Priam's castle-walls had sunk, Troy in dust and ashes lay, And each Greek, with triumph drunk, Richly laden with his prey, Sat upon his ship's high prow, On the Hellespontic strand,...
Why run the crowd? What means the throng That rushes fast the streets along? Can Rhodes a prey to flames, then, be? In crowds they gather hastily, And, on his steed, a noble knight...
Ye offspring of the morning sun, Ye flowers that deck the smiling plain, Your lives, in joy and bliss begun, In Nature's love unchanged remain. With hues of bright and godlike splendor...
Ah! happy he, upon whose birth each god Looks down in love, whose earliest sleep the bright Idalia cradles, whose young lips the rod Of eloquent Hermes kindles to whose eyes,...
The goblet is sparkling with purpled-tinged wine, Bright glistens the eye of each guest, When into the hall comes the Minstrel divine, To the good he now brings what is best;...
The air is perfumed with the morning's fresh breeze, From the bush peer the sunbeams all purple and bright, While they gleam through the clefts of the dark-waving trees,...
Within a vale, each infant year, When earliest larks first carol free, To humble shepherds cloth appear A wondrous maiden, fair to see. Not born within that lowly place...
Severe the proof the Grecian youth was doomed to undergo, Before he might what lurks beneath the Eleusinia know Art thou prepared and ripe, the shrine the inner shrine to win,...
Yes, my friends! that happier times have been Than the present, none can contravene; That a race once lived of nobler worth; And if ancient chronicles were dumb, Countless stones in witness forth would come...
Not in the crowd of masqueraders gay, Where coxcombs' wit with wondrous splendor flares, And, easier than the Indian's net the prey, The virtue of young beauties snares; ...
Nature in charms is exhaustless, in beauty ever reviving; And, like Nature, fair art is inexhaustible too. Hail, thou honored old man! for both in thy heart thou preservest...
Once wisdom dwelt in tomes of ponderous size, While friendship from a pocketbook would talk; But now that knowledge in small compass lies, And floats in almanacs, as light as cork,...