STROPHE III. Since Rouse desires thee, and complains Thou yet appear'st not in thy place Among the literary noble stores Given to his care, But, absent, leavest his numbers incomplete. Calls thee to the interior shrine, his charge, That Iön kept (Iön, Erectheus son ANTISTROPHE. Haste, then, to the pleasant groves, Than Delos, or the fork'd Parnassian hill! Since now a splendid lot is also thine, With authors of exalted note, The ancient glorious lights of Greece and Rome. EPODE. Ye, then, my works, no longer vain, And worthless deem'd by me! Whate'er this sterile genius has produced, Gift of kind Hermes, and my watchful friend, And whence the coarse unletter'd multitude Perhaps some future distant age, To judge more equally. Then, malice silenced in the tomb, Thanks to Rouse, if aught of praise TRANSLATIONS OF THE ITALIAN POEMS. SONNET. FAIR Lady! whose harmonious name the Rhine, Through all his grassy vale, delights to hear, Base were indeed the wretch who could forbear To love a spirit elegant as thine, That manifests a sweetness all divine, Nor knows a thousand winning acts to spare, And graces, which Love's bow and arrows are, Tempering thy virtues to a softer shine. When gracefully thou speak'st, or singest gay Such strains as might the senseless forest move, Ah then-turn each his eyes and ears away, Who feels himself unworthy of thy love! Grace can alone preserve him ere the dart Of fond desire yet reach his inmost heart. SONNET. As on a hill-top rude, when closing day So, on my tongue these accents, new and rare, Are flowers exotic, which Love waters there. While thus, O sweetly scornful! I essay Thy praise in verse to British ears unknown, And Thames exchange for Arno's fair domain; So love has will'd, and ofttimes Love has shown, That what he wills, he never wills in vainOh that this hard and sterile breast might be To Him, who plants from heaven, a soil as free! CANZONE. THEY mock my toil-the nymphs and amorous swains And whence this fond attempt to write, they cry, Say truly. Find'st not oft thy purpose cross'd, Rivers, on whose grassy sides Her deathless laurel leaf, with which to bind VOL. II. 23 My willing heart, and all my fancy's flights, “This is the language in which Love delights.” SONNET, TO CHARLES DEODATI. CHARLES-and I say it wondering-thou must know That I, who once assumed a scornful air And scoff'd at Love, am fallen in his snare, (Full many an upright man has fallen so:) Yet think me not thus dazzled by the flow Of golden locks, or damask cheek; more rare The heartfelt beauties of my foreign fair; A mien majestic, with dark brows that show The tranquil lustre of a lofty mind; Words exquisite, of idioms more than one, And song whose fascinating power might bind, And from her sphere draw down the laboring moon; With such fire-darting eyes that, should I fill My ears with wax, she would enchant me still. SONNET. LADY! It cannot be but that thine eyes Must be my sun, such radiance they display, And strike me e'en as Phœbus him whose way Through horrid Libya's sandy desert lies. Meantime, on that side steamy vapors rise Where most I suffer. Of what kind are they, New as to me they are, I cannot say, But deem them, in the lover's language-sighs. Some, though with pain, my bosom close conceals, Which, if in part escaping thence, they tend To soften thine, thy coldness soon congeals. Whence my sad nights in showers are ever drown'd, Till my Aurora comes, her brow with roses bound, SONNET. ENAMOR'D, artless, young, on foreign ground, To thee, dear Lady with an humble sigh SIMILE IN PARADISE LOST. 'So when, from mountain tops, the dusky clouds Ascending,' &c. QUALES aërii montis de vertice nubes Cum surgunt, et jam Boreæ tumida ora quiêrunt, Tum, si jucundo tandem sol prodeat ore, |