A strange, invisible perfume hits the sense

Of the adjacent wharfs.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE GRACES.

THESE three on men all gracious gifts bestow Which deck the body or adorn the mind, To make them lovely or well-favored show; As comely carriage, entertainment kind, Sweet semblance, friendly offices that bind, And all the complements of courtesy; They teach us how to each degree and kind We should ourselves demean, to low, to high, To friends, to foes; which skill men call civility.

SPENSER.

THE CESTUS OF VENUS.

THAT girdle gave the virtue of chaste love
And wifehood true to all that did it bear;
And whosoever contrary doth prove

Might not the same about her middle wear,
But it would loose, or else asunder tear.

SPENSER.

IRIS-THE RAINBOW.

As when the daughter of Thaumantes* fair
Hath in a watery cloud displayéd wide
Her goodly bow, which paints the liquid air,
That all men wonder at her color's pride,
All suddenly, ere one can look aside,
The glorious picture vanisheth away,
Ne any token doth thereof abide.

SPENSER.

LATONA AND THE RUSTICS.

I DID but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known laws of ancient liberty,

When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs.

As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,

Which after held the sun and moon in fee.

MILTON.

*Iris, the daughter of Thaumas. The poet has added a syl

lable to the name, either accidentally or intentionally.

APOLLO, PHOEBUS.

To thee, great Phoebus, various arts belong —
To wing the dart, and guide the poet's song;
The enlightened prophet feels thy flames divine,
And all the dark events to come are thine.
By Phoebus taught, the sage prolongs our breath,
And in its flight suspends the dart of death.

ATTRIBUTES OF APOLLO.

MUSIC exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain;
And hence the wise of ancient days adored
One power of physic, melody, and song.

ARMSTRONG.

APOLLO AND PYTHON.

HEARD ye the arrow hurtle in the sky? Heard ye the dragon-monsters' deathful cry? In settled majesty of calm disdain,

Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain, The heavenly archer stands, -no human birth, No perishable denizen of earth;

Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face;

A god in strength, with more than godlike grace; See, all divine, no struggling muscle glows,

-

Through heaving vein no mantling life blood flows, But, animate with deity alone,

In deathless glory lives the breathing stone.

MILMAN.

THE BELVEDERE APOLLO.

THE lord of the unerring bow,

The god of life, and poetry, and light,

The Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight. The shaft has just been shot; the arrow bright With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might, And majesty flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity.

BYRON.

BYRON AND THE REVIEWERS.

THE herded wolves, bold only to pursue;

The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;

The vultures, to the conqueror's banner true,
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,

And whose wings rain contagion; how they fled,
When like Apollo, from his golden bow,

The Pythian of the age one arrow sped,

And smiled! The spoilers tempt no second blow; They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them as

they go.

SHELLEY.

THE STORY OF APOLLO AND DAPHNE APPLIED.

THYRSIS, a youth of the inspired train,
Fair Sacharissa loved, but loved in vain.
Like Phoebus sung the no less amorous boy;
Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy.
With numbers he the flying nymph pursues,
With numbers such as Phoebus' self might use.
But all in vain. With his harmonious lay
Unmoved, the nymph could not incline to stay.
Yet what he sung in his immortal strain,
Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain.
All but the nymph that should redress his wrong
Attend his passion, and approve his song.