Where zephyrs have no power to curl the deep, To gaze upon the lustres, where they sleep TO ZÖE. Look upon this picture. SHAKSPEARE. A ROSE in Zöe's arbour grew, The gentlest zephyrs, still, would creep, Warm o'er it, from the west, And the night-spirit loved to weep Upon its virgin breast; And all the host of insect beaux Would pause, to trifle with the rose ! Alas, the flower!-one summer night, Some spirit rode the gale, Who, from his pinions, scattered blight Along the scented vale ; I saw it in the sunny morn, 'Twas dying on its stem, Yet wore, though drooping and forlorn, Its dewy diadem; But every roving butterfly Looked on the rose-and wandered by! The beams of morning had no power Upon its faded cheek, The bee went singing past the flower, The bird flew by the wreck; Still, as each fluttering idler fled, That used to linger here, The rose would bow its gentle head, And shake away a tear, But never raised its timid eye, To gaze, again, upon the sky! It withered through the sunny hours, And, when the shadows fell, In vain the spirit of the flowers Flung down its dewy spell! The moon gleamed sad,-the night-breeze sighed, Above the lonely flower, But, none who loved its day of pride Watched o'er its waning hour ; The flatterers-they had, long, been gone, THE FOREIGN GRAVE. Ω φιλτάτη χεὶρ, φίλτατον δέ μοι στόμα, EURIP. Medea. Thou art gone! thy genius fled up to the stars, from whence it came! and that warm heart of thine, with all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a clod of the valley. FAR, far away,—the zephyrs wave, In silence, o'er thy lonely grave! No kindred sigh disturbs the gloom That midnight hangs around thy tomb: But spirits of a foreign air, At evening, love to linger there; STERNE. |