TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST.* Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor? Aëris et linguæ sum filia; Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum. AUSONIUS. ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul, Once more we hail thy soft controul. -Yet whither, whither didst thou fly? To what bright region of the sky? Thy raptures to the pure in heart ? Perhaps to many a desert shore, Thee, in his rage, the Tempest bore; * In the winter of 1805. Thy broken murmurs swept along, Arrested in the realms of Frost, Or in the wilds of Ether lost. Far happier thou! 'twas thine to soar, Careering on the winged wind. Thy triumphs who shall dare explore? Suns and their systems left behind. No tract of space, no distant star, Did thee detain. Thy wing of fire strain from Heaven! * Mrs. Sheridan's. W HILE on the cliff with calm delight she kneels, And the blue vales a thousand joys recall, See, to the last, last verge her infant steals! O fly-yet stir not, speak not, lest it fall. Far better taught, she lays her bosom bare, And the fond boy springs back to nestle there. TO THE FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES, COMMONLY CALLED THE TORSO. AND dost thou still, thɔu mass of breathing stone, (Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurled) Still sit as on the fragment of a world; Surviving all, majestic and alone? What tho' the Spirits of the North, that swept Rome from the earth, when in her pomp she slept, Smote thee with fury, and thy headless trunk Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught * By thee that long-lost spel † in secret given, * In the gardens of the Vatican, where it was placed by Julius II, it was long the favourite study of those great men to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Caracci. + Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an antient epigram on the Gnidian Venus. Analecta Vet. Poetarum, III. 200. |