Then, when night's long labour past,
Wilder'd, faint he falls at last,
Sinking where the causeway's edge

Moulders in the slimy sedge,
There let every noxious thing
Trail its filth and fix its sting;
Let the bull-toad taint him over,
Round him let musquitoes hover,
In his ears and eye-balls tingling,
With his blood their poison mingling,
Till, beneath the solar fires,
Rankling all, the wretch expires!

TO MRS. HENRY T-GHE,

ON READING HER 66

PSYCHE.

TELL me the witching tale again,
For never has my heart or ear

Hung on so sweet, so pure a strain,
pure to feel, so sweet to hear!

So

"We took notice of one barbarian, who made a kind of sacrifice upon an oak at the Cascade of St. Antony of Padua, upon the river Mississippi."-See HENNEPIN'S Voyage into North America.

Say, Love! in all thy spring of fame,
When the high Heaven itself was thine;
When piety confess'd the flame,

And even thy errors were divine!

Did ever Muse's hand, so fair,

A glory round thy temple spread? Did ever lip's ambrosial air

Such perfume o'er thy altars shed?

One maid there was, who round her lyre
The mystic myrtle wildly wreathed-

But all her sighs were sighs of fire,

The myrtle wither'd as she breathed!

Oh! you that Love's celestial dream
In all its purity would know,

Let not the senses' ardent beam

Too strongly through the vision glow!

Love sweetest lies conceal'd in night,

The night where Heaven has bid him lie; Oh! shed not there unhallow'd light,

Or, PSYCHE knows, the boy will fly ! *

* See the story in APULEIUS. With respect to this beautiful allegory of Love and Psyche, there is an ingenious idea sug

Dear PSYCHE! many a charmed hour,

Through many a wild and magic waste,

To the fair fount and blissful bower*
Thy mazy foot my soul hath traced!

Where'er thy joys are number'd now,
Beneath whatever shades of rest,

The Genius of the starry brow†

Has chain'd thee to thy Cupid's breast;

gested by the senator BUONAROTTI, in his Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi. He thinks the fable is taken from some very occult mysteries, which had long been celebrated in honour of Love; and he accounts, upon this supposition, for the silence of the more ancient authors upon the subject, as it was not till towards the decline of Pagan superstition that writers could venture to reveal or discuss such ceremonies; accordingly, he observes, we find Lucian and Plutarch treating, without reserve, of the Dea Syria, and Isis and Osiris; and APULEIUS, who has given us the story of Cupid and Psyche, has also detailed some of the mysteries of Isis. See the Giornale di Litterati d'Italia, tom. xxvii. articol. 1. See also the Observations upon the ancient Gems in the Museum Florentinum, vol. i. P. 156.

I cannot avoid remarking here an error into which the French Encyclopédistes have been led by M. Spon, in their article Psyché. They say, "Petron fait un récit de la pompe nuptiale de ces deux amans (Amour et Psyché). Déjà, dit-il,” etc. etc. The Psyche of PETRONIUS, however, is a servantmaid, and the marriage which he describes is that of the young Pannychis. See SPON's Recherches curieuses, etc. dissertat. 5.

* Allusions to Mrs. T-GHE's poem.

+ Constancy.

Whether above the horizon dim,

Along whose verge our spirits stray (Half sunk within the shadowy brim, Half brighten'd by the eternal ray), *

Thou risest to a cloudless pole!

Or, lingering here, dost love to mark
The twilight walk of many a soul
Through sunny good and evil dark ;

Still be the song to PSYCHE dear,
The song, whose dulcet tide was given
To keep her name as fadeless here
As nectar keeps her soul in Heaven!

* By this image the Platonists expressed the middle state of the soul between sensible and intellectual existence.

Dear shall be the day we met,

And dear shall be the night we parted!

Oh! if regrets, however sweet,

Must with the lapse of time decay, Yet still, when thus in mirth you meet, Fill high to him that's far away!

Long be the flame of memory found
Alive within your social glass,
Let that be still the magic round
O'er which oblivion dares not pass !