasp or stud, nor can I in ing ruth, restrain? the present passage understand why the pregnant Better breathe my last before thee, than in lingerEvadne should encumber herself with a water-pot, ing grief remain! or why the water-pot and zone should be mentioned as laid aside at the same time. But the round To yon planet, Fate has given every month to wax and cup-like form of an antique clasp may well account for such names being applied to it.

And—thy world of blushing brightness-can it,

will it, long remain ? Note 16, page 34, col. 2.

Health and youth in balmy moisture on thy cheek -Cool Cyllene's height of snow.

their seat maintain; Cyllene was a mountain in Arcadia dedicated But-the dew that steeps the rose-bud-can it, will to Mercury.

it long remain ? Note 17, page 35, col. 1.

Asuf! why, in mournful numbers, of thine absence Then, minstrel! bid thy chorus riæ

thus complain, To Juno queen of deities.

Chance had joined us, chance has parted !-nought Such passages as this appear to prove, first, that

on earth can long remain. the Odes of Pindar, instead of being danced and chaunted by a chorus of hired musicians and ac. In the world, may'st thou, beloved ! live exempt tors, in the absurd and impossible manner pretend- from grief and pain ! ed by the later Grecian writers, (whose ignorance On my lips the breath is fleeting, can it, will it respecting their own antiquities, is in many instan- long remain ? ces apparent,) were recited by the poet himself sitting, (his iron chair was long preserved at Delphos,) and accompanied by one or more musicians,

FROM THE GULISTAN.
such as the Theban Æneas whom he here com-
pliments. Secondly, what will account at once “BROTHER! know the world deceiveth!
for the inequalities of his style and the rapidity of Trust on Him who safely giveth!
his transitions, we may infer that the Dincæan Fix not on the world thy trust,
swan was, often at least, an "improvisatore." I She feeds us—but she turns to dust,
know not the origin of the Bæotian agnomen of And the bare earth or kingly throne
swine. In later times we find their region called Alike may serve to die upon !"
"vervecum patria.”

Note 18, page 35, col. 1.
Mark with no envious ear a subject's praise.

FROM THE SAME.
Either the poet was led by his vanity to ascribe

“The man who leaveth life behind, a greater consequence to his verses than they real

May well and boldly speak his mind; ly possessed, when he supposes that the praise of

Where flight is none from battle field, Agesias may move his sovereign to jealousy; or

We blithely snatch the sword and shield; we may infer from this little circumstance that the

Where hope is past, and hate is strong, importance attached to the Olympic prize has not

The wretch's tongue is sharp and long; been so greatly overrated by poets and antiquaries,

Myself have seen, in wild despair, and that it was indeed " a gift more valuable than

The feeble cat the mastiff tear." a hundred trophies.”

TRANSLATIONS

FROM THE
HINDOOSTANEE.

SONNET BY THE LATE NAWAB OF

OUDE, ASUF UD DOWLA.
In those eyes the tears that glisten as in pity for

my pain,
Are they gems, or only dew-drops ? can they, will

they long remain ?

FROM THE SAME.
“ Wło the silent man can prize,
If a fool he be or wise?
Yet, though lonely seem the wood,
Therein may lurk the beast of blood,
Often bashful looks conceal
Tongue of fire and heart of steel,
And deem not thou in forest gray,
Every dappled skin thy prey;
Lest thou rouse, with luckless spear,
The tiger for the fallow-deer!"

Miscellaneous Poems.

From distant Cush they trooped, a warrior train, THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.

Siwah's(1) green isle and Sennaar's marly plain : With heat o'erlaboured and the length of way, On either wing their fiery coursers check On Ethan's beach the bands of Israel lay. The parched and sinewy sons of Amalek : 'T was silence all, the sparkling sands along, While close behind, inured to feast on blood, Save where the locust trilled her feeble song, Decked in Behemoth’s spoils, the tall Shangalla(2) Or blended soft in drowsy cadence fell

strode. The wave's low whisper or the camel's bell.- 'Mid blazing helms and bucklers rough with gold 'T was silence all !—the flocks for shelter fly Saw ye how swift the scythed chariot rolled ? Where, waving light, the acacia shadows lie; Lo, these are they whom, lords of Afric's fates, Or where, from far, the flattering vapours make Old Thebes had poured through all her hundred The noon-tide semblance of a misty lake:

gates, While the mute swain, in careless safety spread, Mother of armies !-How the emeralds(3) glowed, With arms enfolded, and dejected head, Where, flushed with power and vengeance, PhaDreams o'er his wondrous call, his lineage high, raoh rode! And, late revealed, his children's destiny. And stoled in white, those brazen wheels before, For, not in vain, in thraldom's darkest hour, Osiris' ark his swarthy wizards bore; Had sped from Amram's sons the word of power; And still responsive to the trumpet's cry Nor failed the dreadful wand, whose god-like sway The priestly sistrum murmured— Victory?Could lure the locust from her airy way; Why swell these shouts that rend the desert's With reptile war assail their proud abodes,

gloom? And mar the giant pomp of Egypt's gods. Whom come ye forth to combat ?---warriors, Oh helpless gods! who nought availed to shield whom?From fiery rain your Zoan's favoured field !- These flocks and herds—this faint and weary Oh helpless gods! who saw the curdled blood

trainTaint the pure lotus of your ancient flood, Red from the scourge and recent from the chain? And fourfold-night the wondering earth enchain, God of the poor, the poor and friendless save! While Memnon's orient harp was heard in vain!- Giver and Lord of freedom, help the slave !-Such musings held the tribes, till now the west North, south, and west the sandy whirlwinds fly, With milder influence on their temples prest; The circling horns of Egypt's chivalry. And that portentous cloud which, all the day, On earth's last margin throng the weeping train : Hung its dark curtain o'er their weary way, Their cloudy guide moves on :-"And must we (A cloud by day, a friendly flame by night)

swim the main ?" Rolled back its misty veil, and kindled into light! Mid the light spray their snorting camels stood, Soft fell the eve :-But, ere the day was done, Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous floodTall, waving banners streaked the level sun; He comes-their leader comes !--the man of God And wide and dark along th’ horizon red, O'er the wide waters lifts his mighty rod, In sandy surge the rising desert spread. - And onward treads—The circling waves retreat “Mark, Israel, mark !"-On that strange sight in- In hoarse deep murmurs, from his holy feet; tent,

And the chased surges, inly roaring, show In breathless terror, every eye was bent ; The hard wet sand and coral hills below. And busy faction's undistinguished hum

With limbs that falter, and with hearts that And female shrieks arose, “They come, they swell, come !"

Down, down they pass—a steep and slippery dell They come, they come! in scintillating show Around them rise, in pristine chaos hurled, O'er the dark mass the brazen lances glow; The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world; And sandy clouds in countless shapes combine, And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green, As deepens or extends the long tumultuous line;- And caves, the sea-calves' low-roofed haunt, are And fancy's keener glance e'en now may trace The threatening aspects of each mingled race; Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread; For many a coal-black tribe and cany spear, The beetling waters storm above their head: The hireling guards of Misraim's throne, were While far behind retires the sinking day, there.

And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.

seen.