By a single little boy-I should be surpass'd in Writing so I'd just as lief-be buried, tomb'd and grass'd in.

Every one by nature hath—a gift too, a dotation:
I, when I make verses,-do get the inspiration
Of the very best of wine-that comes into the nation:
It maketh sermons to abound-for edification.

Just as liquor floweth good-floweth forth my lay so;
But I must moreover eat-or I could not say so;
Nought it availeth inwardly-should I write all
day so;

But with God's grace after meat-I beat Ovidius Naso.

Neither is there given to me-prophetic animation, Unless when I have eat and drank-yea, ev'n to saturation;

Then in my upper story-hath Bacchus domination, And Phoebus rusheth into me, and beggareth all relation.

EPITAPH ON EROTION.

FROM MARTIAL.

UNDERNEATH this greedy stone
Lies little sweet Erotion;

Whom the Fates, with hearts as cold,
Nipp'd away at six years old.

Thou, whoever thou may'st be,

That hast this small field after me,
Let the yearly rites be paid
To her little slender shade;
So shall no disease or jar
Hurt thy house, or chill thy Lar;
But this tomb here be alone,
The only melancholy stone.

PLATO'S ARCHETYPAL MAN.

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF IT ENTERTAINED BY

ARISTOTLE.

FROM THE LATIN OF MILTON,

SAY, guardian goddesses of woods,
Aspects felt in solitudes,

And Memory, at whose blessed knee
The Nine, which thy dear daughters be,
Learnt of the majestic past;

And thou, that in some antre vast
Leaning afar off dost lie,

Otiose Eternity,

Keeping the tablets and decrees
Of Jove, and the ephemerides

Of the gods, and calendars
Of the ever festal stars;

Say, who was he, the sunless shade,
After whose pattern man was made ;
He first, the full of
ages, born
With the old pale polar morn,
Sole, yet all; first visible thought,
After which the Deity wrought?
Twin-birth with Pallas, not remain
Doth he in Jove's o'ershadow'd brain,
But though of wide communion,
Dwells apart, like one alone,
And fills the wondering embrace
(Doubt it not) of size and place,
Whether, companion of the stars,
With their ten-fold round he errs;
Or inhabits with his lone
Nature in the neighbouring moon ;

Or sits with body-waiting souls,
Dozing by the Lethæan pools :-
Or whether, haply, placed afar
In some blank region of our star,
He stalks, an unsubstantial heap,
Humanity's giant archetype;
Where a loftier bulk he rears
Than Atlas, grappler of the stars,
And through their shadow-touch'd abodes
Brings a terror to the gods.

Not the seer of him had sight,

Who found in darkness depths of light;*
His travell'd eyeballs saw him not
In all his mighty gulphs of thought :-
Him the farthest-footed god,

Pleiad Mercury, never shewed
To any poet's wisest sight

In the silence of the night

News of him the Assyrian priest +

Found not in his sacred list,

Though he traced back old king Nine,

And Belus, elder name divine,
And Osiris, endless famed.

Not the glory, triple-named,

Thrice great Hermes, though his eyes
Read the shapes of all the skies,
Left him in his sacred verse
Reveal'd to Nature's worshippers.

O Plato and was this a dream
Of thine in bowery Academe?
Wert thou the golden tongue to tell
First of this high miracle,

And charm him to thy schools below?
O call thy poets back, if so: ‡

* Tiresias, who was blind.

+ Sanchoniathon.

Whom Plato banished from his imaginary republic.

Back to the state thine exiles call,
Thou greatest fabler of them all ;
Or follow through the self-same gate,
Thou, the founder of the state.

ODE TO THE GOLDEN AGE.

SUNG BY A CHORUS OF SHEPHERDS IN TASSO'S AMYNTAS.

It is to be borne in mind, that the opinions expressed in this famous ode of Tasso's, are only so expressed on the supposition of their compatibility with a state of innocence.

O LOVELY age of gold!

Not that the rivers roll'd

With milk, or that the woods wept honey-dew;
Not that the ready ground

Produc'd without a wound,

Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew;

Not that a cloudless blue

For ever was in sight,

Or that the heaven which burns,

And now is cold by turns,

Look'd out in glad and everlasting light;

No, nor that even the insolent ships from far [war: Brought war to no new lands, nor riches worse than

But solely that that vain

And breath-invented pain,

That idol of mistake, that worshipped cheat,

That Honour, since so call'd

By vulgar minds appall'd,

Play'd not the tyrant with our nature yet.

It had not come to fret

The sweet and happy fold
Of gentle human-kind;
Nor did its hard law bind

Souls nurs'd in freedom; but that law of gold,
That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,
Which Nature's own hand wrote-What pleases, is
permitted.

Then among streams and flowers,

The little winged Powers

Went singing carols without toren or bow;

The nymphs and shepherds sat

Mingling with innocent chat

Sports and low whispers ; and with whispers low,

Kisses that would not go.

The maid, her childhood o'er,

Kept not her bloom uneyed,

Which now a veil must hide,

Nor the crisp apples which her bosom bore;

And oftentimes, in river or in lake,

The lover and his love their merry bath would take.

'Twas thou, thou, Honour, first

That didst deny our thirst

Its drink, and on the fount thy covering set;

Thou bad'st kind eyes withdraw

Into constrained awe,

And keep the secret for their tears to wet ;

Thou gathered'st in a net

The tresses from the air,

And mad'st the sports and plays

Turn all to sullen ways,

And putt'st on speech a rein, in steps a care.

Thy work it is,-thou shade that wilt not move,

That what was once the gift, is now the theft of Love.

Our sorrows and our pains,
These are thy noble gains.