High on a mountain's ftarry top divine
Her palace walls of living crystal shine;
Of gold and crystal blaze the lofty towers:
Here bathed in joy they pass the blissful hours:
Ingulph'd in tides on tides of joy, the day
On downy pinions glides unknown away.'
While thus the fovereigns in the palace reign,
Like transport riots o'er the humbler plain,
Where each in generous triumph o'er his peers
His lovely bride to every bride prefers.
Hence, yem profane—the fong melodious rofe, By mildeft zephyrs wafted through the boughs, Unfeen the warblers of the holy ftrain
Far from these facred bowers, ye lewd profane!
Hence each unhallowed eye, each vulgar ear;
Chaste and divine are all the raptures here.
The nymphs of ocean, and the ocean's queen,
The ifle angelic, every raptured scene,
The charms of honour and its meed confess,
These are the raptures, these the wedded blifs;
The glorious triumph and the laurel crown,
The ever bloffom'd palms of fair renown,
m Hence, ye profane.- We have already observed, that in every other poet the love scenes are generally defcribed as those of guilt and remorfe. The contrary character of those of Camoëns, not only gives them a delicacy unknown to other moderns; but by the fiction of the fpoufal rites, the allegory and machinery of the poem are most happily conducted. See the Introduction.
By time unwither'd and untaught to cloy;
These are the tranfports of the Isle of Joy.
Such was Olympus and the bright abodes;
Renown was heaven, and heroes were the gods.
Thus ancient times, to virtue ever just,
To arts and valour rear'd the worshipp'd bust.
High, fteep and rugged, painful to be trod,
With toils on toils immenfe is virtue's road;
But smooth at last the walks umbrageous smile,
Smooth as our lawns, and cheerful as our isle.
Up the rough road Alcides, Hermes, ftrove,
All men like you, Apollo, Mars, and Jove:
Like to blefs mankind Minerva toil'd;
Diana bound the tyrants of the wild;
O'er the waste desert Bacchus spread the vine;
And Ceres taught the harvest field to fhine.
Fame rear'd her trumpet; to the bleft abodes
She raised, and hail'd them gods and fprung of gods.
The love of fame, by heaven's own hand impreft,
The first and nobleft paffion of the breast,
May yet mislead-Oh guard, ye hero train,
No harlot robes of honours falfe and vain,
No tinfel yours, be yours all native gold,
Well-earn'd each honour, each respect you
To your lov'd king return a guardian band,
Return the guardians of your native land;
To tyrant power be dreadful; from the jaws
Of fierce oppreffion guard the peafant's caufe.
If youthful fury pant for fhining arms,
Spread o'er the Eastern World the dread alarms;
There bends the Saracen the hoftile bow,
The Saracen thy faith, thy nation's foe;
There from his cruel gripe tear empire's reins,
And break his tyrant fceptre o'er his chains.
On adamantine pillars thus fhall stand
The throne, the glory of your native land,
And Lufian heroes, an immortal line,
Shall ever with us fhare our ifle divine.
FROM the earliest ages, and in the moft diftant nations,
palaces, forefts and gardens, have been the favourite themes of poets. And though, as in Homer's island of Radamanthus, the description is fometimes only curfory; at other times they have lavished all their powers, and have vied with each other in adorn ing their edifices and landscapes. The gardens of Alcinous in the Odyffey, and the Elyfium in the Æneid, have excited the ambition of many imitators. Many instances of these occur in the later writers. Thefe fubjects, however, it must be owned, are fo natural to the genius of poetry, that it is fcarcely fair to attribute to an imitation of the claffics, the innumerable defcriptions of this kind, which abound in the old romances. In these, under different allegorical names, every paffion, every virtue and vice, had its palace, its inchanted bower, or its dreary cave.
The fictions of the Arabs were adopted by the Trobardours
and firft Gothic Romancers. Among the Italians, on the re-
vival of letters, Pulci, Boyardo, and others, borrowed from the
Trobardours; Ariofto borrowed from Pulci and his followers;
and Spenfer has copied Ariofto and Taffo. In the fixth and
seventh books of the Orlando Furiofo, there is a fine defcription
of the island and palace of Alcina or Vice; and in the tenth
book, but inferior to the other in poetical colouring, we have a
view of the country of Logistilla or Virtue. The passage, of
this kind, however, where Ariofto has difplayed the richest
poetical painting, is in the xxxiv book, in the defcription of
Paradise, whither he fends Aftolpho the English Duke, to ask
the aid of St. John to recover the wits of Orlando. The whole
is most admirably fanciful. Aftolpho mounts the clouds on the
winged horse, sees Paradise, and, accompanied by the Evan-
gelift, vifits the moon; the defcription of which orb is almoft
literally translated in Milton's Limbo. But the paffage which
may be faid to bear the nearest resemblance to the descriptive
part of the island of Venus, is the landscape of Paradife, of
which the ingenious Mr. Hoole, to whofe many acts of friend-
ship I am proud to acknowledge myself indebted, has obliged
me with his tranflation, though only ten books of his Ariosto
are yet published.
O'er the glad earth the blissful feafon pours
The vernal beauties of a thoufand flowers
In vary'd tints: there fhew'd the ruby's hue,
The yellow topaz, and the fapphire blue.
The mead appears one intermingled blaze
Where pearls and diamonds dart their trembling rays.
Not emerald here fo bright a verdure yields
As the fair turf of thofe celeftial fields.
|