like these for us, are like stains on garments that may be changed, like black feathers in a bird's wings that may be plucked out, and white ones may grow in their places; not like the Ethiopian's skin, nor like the leopard's spots, whose fixedness some doting wiseacres are even yet persuading us to imitate.

ΤΟ

Tu perdi un cor sincero
Non so di noi primiero,
Chi s'abbia consolar.

THE conflict is over, the struggle is past,

I have looked - I have loved - I have worshipped my last,
And now back to the world, and let Fate do her worst
On the heart which for thee such devotion hath nurst—
To thee its best feelings were trusted away,
And Life hath hereafter not one to betray.

Yet not in resentment thy love I resign;

I blame not-upbraid not, one motive of thine;

I ask not what change has come over thy heart,

I reck not what chances have doomed us to part;

I but know thou hast told me to love thee no more,
And I still must obey where I once did adore.

Farewell then, thou loved one-oh! loved but too well,
Too deeply, too blindly, for language to tell -
Farewell! thou hast trampled love's faith in the dust,
Thou hast torn from my bosom its hope and its trust;
Yet if thy life's current with bliss it would swell,
I would pour out my own in this last fond farewell.

TO THE CYPRESS.

SLOW-WAVING Cypress of the land of song!
Perennial mourner!-though thou art
Amid the glories of the sylvan throng,
Most eloquent of sadness to the heart;
Yet ever welcome to the weary eye,
Thy graceful shaft of foliated green
Against the azure of the morning sky,
Upreared in beauty, solemn and serene.

And where afar Day's vesper beacons blaze
Upon Fiesole or Mario's height,

Touching with flame each mountain altar round,
Shed on thy verdant cones a rosy gleam,

And winds among thy boughs a requiem sound,
What fitting cenotaphs for man ye seem!

THE INTEMPERANCE OF ANCIENT LITERATURE.

ENOUGH was probably said in our first article on this subject (in the March number) to satisfy any reasonable person that the prevalent use of wine (and consequently of any other inebriant) is certain to corrupt the character of national literature. Every one will admit that national character is, in turn, acted upon by national literature; and that thus intemperance begets intemperance.

It follows upon all this, that in order to purify the republic of letters we must purge the public morals, and that in order to effect a thorough and permanent reform in public morality we must make our literature pure and wholesome.

We will now produce further illustrations from ancient lore of the mischievous results of ancient intemperance.

And, first, let us consider a fragment of Simonides, that "divine poet" of Plato, whose works, numerous and admired as they were of old, are now known only in fragments. Being the follower of Anacreon in point of time, he was also his disciple in doctrine. Standing before the grave of his master, and perceiving that there had sprung up, thereby, a grape-vine, Simonides is inspired by the singular appropriateness of this natural adornment of Anacreon's sepulchre ; and thus he exclaims

"Bland mother of the grape,-all-gladdening vine,

Mother of tipsy joy! thy verdure and thy bloom,
Close woven in winding trail now green entwine
This monumental mound-Anacreon's tomb!
He, lover of the feast,-of the unmingled bowl,
While fiery inspiration moved his soul,
Smote on his harp, whose drunken melodies
Were tuned to girlish loves-till midnight fled.
Now that he's fallen, embrace him as he lies,
Thy purple clusters blushing o'er his head
Still be fresh dew upon these branches hung,

Like that which breathed from his enchanting tongue!

An unmingled admiration for Anacreon, which could thus pour itself forth by his grave, would suffice to convince us that the lost productions of the pen of Simonides bore upon their surface, and carried in their substance, the same sensual impress, the same unmanly sentiments, which characterise the poetry of him thus eulogised. But Simonides was only the first in the long catalogue of those who have followed the reeling footsteps of Anacreon's example.

From the disciple, let us turn to the lover of the Teïan minstrel ;from the mainland to

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning SAPPHO loved and sung."

We will not shock the sentimentalism of those who are wont to admire the lover's leap of Sappho from the Leucadian rock, by insinuating that the lady-poet committed that romantic suicide under the impulse of wine, though such a theory is plausible. We know that her own brother, Charaxus, was a great wine-merchant, so that all precious vintages were within her reach; we know that she loved the king of drunken poets; and we also know, (alas, that e'er we should,) that the strains which flowed from her lip and lute, and which secured for her the name of "the tenth muse," were strains of a coarse, indelicate, and licentious, though of a vigorous and beautiful character, as offensive to our sense of moral propriety as they are gratifying to the intellectual taste. Fancy a lady, seated at a banquet, and exclaiming

"Venus! come, forsake the sky,
And join our banquet's gayety!
Come while rosy goblets gleam,
The nectar mix in purple stream!
Fill to these gentle friends the wine,
Friends to me, and friends of thine."

It is a sad fact, that scarcely a Grecian female, whose name is now remembered, was entitled to the respect of a virtuous man. Of those women whom Grecian history makes known, most were infamously vicious and criminal, the common harlots or kept mistresses of their times. Sappho, Erinna, Aspasia, Lais, Phryne, Pythonice, — were all adorned with perfect personal loveliness,—and some of them were inspired with true genius. Their names are blazoned in light, but it is the light of corruption

"That hovers still around decay."

But we will not stop to shed tears over the sepulchres of depraved beauties, Mrs. Jameson* claims that office for herself. Let us now turn from the melting Sapphic verses of the Lesbian to the wild Dithyrambs of the fiery and impassioned PINDAR. We will not attempt, however, to reach the lofty heights of that great poet's soaring. Our humble prose will hardly find wings for itself, and we have not forgotten what Horace so prettily says

"He who to Pindar's height attempts to rise,

Like Icarus, with waxen pinions flies."

We know that it may, by some scholars, be deemed high treason against our classic allegiance for us to touch with wanton hand the *Author of the Beauties of the Court of Charles II.

poetry of Pindar. We are ready to confess our admiration of the strong energy and impetuous force of the Pindarics that have come down to us. The surviving odes, like the fragmentary Torso Farnese, reveal the unquestionable grandeur of the perfect whole.

But from the fragments which remain of the compositions of Pindar, it is impossible to form a correct conception of the real character of the poet or of his poetry; or at least a conception corresponding with those sketches of him and his works which were given by subsequent writers of Greece and Rome.

The most celebrated and remarkable poems of Pindar are lost. These were his Dithyrambics, or odes in praise of Bacchus. The general tenor and complexion of them is at once learned from their subject; from which it would be inferred, of course, that they were of an intemperate and fiery character. Such they were; and so full of Bacchanal madness and wild impetuosity were they, that Horace thus describes the poet and his lays :

"As when a river, swoln by sudden showers,

O'er its known banks, from some steep mountain, pours,

So in profound immeasurable song,

The deep-mouthed Pindar, foaming, pours along.

Well he deserves Apollo's laurelled crown,

When with new words, he rolls, enraptured, down
Impetuous, through the Dithyrambic strains,
Free from all laws but what himself ordains!"

The frantic violence of intoxicated Bacchanals was imitated in these Dithyrambics; and as they were a part of the worship of that Deity whose orgies were one unbroken scene of intemperance, and in the celebration of which it was deemed meritorious to drink as deeply as possible, we can readily imagine the complexion of the sentiment and moral. The Deity whom they praised was made to reel and stagger, -his worshippers reeled, the metre of the Dithyramb reeled,— and beyond a doubt, the poetry itself fully partook of the universal ine

briation.

Such were the works, and such the characters, of some few of Grecia's most illustrious sons of song. The tremendous agency which their poetry has exercised upon the generations of three thousand years we will not undertake to describe. It has been incalculable; it has been incalculably mischievous.

Poetry is the wine of human thought. It possesses, in the hands of genius, a stimulating and active power, far greater than belongs to any other form of eloquence; for it appeals to a greater number of those organs by which the mind of man is roused, and his heart fired, and his arm moved. It falls upon the ear with a sound of music, that awakens sympathy in the inner man. It has a spirit-stirring sense, like the sound of a war-blast. It inflames the imagination, giving

"to things unknown,

A local habitation and a name;"

clothing with resistless beauty whatever it touches, and recommending all things, at will, to our admiration and imitation; so that it leads us as Horace was led by Bacchic fury, in defiance of himself, and exclaiming

"Oh Bacchus! When by thee possessed,

What hallowed spirit fills my raving breast!
How am I rapt to dreary glades,

To gloomy caverns, unfrequented shades!

O'er pathless rocks; through lonely groves,
With what delight my raptured spirit roves!"

Such is ever the commanding influence of poetry. But, yet more controlling is its power when it commends itself to those fiery impulses, and rabid appetites, which rage like chained tigers in the very coldest breast, and which are so easily roused by the whisper of allurement, and are so prompt to follow a far less tempting guide than the Muses, who come "with zones unbound," and beckoning on to pleasure!

Remembering how strong is the poet's power, and the corrupting tendency of that poetry at which we have just now been looking, can we adequately conceive of the vast amount of moral evil which has been wrought out by this department of ancient literature: can we enumerate the wrecks of talent, of virtue, of life, which the waves

of intemperance, thus fostered, have, from age to age, washed up upon the shores of time; or count the tears of shaine, and sorrow, and remorse, which have been poured out, because of this seducing and demoralising literature?

If the long train of victims, who have perished under the corrupting influence of ancient poetry, shall in the world of woe gather around the respective authors to whom is owing their wretched fate, no funeral procession that ever followed to the grave the remains of departed greatness, could rival this awful array, this infernal triumph : no company of fiends could so terribly torture the accursed object, upon whom this dark crowd shall gaze with the unchanging look of eternal reproach and condemnation.

Thus far we have glanced only at Epic, Didactic, and Lyric poetry of Greece. Let us direct our thoughts towards another species of the same beautiful product of genius.