Demetrius, when he basely fled the field,
A Spartan born, his Spartan mother kill'd;
Then, stretching forth the bloody sword, she cried
(Her teeth fierce gnashing with disdainful pride)
"Fly cursed offspring to the shades below,
Where proud Eurotas shall no longer flow
For timid hinds like thee-Fly, trembling slave,
Abandon'd wretch, to Pluto's darkest cave!
This womb so vile a monster never bore.
Disown'd by Sparta, thou'rt my son no more."
Grieve not, Philanis, tho' condemn'd to die
Far from thy parent soil and native sky;
Tho' strangers' hands must raise thy funeral pile
And lay thy ashes in a foreign isle;
To all on Death's last dreary journey bound
The Road is equal, and alike the ground.
We are now arrived, in nearly chronological order, at the period of the first collection of epigrams, for this Tymneus appears to have been a contemporary with Meleager.
The wizards, at my first nativity,
Declar'd with one accord I soon should die;
What if (o'er all impends that certain fate)
I visit gloomy Minos soon or late?
Wine, like a racer, brings me there with ease,
The sober souls may walk it, if they please.
Not the planet that, sinking in Ocean,
Foretels future storms to our tars,
Not the sea, when in fearful commotion
Its billows swell high as the stars,
Not the Thunder that rolls in October,
Is so hateful to each honest fellow
As he who remembers when sober
The tales that were told him when mellow.
See yonder blushing vine-tree grow
And clasp a dry and wither'd plane,
And round its youthful tendrils throw,
A shelter from the winds and rain.
That sapless trunk in former time
Gave covert from the noontide blaze, And taught the infant shoot to climb That now the pious debt repays.
And thus, kind powers, a partner give
To share in my prosperity;
Hang on my strength while yet I live,
And do me honor when I die.
Few were thy notes, Erinne, short thy lay;
But thy short lay the Muse herself has given;
Thus never shall thy memory decay,
Nor night obscure thy fame, which lives in heaven:
While we, th' unnumber'd bards of after-times,
Sink in the melancholy grave unseen,
Un-honoured reach Avernus' fabled climes
And leave no record that we once have been.
Sweet are the graceful Swan's melodious lays,
Tho' but an instant heard, and then they die;
But the long chattering of discordant Jays
The winds of April scatter thro' the sky.
THE NEREIDS OF CORINTH LAMENT
Where has thy grandeur, Corinth, shrunk from sight,
Thy antient treasures, and thy rampart's height?
Thy godlike fanes and palaces-Oh where
Thy mighty myriads and majestic fair?
Relentless war has pour'd around the wall,
And hardly spar'd the traces of thy fall.
We nymphs of Ocean deathless yet remain,
And sad and silent sorrow near thy plain.
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