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,
Scarce wakened yet, Apollo steals
in light,
While on imperial brows Jove
sets the seal of might!
Godlike the lot ordained for him
to share,
He wins the garland ere he
runs the race;
He learns lifes wisdom ere
he knows lifes care,
And, without labor vanquished,
smiles the grace.
Great is the man, I grant, whose
strength of mind,
Self-shapes its objects and
subdues the fates-
Virtue subdues the fates, but cannot
blind
The fickle happiness, whose
smile awaits
Those who scarce seek it; nor can
courage earn
What the grace showers not from
her own free urn!
From aught unworthy, the determined
will
Can guard the watchful spirit-there
it ends
The all thats glorious
from the heaven descends;
As some sweet mistress loves us,
freely still
Come the spontaneous gifts of heaven!-Above
Favor rules Jove, as it below rules
love!
The immortals have their bias!-Kindly
they
See the bright locks of youth enamored
play,
And where the glad one goes, shed
gladness round the way.
It is not they who boast the best
to see,
Whose eyes the holy apparitions
bless;
The stately light of their divinity
Hath oft but shone the
brightest on the blind;-
And their choice spirit found
its calm recess
In the pure childhood
of a simple mind.
Unasked they come delighted to delude
The expectation of our baffled
pride;
No law can call their free
steps to our side.
Him whom he loves, the
sire of men and gods
(Selected from the marvelling multitude)
Bears on his eagle to
his bright abodes;
And showers, with partial hand and
lavish, down,
The minstrels laurel or the
monarchs crown!
Before the fortune-favored son of
earth,
Apollo walks-and, with
his jocund mirth,
The heart-enthralling smiler of
the skies
For him gray Neptune smooths
the pliant wave-
Harmless the waters
for the ship that bore
The C?sar and his fortunes
to the shore!
Charmed at his feet the crouching
lion lies,
To him his back the murmuring
dolphin gave;
His soul is born a sovereign oer
the strife-
The lord of all the beautiful of
life;
Whereer his presence in its
calm has trod,
It charms-it sways as
solve diviner God.
Scorn not the fortune-favored, that
to him
The light-won victory by the
gods is given,
Or that, as Paris, from
the strife severe,
The Venus draws her darling-Whom
the heaven
So prospers, love so
watches, I revere!
And not the man upon whose eyes,
with dim
And baleful night, sits fate.
Achaia boasts,
No less the glory of the Dorian
lord
That Vulcan wrought for him
the shield and sword-
That round the mortal hovered all
the hosts
Of all Olympus-that his
wrath to grace,
The best and bravest of the Grecian
race
Untimely slaughtered, with resentful
ghosts
Awed the pale people of the Stygian
coasts!
Scorn not the darlings of the beautiful,
If without labor they lifes
blossoms cull;
If, like the stately lilies, they
have won
A crown for which they neither toiled
nor spun;-
If without merit, theirs be beauty,
still
Thy sense, unenvying, with the beauty
fill.
Alike for thee no merit wins the
right,
To share, by simply seeing, their
delight.
Heaven breathes the soul into the
minstrels breast,
But with that soul he animates the
rest;
The god inspires the mortal-but
to God,
In turn, the mortal lifts thee from
the sod.
Oh, not in vain to heaven the bard
is dear;
Holy himself-he hallows
those who hear!
The busy mart let justice still
control,
Weighing the guerdon to the
toil!-What then?
A God alone claims joy-all
joy is his,
Flushing with unsought light
the cheeks of men.
Where is no miracle,
why there no bliss!
Grow, change, and ripen all that
mortal be,
Shapened from form to form,
by toiling time;
The blissful and the
beautiful are born
Full grown, and ripened from eternity-
No gradual changes to their
glorious prime,
No childhood dwarfs
them, and no age has worn.-
Like heavens, each earthly Venus
on the sight
Comes, a dark birth, from out an
endless sea;
Like the first Pallas, in maturest might,
Armed, from the thunderers-brow,
leaps forth each thought of light.
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