TO A VOICE THAT HAD BEEN LOST.* Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor? Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum. AUSONIUS. ONCE more, Enchantress of the soul, Once more we hail thy soft controul. Thee, in his rage, the Tempest bore; Arrested in the realms of Frost, Or in the wilds of Ether lost. Far happier thou! 'twas thine to soar, Careering on the winged wind. Thy triumphs who shall dare explore? No tract of space, no distant star, And nursed thy infant years with many a WHILE on the cliff with calm delight she kneels, And the blue vales a thousand joys recall, Far better taught, she lays her bosom bare, And the fond boy springs back to nestle there. TO THE FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES, COMMONLY CALLED THE TORSO. AND dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone, (Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurled) Still sit as on the fragment of a world; Surviving all, majestic and alone? What tho' the Spirits of the North, that swept Rome from the earth, when in her pomp she slept, Smote thee with fury, and thy headless trunk Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught * * In the gardens of the Vatican, where it was placed by Julius II, it was long the favourite study of those great men, to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Caracci. + Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an antient epigram on the Gnidian Venus. Analecta Vet. Poetarum, III. 200.. |