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Which the sand covers,—all his evil gain

The miser in such dreams would rise and shake Into a beggar's lap ;-the lying scribe

Would his own lies betray without a bribe.

LXXIII.

The priests would write an explanation full,
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the god Apis really was a bull,

And nothing more; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull

The old cant down; they licensed all to speak Whate'er they thought of hawks and cats and geese, By pastoral letters to each diocese.

LXXIV.

The king would dress an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, And on the right hand of the sunlike throne Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat The chatterings of the monkey.-Every one

Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great emperor when the morning came; And kissed-alas, how many kiss the same!

LXXV.

The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and

Walked out of quarters in somnambulism; Round the red anvils you might see them stand

Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm, Beating their swords to ploughshares;-in a band The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism Free through the streets of Memphis; much, I wis, To the annoyance of king Amasis.

LXXVI.

And timid lovers who had been so coy

They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; And when next day the maiden and the boy Met one another, both, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy-till the tenth moon shone;

LXXVII.

And then the Witch would let them take no ill: Of many thousand schemes which lovers find The Witch found one, and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, Were torn apart, a wide wound, mind from mind!

She did unite again with visions clear

Of deep affection and of truth sincere.

LXXVIII.

These were the pranks she played among the cities Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites And gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties

To do her will, and show their subtle slights, I will declare another time; for it is

A tale more fit for the weird winter nights Than for these garish summer days, when we Scarcely believe much more than we can see.

TO THE MOON.

ART thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,

And ever-changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

ODE TO NAPLES.*

EPODE I. a.

I STOOD within the city disinterred, †

And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot

falls

Of spirits passing through the streets, and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls :
The oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke-
I felt, but heard not. Through white columns
glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean flood,

A plane of light between two heavens of azure: Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, bad never made erasure;

The Author has connected many recollections of his visit t Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government ut Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory epodes, which depicture the scenes and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.-Author's Note.

† Pompeii.

But every living lineament was clear

As in the sculptor's thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the power divine, Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

EPODE II. a.

Then gentle winds arose,

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen; And where the Baian ocean

Welters with air-like motion,

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever-stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me; like an angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm.

I sailed where ever flows
Under the calm Serene

A spirit of deep emotion,
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of melody."
Shadowy Aornus darkened o'er the helm

Homer and Virgil.

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