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CUPID SWALLOWED!

A PARAPHRASE FROM THE SAME.

["New Monthly Magazine," Oct., 1836. "Works," 1844, 1857, 1860. Kent, 1839.]

'OTHER day as I was twining
Roses, for a crown to dine in,
What, of all things, 'midst the heap
Should I light on, fast asleep,

But the little desperate elf,
The tiny traitor, Love himself!
By the wings I pinched him up
Like a bee, and in a cup

Of my wine I plunged and sank him,
And what d'ye think I did?—I drank him.
'Faith, I thought him dead. Not he !
There he lives with tenfold glee;
And now this moment with his wings
I feel him tickling my heart-strings.

EPITAPH ON EROTION.

FROM MARTIAL.

["Indicator," Nov. 10th, 1819. "Works," 1832, 1844, 1857, 1860. Kent, 1889.]

NDERNEATH this greedy stone

Lies little sweet Erotion;

Whom the Fates, with hearts as cold,

Nipped away at six years old.

Thou, whoever thou may'st be,

That hast this small field after me,
Let the yearly rites be paid
To her little slender shade;
So shall no disease or jar

Hurt thy house, or chill thy Lar;
But this tomb here be alone,

The only melancholy stone.

ATYS THE ENTHUSIAST.

A DITHYRAMBIC POEM TRANSLATED FROM

CATULLUS.

["The Reflector," 1810. "Foliage," 1818.]

TYS o'er the distant waters hurried in his rapid bark

Soon with foot of wild impatience touched the Phrygian forest

dark,

Where amid the awful shades possessed by mighty Cybele,

In his zealous frenzy blind

And wand'ring in his hapless mind,

With flinty knife he gave to earth the weights that stamp virility.

Then as the widowed being saw its wretched limbs bereft of man,

And the unaccustomed blood that on the ground polluting ran,

With snowy hand it snatched in haste the timbrel's airy round on high,

That opens with the trumpet's blast, thy rites, Maternal Mystery ;

And upon its whirling fingers while the hollow parchment rung,

Thus in outcry tremulous to its wild companions sung:

Now rush on, rush on with me,

Worshippers of Cybele,

To the lofty groves of the deity!

Ye vagabond herds that bear the name

Of the Dindymenian dame !

Who seeking strange lands, like the banished of home,

With Atys, with Atys distractedly roam ;

Who your limbs have unmanned in a desperate

hour

With a frantic disdain of the Cyprian pow'r ;

Who have carried my sect through the sea and its terrors,

Exult ye, exult in your fiercely-wrought errors !
No delay, no delay,

But together away,

And follow me up to the Dame all-compelling, To her high Phrygian groves and her dark Phrygian dwelling,

Where the cymbals they clash, and the drums they resound,

And the Phrygian's curved pipe pours its moanings around,

Where the ivy-crowned priestesses toss with their

brows,

And send the shrill howl through their deity's

house,

Where they shriek, and they scour, and they madden about,

'Tis there we go bounding in mystical rout.

No sooner had spoken

This voice half-broken,

When suddenly from quiv'ring tongues arose the universal cry,

The timbrels with a boom resound, the cymbals with a clash reply,

And up the verdant Ida with a quickened step the chorus flew,

While Atys with the timbrel's smite the terrible procession drew;

Raging, panting, wild, and witless, through the sullen shades it broke,

Like the fierce, unconquered heifer bursting from her galling yoke;

And on pursue the sacred crew, till at the door of

Cybele,

Faint and fasting, down they sink in pale immo

vability:

The heavy sleep-the heavy sleep grows o'er their failing eyes,

And locked in dead repose the rabid frenzy lies.

But when the Sun looked out with eyes of light Round the firm earth, wild seas, and skies of morning white,

Scaring the ling'ring shades

With echo-footed steeds,

Sleep, from the suffering Atys, winged his charms To fair Pasithae's expectant arms,

And the poor dreamer woke, oppressed with sad

ness,

To mem❜ry woke and to collected madness :-
Struck with its loss, with what it was, and where,
Back trode the wretched being in despair
To the sea-shore, and stretching forth its eye
O'er the wide waste of waters and of sky,
Thus to its country cried with tears of misery

My country, oh my country, parent state, Whom, like a very slave and runagate, Wretch that I am, I left for wilds like these, This wilderness of snows and matted trees,

:

To house with shiv'ring beasts and learn their wants,

A fierce intruder on their sullen haunts,

Where shall I fancy thee? Where cheat mine

eye

With tricking out thy quarter in the sky?

Fain, while my wits a little space are free,

Would my poor eyeballs strain their points on thee!

Am I then torn from home and far away?

Doomed through these woods to trample, day by day,

Far from my kindred, friends, and native soil,
The mall, the race, and wrestlers bright with oil?
Ah wretch, bewail, bewail; and think for this
On all thy past variety of bliss!

I was the charm of life, the social spring,
First in the race, and brightest in the ring:
Warm with the stir of welcome was my home,
And when I rose betimes, my friends would come

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