They who, from Atlas' height,
Beheld this rosy flame
Descending through the waste of night,
Thought 'twas some planet, whose empyreal frame
Had kindled, as it rapidly revolved
Around its fervid axle, and dissolved
Into a flood so bright!
The youthful Day,
Within his twilight bower,
Lay sweetly sleeping
On the flushed bosom of a lotos-flower;[4]
When round him, in profusion weeping,
Dropt the celestial shower,
Steeping
The rosy clouds, that curled
About his infant head,
Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed.
But, when the waking boy
Waved his exhaling tresses through the sky,
O morn of joy!
The tide divine,
All glorious with the vermil dye
It drank beneath his orient eye,
Distilled, in dews, upon the world,
And every drop was wine, was heavenly WINE!
Blest be the sod, and blest the flower
On which descended first that shower,
All fresh from Jove's nectareous springs;--
Oh far less sweet the flower, the sod,
O'er which the Spirit of the Rainbow flings
The magic mantle of her solar God![5]
[1] We learn from Theopbrastus, that the roses of Cyrene were particularly
fragrant.
[2] Heraclitus (Physicus) held the soul to be a spark of the stellar
essence.
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