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Α βάρβιτος δὲ χορδαῖς

Ερωτα μοῦνον ἠχεῖ.-ANACREON.

WAY with your fictions of flimsy romance;
Those tissues of falsehood which folly

has wove!

Give me the mild beam of the soul

breathing glance,

Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow,

Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove; From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow, Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love!

If Apollo should e'er his assistance refuse,

Or the Nine be disposed from your service to rove, Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the muse,

And try the effect of the first kiss of love.

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art!

Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots

reprove,

I court the effusions that spring from the heart, Which throbs with delight to the first kiss of love.

Your shepherds, your flocks, those fantastical themes, Perhaps may amuse, yet they never can move : Arcadia displays but a region of dreams :

What are visions like these to the first kiss of love?

Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,

From Adam till now, has with wretchedness strove, Some portion of Paradise still is on earth,

And Eden revives in the first kiss of love.

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past

For years fleet away with the wings of the doveThe dearest remembrance will still be the last,

Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.

H! when shall the grave hide for ever my sorrow?

Oh! when shall my soul wing her flight from this clay?

The present is hell, and the coming to-morrow

But brings, with new torture, the curse of to-day.

From my eye flows no tear, from my lips flow no

curses,

I blast not the fiends who have hurl'd me from bliss; For poor is the soul which bewailing rehearses

Its querulous grief, when in anguish like this.

Was my eye, 'stead of tears, with red fury flakes bright'ning,

Would my lips breathe a flame which no stream could assuage,

On our foes should my glance launch in vengeance its lightning,

With transport my tongue give a loose to its rage.

But now tears and curses, alike unavailing,

Would add to the souls of our tyrants delight; Could they view us our sad separation bewailing, Their merciless hearts would rejoice at the sight.

Yet still, though we bend with a feign'd resignation, Life beams not for us with one ray that can cheer; Love and hope upon earth bring no more consola

tion;

In the grave is our hope, for in life is our fear.

Oh! when, my adored, in the tomb will they place

me,

Since, in life, love and friendship for ever are fled? If again in the mansion of death I embrace thee, Perhaps they will leave unmolested the dead.

YE SCENES OF MY CHILDHOOD, WHOSE

LOVED RECOLLECTION.

"Oh! mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter anncs."-Virg.

E scenes of my childhood, whose loved recollection

Embitters the present, compared with

the past;

Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection,

And friendships were form'd, too romantic to last;

Where fancy yet joys to trace the resemblance

Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied; How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance, Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied!

H