Bless'd residence! for there, as poets tell, (For ever spread, ye laurels green and new!) They bathe their horses in the learned flood, With nectar nurtured, and involved in flowers: Of melting maidens, in the woodbine groves, • The Gemini are supposed to preside over learned men. See Pontanus, in his beautiful poem called Urania. Lib. 2. De Gemini. + Surely, certainly. Ibid. Rhedicyna, Oxford. Jupiter deceived Leda in the shape of a swan, as she was bathing herself in the river Eurotas. Nor. § Garlands. By the youths' plainings stealing on the air (For youths will plain, though yielding be the fair), Hither, to bless the maidens and the youths, re pair. With dew bespangled, by the hawthorn buds, Delight of earth and heaven, O blessed May! From heaven descend to earth: on earth vouchsafe to stay. She comes! a silken camus †, emerald green, Her mantle proud to swell, and wanton with her hair. Her hair (but rather threads of light it seems), Or, curling round her waist, disparts its wavy gold. Young circling roses, blushing, round them throw And lilies, dipp'd in fragrance, freshly blow, * Songs. + A light gown. Flourished with a needle. The humid radiance beaming from her eyes On Zephyr's wing the laughing goddess view, She gives her naked bosom to the gales, All as the phoenix, in Arabian skies, So round this phoenix of the gaudy year • Pliny tells us, Lib. 11, that the phoenix is about the bigness of an eagle; the feathers round the neck shining like gold; the body of a purple colour; the tail blue, with feathers resembling roses. See Clandian's fine Poem on that subject, and Marcellus Donatus, who has a short dissertation on the phoenix in his Observations on Tacitus. Annal. Lib. 6. Wesley on Job, and Sir Tho, Brown's Vulgar Errors. VOL. III. I Narcissus fair, in snowy velvet gown'd; He who undazed || can wander o'er her face, May gain upon the solar blaze at noon;What more than female sweetness, and a grace Peculiar! save, Ianthe, thine alone, Ineffable effusion of the day! So very much the same that lovers say, So far as doth the harbinger of Day Above all other nymphs Ianthe bears the meed tt. A beautiful youth who, beholding his face in a fountain, fell in love with himself, and pining away was changed into a flower which bears his name. See Ovid. Metamorph. Lib. 3. + Beloved, and turned into a flower, by Apollo. See the Story in Ovid. Met. Lib. 10. There is likewise a curious dialogue in Lucian betwixt Mercury and Apollo on this subject. Servius, in his Notes on Virgil's second Bucolic, takes the Hyacinth to be the Vaccinium of the Latins, bearing some similitude with the name. Formerly: long ago. || Undazzled. ** Beauty. + Prize. See Tasso's Il Goffredo, Canto 16. Welcome! as to a youthful poet wine, The drowsy Elements, aroused by thee, Fire glows intenser; softer blows the Air; Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, thy gladdening impulse share. What boundless tides of splendour o'er the skies, O'erflowing brightness! stream their golden rays! Heaven's azure kindles with the varying dyes, Reflects the glory, and returns the blaze. Air whitens: wide the tracts of ether been With colours damask'd rich, and goodly sheen; And all above is blue, and all below is green. At thy approach, the wild waves' loud uproar, And foamy surges of the maddening main, Forget to heave their mountains to the shore; Diffused into the level of the plain. For thee the halcyon builds her summer's nest; For thee the Ocean smooths her troubled breast, Gay from thy placid smiles, in thy own purple dress'd. |