"But should suspense permit the Foe to cry, Old frailties then recurred: but lofty thought, In act embodied, my deliverance wrought. "And Thou, though strong in love, art all too weak In reason, in self-government too slow; I counsel thee by fortitude to seek The invisible world with thee hath sympathized; "Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend, - Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes reappears! Round the dear Shade she would have clung,'t is vain : The hours are past, too brief had they been years; And him no mortal effort can detain : Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day, Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved, -Yet tears to human suffering are due; From out the tomb of him for whom she died; 1814. * For the account of these long-lived trees, see Pliny's Natural History, Lib. XVI. Cap. 44; and for the features in the character of Protesilaus see the Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. Virgil places the Shade of Laodamia in a mournful region, among unhappy Lovers: His Laodamia It Comes. XXXII. DION. (SEE PLUTARCH.) I. SERENE, and fitted to embrace, With self-sufficing solitude, But with majestic lowliness endued, Might in the universal bosom reign, And from affectionate observance gain II. Five thousand warriors,- O the rapturous day!Each crowned with flowers, and armed with spear and shield, Or ruder weapon which their course might yield, To Syracuse advance in bright array. Who leads them on? - The anxious people see On tables set, as if for rites divine; And, as the great Deliverer marches by, He looks on festal ground with fruits bestrown; And flowers are on his person thrown In boundless prodigality; Nor doth the general voice abstain from prayer, Invoking Dion's tutelary care, As if a very Deity he were? III. Mourn, hills and groves of Attica! and mourn, Mourn, and lament for him whose spirit dreads shades! For him who to divinity aspired, Not on the breath of popular applause, But through dependence on the sacred laws Framed in the schools where Wisdom dwelt retired, Intent to trace the ideal path of right (More fair than heaven's broad causeway paved with stars) Which Dion learned to measure with sublime de light; But he hath overleaped the eternal bars ; And, following guides whose craft holds no consent With aught that breathes the ethereal element, Hath stained the robes of civil power with blood, Unjustly shed, though for the public good. Whence doubts that came too late, and wishes vain, Hollow excuses, and triumphant pain; And oft his cogitations sink as low As, through the abysses of a joyless heart, But whence that sudden check? that fearful start? Anon his lifted eyes Saw, at a long-drawn gallery's dusky bound, And hideous aspect, stalking round and round! |