V

And is She brought within the power Of vision?--o'er this tempting flower Hovering until the petals stay Her flight, and take its voice away!-- Observe each wing!--a tiny van! The structure of her laden thigh, How fragile! yet of ancestry Mysteriously remote and high; High as the imperial front of man; The roseate bloom on woman's cheek; The soaring eagle's curvèd beak; The white plumes of the floating swan; Old as the tiger's paw, the lion's mane Ere shaken by that mood of stern disdain At which the desert trembles.--Humming Bee! Thy sting was needless then, perchance unknown, The seeds of malice were not sown; All creatures met in peace, from fierceness free, And no pride blended with their dignity. --Tears had not broken from their source; Nor Anguish strayed from her Tartarean den; The golden years maintained a course Not undiversified though smooth and even; We were not mocked with glimpse and shadow then, Bright Seraphs mixed familiarly with men; And earth and stars composed a universal heaven!

A MS. copy of this Ode commences with the following stanza, and goes on to "And what if his presiding breath," stanza iii. text of 1820.--ED.

Forsake me not, Urania, but when Ev'n Fades into night, resume the enraptur'd song That shadowed forth the immensity of Heav'n In music--uttered surely without wrong (For 'twas thy work) though here the Listener lay Couch'd on green herbage 'mid the warmth of May --A parting promise makes a bright farewell: Empow'r'd to wait for thy return Voice of the Heav'ns I will not mourn; Content that holy peace and mute remembrance dwell Within the bosom of the chorded shell Tuned 'mid those seats of love and joy, concealed By day, by night imperfectly revealed; Thy native mansions that endure Beyond their present seeming--pure From taint of dissolution or decay. --No blights, no wintry desolations, Affect those blissful habitations, Built such as hope might gather from the hue Profound of the celestial blue, And from the aspect of each radiant orb, Some fix'd, some wandering, with no timid curb, Yet both permitted to proclaim Their Maker's glory with unaltered frame.

ED.

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