[m] Beyond the triumphs of a Loriot’s art.
At the petits soupés of Choisy were first introduced those admirable pieces of mechanism, afterwards carried to perfection by Loriot, the Confidente and the Servante; a table and a side-board, which descended, and rose again covered with viands and wines. And thus the most luxurious Court in Europe, after all its boasted refinements, was glad to return at last, by this singular contrivance, to the quiet and privacy of humble life. Vie privée de Louis XV. tom. ii. p. 43.
[n] So thro’ the vales of Loire the bee-hives glide,
An allusion to the floating bee-house, or barge laden with bee-hives, which is seen in some parts of France and Piedmont.
[o] And, with the swallow, wings the year away!
It was the boast of Lucullus that he changed his climate with the birds of passage. PLUT. in Vit. Lucull.
How often must he have felt the truth here inculcated, that the master of many houses has no home!
ODE TO SUPERSTITION.[[1]]
I. 1.
Hence, to the realms of Night, dire Demon, hence!
Thy chain of adamant can bind
That little world, the human mind,
And sink its noblest powers to impotence.
Wake the lion’s loudest roar,
Clot his shaggy mane with gore,
With flashing fury bid his eye-balls shine;
Meek is his savage, sullen soul, to thine!
Thy touch, thy deadening touch has steel’d the breast,[[2]]
Whence, thro’ her April-shower, soft Pity smil’d;
Has clos’d the heart each godlike virtue bless’d,
To all the silent pleadings of his child.
At thy command he plants the dagger deep,
At thy command exults, tho’ Nature bids him weep!
I. 2.
When, with a frown that froze the peopled earth,[[3]]
Thou dartedst thy huge head from high,
Night wav’d her banners o’er the sky,
And, brooding, gave her shapeless shadows birth.
Rocking on the billowy air,
Ha! what withering phantoms glare!
As blows the blast with many a sudden swell,
At each dead pause, what shrill-ton’d voices yell!
The sheeted spectre, rising from the tomb,
Points at the murderer’s stab, and shudders by;
In every grove is felt a heavier gloom,
That veils its genius from the vulgar eye:
The spirit of the water rides the storm,
And, thro’ the mist, reveals the terrors of his form.
I. 3.
O’er solid seas, where Winter reigns,
And holds each mountain-wave in chains,
The fur-clad savage, ere he guides his deer[[4]]
By glistering star-light thro’ the snow,
Breathes softly in her wondering ear
Each potent spell thou bad’st him know.
By thee inspir’d, on India’s sands,[[5]]
Full in the sun the Bramin stands;
And, while the panting tigress hies
To quench her fever in the stream,
His spirit laughs in agonies,[[6]]
Smit by the scorchings of the noontide beam.
Mark who mounts the sacred pyre,
Blooming in her bridal vest:
She hurls the torch! she fans the fire!
To die is to be blest:[[7]]
She clasps her lord to part no more,
And, sighing, sinks! but sinks to soar.
O’ershadowing Scotia’s desert coast,
The Sisters sail in dusky state,[[8]]
And, wrapt in clouds, in tempests tost,
Weave the airy web of fate;
While the lone shepherd, near the shipless main,[[9]]
Sees o’er her hills advance the long-drawn funeral train.