ON A STATUE OF NIOBE.

To stone the gods have changed her, but in vain ; The sculptor's art has made her breathe again.

Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun
Dropped from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, the Ægean isle.

MILTON.

THE CYCLOPES.

THE giant brethren, arrogant of heart,

Who forged the lightning shaft, and gave to Jove

His thunder, they were like unto the gods,

Save that a single ball of sight was fixed
In their mid-forehead. Cyclops was their name,
From that round eyeball in their brow infixed;
And strength, and force, and manual craft was theirs.

ELTON'S HESIOD.

HERCULES AND THE SERPENTS.

How early has young Chromius begun
The race of virtue, and how swiftly run,
And borne the noble prize away,

While other youths yet at the barrier stay!

None but Alcides e'er set earlier forth than he.
The big-limbed babe in his huge cradle lay,
Too weighty to be rocked by nurse's hands,

Wrapped in purple swaddling bands,
When, lo, by jealous Juno's fierce commands,
Two dreadful serpents come,

Rolling and hissing loud into the room.

To the bold babe they trace their hidden way; Forth from their flaming eyes dread lightnings went; Their gaping mouths did forkéd tongues like thunderbolts present.

Some of th' amazed women dropped down dead
With fear, some wildly fled

About the room, some into corners crept,

Where silently they shook and wept.

All naked from the bed the passionate mother leaped, To save or perish with her child.

She trembled and she cried;—the mighty infant smiled.

The mighty infant seemed well pleased

At his gay, gilded foes;

And as their spotted necks up to the cradle rose, With his young warlike hands on both he seized. In vain they raged, in vain they hissed,

In vain their arméd tails they twist,

And

angry circles cast about;

Black blood, and fiery breath, and poisonous soul,

he squeezes out.

PINDAR, BY COWLEY.

HERCULES.

THE mighty Hercules, o'er many a clime Waved his vast mace in virtue's cause sublime. Unmeasured strength, with early art combined, Awed, served, protected, and amazed mankind.

DEEP degraded to a coward's slave,
Endless contests bore Alcides brave,

DARWIN.

Through the thorny path of suffering led Slew the Hydra, crushed the lion's might, Threw himself, to bring his friend to light, Living, in the skiff that bears the dead. All the torments, every toil of earth,

Juno's hatred on him could impose,
Well he bore them, from his fated birth,
To life's grandly mournful close.

Till the god, the earthly part forsaken,
From the man in flames asunder taken,

Drank the heavenly ether's purer breath,
Joyous in the new, unwonted lightness,
Soared he upwards to celestial brightness,

Earth's dark, heavy burden lost in death.
High Olympus gives harmonious greeting

To the hall where reigns his sire adored; Youth's bright goddess, with a blush at meeting, Gives the nectar to her lord.

SCHILLER, BY S. G. BULFINCH.

[Alluding to the efforts of the confederated powers to put down the French revolution.]

MEANTIME the invaders fared as they deserved.
The Herculean Commonwealth put forth her arms
And throttled with an infant godhead's might
The snakes about her cradle.

WORDSWORTH.

[Alluding to the proscriptions and massacres which accompanied that event.]

THEY who with clumsy desperation brought

A river of blood, and preached that nothing else
Could cleanse the Augean stable, by the might
Of their own helper have been swept away.

WORDSWORTH.