(As lovers steal to bliss), The billows kiss the shore, and then Remember, o'er its circling flood Around us, all the gloom of grove, I saw you blush, you felt me tremble, I stoop'd to cull, with faltering hand, I raised it to your lips of dew, Good Heaven! how sweet it seem'd! Oh! trust me, 'twas a place, an hour, Sweet NEA! let us roam no more Such walks will be our ruin! You read it in my languid eyes, And there alone should love be read; You hear me say it all in sighs, And thus alone should love be said. Then dread no more; I will not speak ; Although my heart to anguish thrill, I'll spare the burning of your cheek, And look it all in silence still! Heard you the wish I dared to name, Divinely through the graceful dance, Bending to earth that beamy glance, Oh! how could others dare to touch That hallow'd form with hand so free, When but to look was bliss too much, Too rare for all but Heaven and me! With smiling eyes, that little thought Heedless of all, I wildly turn'd, My soul forgot-nor, oh! condemn, That when such eyes before me burn'd, My soul forgot all eyes but them! I dared to speak in sobs of bliss, Rapture of every thought bereft me, I would have clasp'd you-oh, even this !— But, with a bound, you blushing left me. Forget, forget that night's offence, Forgive it, if, alas! you can; 'Twas love, 'twas passion-soul and sense-'Twas all the best and worst of man ! That moment, did the mingled eyes Of Heaven and earth my madness view, I should have seen, through earth and skies, Did not a frown from you reprove, A DREAM OF ANTIQUITY. I JUST had turn'd the classic page, Upon the bank awhile I stood, And saw the vestal planet weep My heart was full of Fancy's dream, Entangling in its net of smiles So fair a group of elfin isles, I felt as if the scenery there Were lighted by a Grecian skyAs if I breathed the blissful air That yet was warm with Sappho's sigh! And now the downy hand of rest To polish Virtue's native brightness, Can give to pearls a smoother whiteness! † GASSENDI thinks that the gardens which Pausanias mentions, in his first Book, were those of Epicurus; and STUART says, in his Antiquities of Athens, "Near this convent (the convent of Hagios Asomatos) is the place called at present Kepoi, or the Gardens: and Ampelos Kepos, or the Vineyard Garden; these were probably the gardens which Pausanias visited." Chap. ii. vol. 1. + This method of polishing pearls, by leaving them awhile to be played with by doves, is mentioned by the fanciful CARDANUS, de Rerum Varietat. lib. vii. cap. 34. |