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Their early loveliness is gone! but now,
Youth's vigour, manhood's strength, and age, combined,

Have rear'd a throne to which the world must bow,
And torn a wreath from Time to bind round Art's bright brow.

12.
The fragments here of fine hewn forms I see,
Which were the wonders of the world of old;
And ever will the pride of nations be,
Until the heart-blood of their sons is cold !
Come nearer, and drink in the charm-behold
Where, in his hoary strength, Ilissus lies, *
O'er whom the floods of many an age have roll’d,

Since first his mighty form was seen to rise-
Ere the great artist's soul had sought its native skies !

13.
Rise ! Rise! Old guardian of the peaceful stream, +
And to thy ancient place of rest depart !
Lift thy huge bulk, that, fill'd with life, doth seem
From its hard seat e'en now about to start !
Strength nerve that arm if thou material art;
That foot firm grasp the ground without delay!
Though callid a God, thou canst not upward dart,
And quit this spot, where thou art doom'd to stay
Till superhuman strength bear those large limbs away.

14.
Time! Time hath marr'd thee; and the solemn glance

: ;
Of thine unearthly eye is seen no more !
And ever dost thou seem about to advance,
An awful fragment, from the marble floor,
Where yet thou liest, still, as heretofore !
Say, where the remnants of thy form now lie?
Sunk in what sea, or scatter'd on what shore?.

Shame that a God should, mangled, meet the eye,
The marvel of the wise, or jest of passers by.

15.
Thou wert the offspring of a giant mind,
That tower'd above the spirits of the earth;
Born of a nation lofty, and refined,
Whose sons yet dream'd of Gods of mortal birth,
Whose attributes might half excite men's mirth.
Thou art a wanderer from that classic clime,
And art indeed of most surpassing worth;

Would I had seen thee in thy youthful prime,
Ere thy fine form was scathed by the rude hand of Time!

16.
Sweet flows thy unprotected river still,
And shepherd swains upon its banks reside;
And the smooth waters pass by many a hill,
Down which perchance hath rush'd the crimson tide
When war's red hand that stream's fair bosom dyed :
Calm flows thy river, though long lost to thee!
Yet will not I thy shatter'd power deride-

Thou art no God from mortal frailty free,

But made by man to share his immortality. • The God of the little river which runs along the south side of the plain of Athens.

+ It is scarce necessary to observe that the statue of Ilissus represents him as about to raise himself up, and to rest the whole weight of his body on the left arm, the left foot at the same time being firmly placed on the ground. For a particular description of any of the marbles, the reader will refer to Visconti's Memoirs.

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17.
And doth thy temple on the brink still stand,
Of that clear current, where it erst was rear'd,
Whither, of old, went many a rural band
Of worshippers, thy shadowy power who fear'd ?-
Or, with the beams that once the nation cheer'd
From Art's fair sun, now risen on Britain's isle,
Have both the fane and idol disappeared ?

And is not one poor relic left awhile,
To cheer her children's hearts with memory of a smile?

18.
Well, well-our years roll on like ocean's waves,
Which all things in their mighty way do sweep:
And tyrants help at length to fill the graves
Where thousands of their gory victims sleep;
For they who sorrow sow,

affliction reap
O’er Athens, now, despotic darkness reigns
Her country groans—yet let not Athens weep!

A new-born hero yet shall tread her plains,
And rise, like him of old, to snap her hated chains.

19.
Here Athens' king reclines, his labours o'er;
His fine limbs stretch'd in umdisturb'd repose !
Theseus, thy work is done ; and never more
Thy roused strength shall crush thy giant foes:
Ceased are thy toils, with all thy warlike woes !
Thy tasks Herculean all completed are:
But Grecian annals to the world disclose

A tale, which stains thy reputation fair
Of Cretan monster slain, and Cretan maid's despair.

20.
Lovely thy mutilated form appears!
Oh valiant monarch, how couldst thou endure
To look on Ariadne's starry tears?
What shall this world from cruel deeds secure,
If heart so hard could dwell in form so pure ?
Wert thou indeed so beautiful of mien ?
Or hath the sculptor's art, the world to allure,

Bestow'd on thee an aspect so serene?
Thou wouldst not seem so fair if thy lost love were seen!

21.
Thy heart was hard, great king, to murder love,
Whose earliest seed was in affliction sown;
Scarce may thy name deserve to rank above,
For such dark deeds in Heaven are never known.
Thy death was cruel, but could not atone
For sad desertion of a weeping maid:
Thy memory then is best preserved in stone;

For thus thy nature is at once display'd,
And thus in Pluto's realms thou wert of old delay'd!

22.
Happy art thou, in that thy name doth live,
'Shrined in the glory of the artist's fame,
Whose hand an immortality could give,
Vast as surrounds the Theban hero's name,
To rival whom it was thy fruitless aim
How many, richly fraught with virtues rare,
Whose patriot deeds thy famed exploits might shame,

No honours like to thine shall ever share,
But die away from earth without a nation's care!

23.
Latona, where art thou ? In Delos' isle
Thy everlasting home should be ; where night
Looks lovely from thy meek-eyed daughter's smile,
And thy son's presence maketh day most bright:
Apollo and Diana link'd in light!
Fair twins, aye join'd in Love's aërial chains,
Walking the skies to gladden mortal sight -

Not long their light one favour'd spot retains:
Their beams are scatter'd far o'er earth's remotest plains.*

24.
Thy tale, Latona, hath not ceased to claim
Some tender sympathy-perchance a tear !
Surely, 'twas meant to shadow forth the same,
That such a fragment only should be here !
And that thou should'st so desolate appear,
Thy smiling children parted from thy side;
Whose lonely birth must them to thee endear,

Born on an island in the ocean wide:
These thoughts so fill our hearts, we half forget to chide.t

25.
Pale, pale, fair sea-nymph of the brilliant wings,
Iris ! where hath thy rainbow beauty fled?
Art thou the messenger from heaven, that brings
Tidings of sunny peace in tempests bred?
Oh, with what airy lightness dost thou tread,
Thy dainty garments streaming in the wind !
Like a young spirit soaring from the dead,
Just on the point of leaving earth behind,
The ethereal realms to reach, and traverse unconfined.

26.
Minerva's battles, and old Neptune's deeds,
Here, in loose fragments, float on memory ;
Like ancient wrecks bedeck'd with smiling weeds,
On the dark billows of a solemn sea:
Hyperion, too, emerging bright and free
From the deep gloom of hoary Ocean's caves:
And Night, descending to the main, where she
Her star-girt chariot, in the morning, laves,
Plunging her coal-black steeds deep in the midnight waves.

27.
Look on that head'I all motionless as death!
Though life seems flashing from the fiery eye,
And the proud nostril seems to strive for breath,
As if the snorting steed, too strong to die,
Had just been struck by lightning from the sky
And changed to animated stone ; how striye
The marble muscles Reason to belie!

And by the magic might of Art contrive
To force the mind to yield and dream them still alive!

28.
And here is many a monumental urn,
Telling sad tales of unavailing woe,
Of souls departed never to return,
For whom affection's tears have ceased to flow;

A very small portion of the figure of Latona, and a still less one of her offspring, is found in the Elgin Collection.

+ Her unhallowed connection with Jupiter will not be forgotten. * Supposed to be the head of onc of the horses belonging to the chariot of Night.

The mourner, with the dead, long since laid low :
And the frail vase, too faithless to its trust,
Hath let, alas ! its sacred treasure go,

The relics of the dead! whose ashes, thrust
From these their little homes, are mingling with the dust.

29.
Pass on, and muse upon the warriors' doom, *
The men who fighting for their country fell:
Here is the epitaph ! But where their tomb?-
Ask not: for that hath learning fail'd to tell ;
And we may now but wish their spirits well.
Then turn away and yon inscription read ;+
O'er which the tenderest heart will longest dwell:

It speaks of beauty falln; and seems to plead
For something more than tears, pale Sorrow's wonted meed.

30.
Ah me! I ween half sad must be this strain ;
For relics rise at every step, to bring
The recollection that earth's glory's vain,
Which Time so soon o'ershadows with his wing.
Enough! We will not longer stay, to sing
Of the bewitching groups of ladies fair,
Dancing with Grecian youths, as they would spring

Up from the stone into the vaulted air,
And, like half-heavenly things, their sport continue there:

31.
Nor of the forms so exquisitely sweet,
Seen in procession as they pass along:
Where people strange of every order meet,
And to the temple of their idol throng.
Where is the light-limb’d boy, and warrior strong,
The veiled priestess, and the virgin band
Destined to sing aloud the sacred song,
Holding the written hymn with tasteful hand-
Girls chosen from amongst the noble of the land !

32.
And graceful women, tall, and delicate,
Bearing the gifts on altar to be laid:
With vase and candelabra, all in state !
And, true to nature, in the stone display'd,
Until that love-sick fancy wooes some maid
Among the fairy company. And then
Chariots arrive, and horsemen rich array'd,

And youths for ever young, and aged men,
And officers of state, with many a citizen !.

33.
Shall earth ne'er see a second Pericles,
The slumbering genius of a world to wake?
To rouse the energies of men like these,
Of whose rich thoughts our spirits now partake
And are refresh’d? When, when will princes make
Again such use of riches and of power?
The pomp of fashion, and false show forsake-

Ceasing to build but for the passing hour-
And some great fabric rear which Time may not devour !

Jonn BULL.

The Potidean warriors. + To the memory of Tryphera, a young lady of extraordinary beauty, who die ' LORD GROSVENOR'S COLLECTION OP PICTURES. We seldom quit a mansion like discover---you see nothing but a simthat of which we have here to give ple, grand, and natural effect. It is some account, and return home- impalpable as a thought, intangible wards, but we think of Warton's as a sound-nay, the shadows have Sonnet, written after seeing Wilton- a breathing harmony, and fling round house.

* The Metopes, &c.

her 25th year.

an undulating echo of themselves, From Pembroke's princely. dome, where At every fall smoothing the raven down mimic art

Of darkness till it smiles ! Decks with a magic hand the dazzling In the opposite corner of the room bowers,

is a portrait of a female (by the same), Its living hues where the warm pencil pours, in which every thing is as clear, and And breathing forms from the rude marble pointed, and brought out into the

start, How to liie's humbler scenes can I depart? drawn from close and minute inspec

open day, as in the former it is withMy breast all glowing from those gorgeous tion. The face glitters with smiles

tow'rs, In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours ? as the ear-rings sparkle with light. Vain the complaint ! For Fancy can impart The whole is stiff

, starched, and (To Fate superior, and to Fortune's doom) formal, has a pearly or metallic look, Whate'er adorns the stately-storied hall : and you throughout remark the most She, mid the dungeon's solitary gloom, elaborate and careful finishing. The Can dress the Graces in their Attic pall ; two pictures make an antithesis, Bid the green landscape's vernal beauty where they are placed; but this bloom;

was not probably at all intended: it And in bright trophies clothe the twilight proceeds simply from the difference wall

in the nature of the subject, and the Having repeated these lines to our- truth and appropriate power of the selves, we sit quietly down in our treatment of it. In the middle bechairs to con over our task, abstract tween these two pictures is a small the idea of exclusive property, and history, by Rembrandt, of the Saluthink only of those images of beauty tation of Elizabeth, in which the and of grandeur, which we can carry figures come out straggling, disjointaway with us in our minds, and have ed, quaint, ugly as in a dream, but every where before us. Let us take partake of the mysterious significance some of these, and describe them of preternatural communication, and how we can.

are seen through the visible gloom, There is one we see it now--the or through the dimmer night of anMan with a Hawk, by Rembrandt. tiquity. Light and shade, not form “ In our mind's eye, Horatio !” or feeling, were the elements of What is the difference between this which Rembrandt composed the finest idea which we have brought away poetry, and his imagination brooded with us, and the picture on the wall? only over the medium through which Has it lost any of its tone, its ease, we discern objects, leaving the ohits depth? The head turns round in jects themselves uninspired, unhalthe same graceful moving attitude, lowed, and untouched ! the eye carelessly meets ours, the We must go through our aceount tufted beard grows to the chin, the of these pictures as they start up in hawk flutters and balances himself our memory, not according to the oron his favourite perch, his master's der of their arrangement, for want of hand; and a shadow seems passing a proper set of memorandums. Our over the picture, just leaving a friend, Mr. Gummow, of Clevelandlight in one corner of it behind, to house, had a nice little neatly-bound give a livelier effect to the whole. duodecimo Catalogue, of great use as. There is no mark of the pencil, no a Vade Mecum to occasional visitants jagged points or solid masses; it is or absent critics—but here we have all air, and twilight might be sup- no such advantage; and to take posed to have drawn his veil across it. notes before company is a thing that It is as much an idea on the canvas, we abhor. It has a look of pilfering as it is in the mind. There are no something from the pictures. While means employed, as far as you can we merely enjoy the sight of the obie

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