"Twas one of those delicious nights

So common in the climes of Greece, When day withdraws but half its lights, And all is moonshine, balm, and peace! And thou wert there, my own beloved! And dearly by thy side I roved Through many a temple's reverend gloom, And many a bower's seductive bloom, Where beauty blush'd and wisdom taught, Where lovers sigh'd and sages thought, Where hearts might feel or heads discern, And all was form'd to soothe or move,

To make the dullest love to learn,

To make the coldest learn to love!

And now the fairy pathway seem'd
To lead us through enchanted ground,
Where all that bard has ever dream'd
Of love or luxury bloom'd around!
Oh! 'twas a bright, bewildering scene-
Along the alley's deepening green,

Soft lamps, that hung like burning flowers,

And scented and illumed the bowers,

Seem'd, as to him, who darkling roves
Amid the lone Hercynian groves,
Appear the countless birds of light,

That sparkle in the leaves at night,

And from their wings diffuse a ray

Along the traveller's weary way!*
'Twas light of that mysterious kind,

Through which the soul is doom'd to roam
When it has left this world 'behind,
And gone to seek its heavenly home!
And, NEA, thou didst look and move,
Like any blooming soul of bliss,

That wanders to its home above

Through mild and shadowy light like this!

But now, methought, we stole along
Through halls of more voluptuous glory

Than ever lived in Teian song,

Or wanton'd in Milesian story! †

* In Hercynio Germaniæ saltu inusitata genera alitum accepimus, quarum plumæ, ignium modo, colluceant noctibus. PLIN. lib. x. cap. 47.

The 'Milesiacs, or Milesian fables, had their origin in Miletus, a luxurious town of Jonia. Aristides was the most celebrated author of these licentious fictions. See PLUTARCH (in Crasso), who calls them axoλasa Bıbdıa.

And nymphs were there, whose very eyes

Seem'd almost to exhale in sighs;

Whose every little ringlet thrill'd,

As if with soul and passion fill'd !
Some flew, with amber cups, around,

Shedding the flowery wines of Crete, *
And, as they pass'd with youthful bound,
The onyx shone beneath their feet!†
While others, waving arms of snow
Entwined by snakes of burnish'd gold, §
And showing limbs, as loth to show,
Through many a thin Tarentian fold, **

"Some of the Cretan wines, which Athenæus cafts orvos avDoquias, from their fragrancy resembling that of the finest flowers."-BARRY on Wines, chap. vij.

† It appears that, in very splendid mansions, the floor or pavement was frequently of onyx. Thus MARTIAL: "Caleatusque tuo sub pede lucet onyx."-Epig. 5o. lib. xii.

§ Bracelets of this shape were a favourite ornament among the women of antiquity." ‘Οι επικαρπιοι οφεις και αἱ χρυ σαι πεδάς Θαιδος και Αριςαγορας και Λάιδος Φαρμακα. PHILOSTRAT. epist. xl. LUCIAN too tells of the Ceaxo08 deaxoves. See his Amores, where he describes the dressing-room of a Grecian lady, and we find the “silver vase,” the rouge, the tooth-powder, and all the "mystic order" of a modern toilet.

**

Ταραντινίδιον, διαφάνες: ενδυμα, ωνομασμένον απο της Ταραντίνων χρήσεως και τρυφης.-Pollux

Glided along the festal ring

With vases, all respiring spring,

Where roses lay, in languor breathing,

And the young bee-grape, * round them wreathing,

Hung on their blushes warm and meek,

Oh, NEA! why did morning break

The spell that so divinely bound me ? Why did I wake? how could I wake,

With thee my own and Heaven around me!

WELL-peace to thy heart, though another's it be, And health to thy cheek, though it bloom not for me! To-morrow, I sail for those cinnamon groves, Where nightly the ghost of the Carribee roves, And, far from thine eye, oh! perhaps, I may yet Its seduction forgive and its splendour forget! Farewell to Bermuda, † and long may the bloom Of the lemon and myrtle its valleys perfume;

* Apiana, mentioned by PLINY, lib. xiv. and " now called the Muscatell (a muscarum telis),” says Pancirollus, book i. sect. 1. chap. 17.

+ The inhabitants pronounce the name as if it were written

May spring to eternity hallow the shade,
Where Ariel has warbled and Waller has stray'd!
And thou-when, at dawn, thou shalt happen to

roam

Through the lime-cover'd alley that leads to thy

home,

Where oft, when the dance and the revel were

done,

And the stars were beginning to fade in the sun,
I have led thee along, and have told by the way
What my heart all the night had been burning to
say-

Bermooda. See the commentators on the words "still-vex'd
Bermoothes," in the Tempest.-I wonder it did not occur
to some of those all-reading gentlemen that, possibly, the
discoverer of this "island of hogs and devils" might have
been no less a personage than the great John Bermudez, who
about the same period (the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury), was sent Patriarch of the Latin Church to Ethiopia,
and has left us most wonderful stories of the Amazons and
the Griffins which he encountered.-Travels of the Jesuits,
vol. I.
I am afraid, however, it would take the Patriarch
rather too much out of his way.

* JOHNSON does not think that Waller was ever at Bermuda; but the Account of the European Settlements in America affirms it confidently. (Vol. ii.) I mention this work, however, less for its authority, than for the pleasure I feel in quoting an unacknowledged production of the great Edmund Burke.