1 Thus, while gray evening lull'd the wind, and call'd Fresh odours from the shubb'ry at my side, Taking my lonely winding walk, I mus'd, "Couldst thou in truth? and art thou taught at length This wisdom, and but this, from all the past? Is not the pardon of thy long arrear, Time wasted, violated laws, abuse I heard, and acquiesced; then to and fro -what is Man? Knows he his origin? can he ascend By reminiscence to his earliest date? Slept he in Adam? and in those from him Through num'rous generations, till he found At length his destin'd moment to be born? Or was he not, till fashion'd in the womb? Deep myst'ries both! which schoolmen much have toil'd To unriddle, and have left them myst'ries still. And of the worst, that unexplor❜d he leaves To search forbidden deeps, where myst'ry lies. Two nymphs, both nearly of an age, The worth of each had been complete And in her humour, when she frown'd The other was of gentler cast, To poets of renown in song The nymphs referr'd the cause, Who, strange to tell, all judg'd it wrong, And gave misplaced applause. They gentle call'd, and kind and soft, And though she chang'd her mood so oft, No judges, sure, were e'er so mad, In short, the charms her sister had Then thus the god whom fondly they Was heard, one genial summer's day, "Since thus ye have combin'd," he said, My favourite nymph to slight, Adorning May, that peevish maid, "The Minx shall for your folly's sake, Still prove herself a shrew, Shall make your scribbling fingers ache, And pinch your noses blue. TRANSLATIONS OF THE LATIN AND ITALIAN POEMS OF MILTON. [Begun, September, 1791. Finished, March, 1792.] 13* TRANSLATIONS OF THE LATIN POEMS, &c. &c. ELEGIES. ELEGY I. TO CHARLES DIODATI. Ar length, my friend, the far sent letters come To reedy Cam, and my forbidden cell. |