Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addrest; But soon he saw the brisk-awakening viol,

Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best; They would have thought, who heard the strain, They saw, in Tempe's vale, her native maids Amidst the festal-sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing,
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round:
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound;
And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,
Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid!
Why, goddess, why, to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside ?
As, in that loved Athenian bower,
You learned an all-commanding power,
Thy mimic soul, O nymph endeared,
Can well recall what then it heard.

Where is thy native simple heart,
Devote to virtue, fancy, art?
Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime!
Thy wonders, in that godlike age,
Fill thy recording sister's page ;
"T is said — and I believe the tale
Thy humblest reed could more prevail,
Had more of strength, diviner rage,
Than all which charms this laggard age,
E'en all at once together found,
Cecilia's mingled world of sound.
O, bid our vain endeavors cease;
Revive the just designs of Greece !
Return in all thy simple state,
Confirm the tales her sons relate !

WILLIAM COLLINS.

THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG.

FROM "MUSIC'S DUEL."

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat

He lost the day's heat and his own hot cares.
A sweet lute's-inaster, in whose gentle airs

Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighboring wood
(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their muse,
their siren, harmless siren she):
There stood she listening, and did entertain
The music's soft report, and mould the same
In her own murmurs; that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good.

And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, stilled out of her breast;
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripened airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears

His honey-dropping tops ploughed by her breath
Which there reciprocally laboreth.

In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Sounded to the name of great Apollo's lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipped angel-imps, that swill their
throats

In cream of morning Helicon, and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing
(Most divine service), whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise;
And lay the groundwork of her hopeful song,
Still keeping in the forward stream so long,
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Winged with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.

She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide

Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the waved back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train ;
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note;
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat

Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird;
Her little soul is ravished, and so poured
Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed
Above herself, music's enthusiast.

RICHARD CRASHAW.

Sharp violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs, and desperation, Fury, frantic indignation,

Depth of pains, and height of passion
For the fair, disdainful dame.
But O, what art can teach,

What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race ; And trees uprooted left their place,

Sequacious of the lyre ;

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher;

FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began;

When Nature underneath a heap

Of jarring atoms lay,

And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise, ye more than dead!

Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell,
To worship that celestial sound.
Less than a God they thought there could not dwell

Within the hollow of that shell,
That spoke so sweetly and so well.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

The trumpet's loud clangor
Excites us to arms,
With shrill notes of anger,

And mortal alarms.

The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries, Hark! the foes come;

Charge, charge, 't is too late to retreat!

The soft complaining flute
In dying notes discovers

The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute.

An angel heard, and straight appeared Mistaking earth for heaven.

FROM "NIGHT THOUGHTS," NIGHT I.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes,
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorpt!
Though sullied and dishonored, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute !
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
A worm! a god!
I tremble at myself,

And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wondering at her own. How reason reels!
O, what a miracle to man is man !

| Where'er the red gold glows, the spice-trees wave, Where the rich diamond ripens, mid the flame Of vertic suns that ope the stranger's grave, He with bronzed cheek and daring step doth rove ;

He, with short pang and slight,
Doth turn him from the checkered light
Of the fair moon through his own forests
dancing,

Where music, joy, and love

Were his young hours entrancing;
And where ambition's thunder-claim
Points out his lot,

Or fitful wealth allures to roam,
There doth he make his home,
Repining not.

It is not thus with Woman.

Though ruinous and lone,

The far halls,

Where first her pleased ear drank a nursing

mother's tone;

The home with humble walls, Where breathed a parent's prayer around her bed;

The valley where, with playmates true, She culled the strawberry, bright with dew; The bower where Love her timid footsteps led; The hearthstone where her children grew; The damp soil where she cast The flower-seeds of her hope, and saw them bide the blast,

Affection with unfading tint recalls, Lingering round the ivied walls, Where every rose hath in its cup a bee,

Making fresh honey of remembered things, Each rose without a thorn, each bee bereft of stings.

LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY.

WOMAN.

THERE in the fane a beauteous creature stands,
The first best work of the Creator's hands,
Whose slender limbs inadequately bear
A full-orbed bosom and a weight of care;

Alternately transported and alarmed!
What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

show,

And fawn-like eyes still tremble as they glow.

From the Portuguese of CALIDASA.
Translation of WILSON.