ON

THE PLATONIC IDEA,

AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE.

YE sister pow'rs, who o'er the sacred groves
Preside, and thou, fair mother of them all,
Mnemosyne! and thou, who in thy grot
Immense, reclin'd at leisure, hast in charge
The archives, and the ord'nances of Jove,
And dost record the festivals of heav'n,
Eternity!-Inform us who is He,

That great original by nature chos'n
To be the archetype of human kind,
Unchangeable, immortal, with the poles
Themselves coeval, one, yet ev'ry where,
An image of the god, who gave him being?
Twin-brother of the goddess born from Jove,
He dwells not in his father's mind, but, though

Of common nature with ourselves, exists

Apart, and occupies a local home.

Whether, companion of the stars, he spend

Eternal ages, roaming at his will

From sphere to sphere the tenfold heav'ns, or dwell

On the moon's side, that nearest neighbours earth, Or torpid on the banks of Lethe sit

Among the multitude of souls ordain'd

To flesh and blood, or whether (as may chance)
That vast and giant model of our kind
In some far distant region of this globe
Sequester'd stalk, with lifted head on high
O'ertow'ring Atlas, on whose shoulders rest
The stars, terrific even to the gods.

Never the Theban seer, whose blindness prov'd
His best illumination, him beheld

In secret vision; never him the son

Of Pleione, amid the noiseless night

Descending, to the prophet-choir reveal'd;

Him never knew th' Assyrian priest, who yet

The ancestry of Ninus chronicles,

And Belus, and Osiris, far-renown'd;

Nor even thrice great Hermes, although skill'd So deep in myst'ry, to the worshippers

Of Isis show'd a prodigy like him.

And thou, who hast immortaliz'd the shades Of Academus, if the schools receiv'd

This monster of the fancy first from thee,
Either recall at once the banish'd bards

To thy republic, or thyself evinc'd

A wilder fabulist, go also forth.

TO

HIS FATHER.

Oн that Pieria's spring would thro' my breast
Pour its inspiring influence, and rush

No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable Father's sake

All meaner themes renounc'd, my muse, on wings
Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain.

For thee, my Father! howsoe'er it please,
She frames this slender work, nor know I aught
That may thy gifts more suitably requite;
Though to requite them suitably would ask
Returns much nobler, and surpassing far
The meagre stores of verbal gratitude:
But, such as I possess, I send thee all.
This page presents thee in their full amount

With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought;

Nought, save the riches that from airy dream

In secret grottos, and in laurel bow'rs,

I have, by golden Clio's gift, acquir'd.

Verse is a work divine; despise not thou Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more) Man's heavenly source, and which, retaining still Some scintillations of Promethean fire,

Bespeaks him animated from above.

The Gods love verse; the infernal Pow'rs them

selves

Confess the influence of verse, which stirs
The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains
Of adamant both Pluto and the Shades.

In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale
Tremulous Sybil, make the future known,
And he who sacrifices, on the shrine

Hangs verse, both when he smites the threat'ning

bull,

And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide