No More Learning

"Hence, ye profane! "[587]--the song melodious rose,
By mildest zephyrs wafted through the boughs,
Unseen the warblers of the holy strain--
"Far from these sacred bowers, ye lewd profane!
Hence each unhallow'd eye, each vulgar ear;
Chaste and divine are all the raptures here.
The nymphs of ocean, and the ocean's queen,
The isle angelic, ev'ry raptur'd scene,
The charms of honour and its meed confess,
These are the raptures, these the wedded bliss:
The glorious triumph and the laurel crown,
The ever blossom'd palms of fair renown,
By time unwither'd, and untaught to cloy;
These are the transports of the Isle of Joy.
Such was Olympus and the bright abodes;
Renown was heav'n, and heroes were the gods.
Thus, ancient times, to virtue ever just,
To arts and valour rear'd the worshipp'd bust.
High, steep, and rugged, painful to be trod,
With toils on toils immense is virtue's road;
But smooth at last the walks umbrageous smile,
Smooth as our lawns, and cheerful as our isle.
Up the rough road Alcides, Hermes, strove,
All men like you, Apollo, Mars, and Jove:
Like you to bless mankind Minerva toil'd;
Diana bound the tyrants of the wild;
O'er the waste desert Bacchus spread the vine;
And Ceres taught the harvest-field to shine.
Fame rear'd her trumpet; to the blest abodes
She rais'd, and hail'd them gods, and sprung of gods.

"The love of fame, by heav'n's own hand impress'd,
The first, and noblest passion of the breast,
May yet mislead. --Oh guard, ye hero train,
No harlot robes of honours false and vain,
No tinsel yours, be yours all native gold,
Well-earn'd each honour, each respect you hold:
To your lov'd king return a guardian band,
Return the guardians of your native land;
To tyrant power be dreadful; from the jaws
Of fierce oppression guard the peasant's cause.
If youthful fury pant for shining arms,
Spread o'er the eastern world the dread alarms;[588]
There bends the Saracen the hostile bow,
The Saracen thy faith, thy nation's foe;
There from his cruel gripe tear empire's reins,
And break his tyrant-sceptre o'er his chains.
On adamantine pillars thus shall stand
The throne, the glory of your native land;
And Lusian heroes, an immortal line,
Shall ever with us share our isle divine. "




DISSERTATION

ON THE

FICTION OF THE ISLAND OF VENUS.


From the earliest ages, and in the most distant nations, palaces,
forests and gardens, have been the favourite themes of poets.
And
though, as in Homer's island of Rhadamanthus, the description is
sometimes only cursory; at other times they have lavished all their
powers, and have vied with each other in adorning their edifices and
landscapes. The gardens of Alcinous in the Odyssey, and Elysium in the
AEneid, have excited the ambition of many imitators. Many instances of
these occur in the later writers. These subjects, however, it must be
owned, are so natural to the genius of poetry, that it is scarcely fair
to attribute to an imitation of the classics, the innumerable
descriptions of this kind which abound in the old romances. In these,
under different allegorical names, every passion, every virtue and vice,
had its palace, its enchanted bower, or its dreary cave. Among the
Italians, on the revival of letters, Pulci, Boiardo, and others,
borrowed these fictions from the Gothic romancers; Ariosto borrowed from
them, and Spenser has copied Ariosto and Tasso. In the sixth and seventh
books of the Orlando Furioso, there is a fine description of the island
and palace of Alcina, or Vice; and in the tenth book (but inferior to
the other in poetical colouring), we have a view of the country of
Logistilla, or Virtue. The passage, of this kind, however, where Ariosto
has displayed the richest poetical painting, is in the xxxiv. book, in
the description of Paradise, whither he sends Astolpho, the English
duke, to ask the help of St. John to recover the wits of Orlando. The
whole is most admirably fanciful. Astolpho mounts the clouds on the
winged horse, sees Paradise, and, accompanied by the Evangelist, visits
the moon; the adventures in which orb are almost literally translated in
Milton's Limbo. But the passage which may be said to bear the nearest
resemblance to the descriptive part of the island of Venus, is the
landscape of Paradise, of which the ingenious Mr. Hoole, to whose many
acts of friendship I am proud to acknowledge myself indebted, has
obliged me with this translation, though only ten books of his Ariosto
are yet published.

"O'er the glad earth the blissful season pours
The vernal beauties of a thousand flowers
In varied tints: there show'd the ruby's hue,
The yellow topaz, and the sapphire blue.
The mead appears one intermingled blaze
Where pearls and diamonds dart their trembling rays.