At once by tokens manifest he spies

That they are here, whom quaintly twisted plies
And knots and labyrinths of oracular saw,

Inspired by Phoebus, named his sons-in-law,

In form of beasts foreshown. With palms outspread
Towards the sky, in awful accent said

The king illumined: Thou, whose compass dread
And universal empire dost contain

Both heaven and earth, and all their woe and pain;
Night, that transmittest stellar influence
With manifold illapse to heal the sense
Of weary mortals by a kind renewing,
Till Titan bid them to be up and doing:
At last in happy hour thou bring'st to me
The truth long sought in sore perplexity,-
Reveal'st the principles of Destiny.

Aid but the work, and make the omen sure,
From age to age thy rites shall still endure.
Yon house shall honour thee, O reverend Night!
With sable victims and drink-offerings white
Of purest milk. The hallow'd flame shall sup
The liquid gifts and eat the entrails up.
Hail secret place, all hail thou seat divine,
Mysterious symbol of the dreadful Trine!

R

PEAN OF ARIPHQON THE SICYONIAN.
Υγίεια πρεσβίστα Μακάρων.

HOLIEST and first of all the happy powers,
Sacred Hygeia! let me dwell with thee-
For all the remnant of my living hours,

Come thou, benign, and share my home with me;
For if there be or good or grace

In riches, offering, or high place
Of godlike empery or delight,

Which, in the hidden nets of Aphrodite,
We would inveigle-aught at all

That from the gods poor man obtains
To soothe him in his toils and pains,-
Blest Hygeia at thy call

Blossoms every pleasant thing:

With thee the Graces spend their spring;

But without thee

No living thing can happy be.

· PROMETHEUS.

A FRAGMENT.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THIS fragment, which, if regarded as a dramatic scene, may be read as a whole, was written in or about the year 1820, when it was shown by the author to his father, who was much pleased with the commencement, and took great interest in the work. This may, however, have operated as a virtual discouragement. The elder Coleridge saw in the fable of Prometheus, as treated by Eschylus, a profound and complex philosopheme, which the unsphered spirit of Plato might have been taxed to unfold. Fully to master the idea, required a tension of mind which, it may be, the younger poet did not bring to the task. To work up such stern materials into poetry might have seemed to him impracticable, or at least foreign to his own genius; and indeed, whoever will cast his eye over the disquisition on this subject, in the second volume of “Coleridge's Literary Remains,” will not be surprised that the youthful Telemachus shrunk from the attempt to bend his father's bow.)

As the poetry in these volumes is by no means intended exclusively for scholars, it may not be amiss to give a short analysis of the Æschylean drama, from which the following

VOL. II.

S

scene is professedly imitated. The Titan Prometheus has stolen fire from heaven, and thereby introduced among mankind the knowledge of mechanic arts. Jupiter, incensed by his presumption, and nowise approving the philanthropic motive by which it was dictated, requires Vulcan to bind the rebel to a rock in Mount Caucasus. Vulcan executes this commission by his ministers, Strength and Force. Prometheus is left alone. The Sea Nymphs, and Ocean himself, endeavour to comfort the sufferer, offering to plead with Jupiter in his behalf; but he sternly declines their mediation. The Egyptian Io appears, to whom Prometheus reveals the course of her wanderings and the extent of her sufferings, in her flight from the persecution of the jealous Juno; and that by one of her descendants, Hercules, the son of Jupiter, he himself is destined to be released. He speaks of Jupiter in terms of bold defiance, announcing that he will be dethroned by a son whom Io will bear to him. Mercury (Hermes) is despatched to demand from him the disclosure of this secret on pain of further vengeance. Prometheus refuses to comply, and is swept away by a thunderbolt.

It is, I am aware, doing sore injustice to the very remarkable interpretation of this sublime fable above alluded to, to give the results without detailing the process. For this I must refer to the original essay, which requires, and will, I think, fully repay, an attentive and thoughtful perusal. Suffice it to say here, that Jupiter and Prometheus are explained to mean Law and Reason, contrasted, yet akin to each other. Jupiter is Law, stern, imperative, controlling the universe; and in one aspect, Political Law, Juno being the Sacerdotal Cultus, the wedded servant of the state, coerced but unsubmissive, jealous (not, it must be confessed, without cause) of Io, the mundane Religion migrating from

land to land while Prometheus is Reason, the super-sensual light in man, free, though in bonds, and struggling against the despot with a prospect of ultimate emancipation. Hermes is Custom, or I should rather say, marketing expediency, ever worldly and complying; while the Ocean Nymphs are the natural solicitings from this visible scene, by which the soul is tempted to forget her original, forego her privileges, and forfeit her destiny.

It is easy to surmise in what spirit and with what skill this subject would have been handled by Dryden, and in this style I believe that he might have found a worthy successor in Hartley Coleridge. But to embody so profound an idea not in witty abstractions, but in living forms, "simple, sensuous, passionate," speaking with lyric earnestness, and combined in a progressive action, was a design more easy for the father to conceive than for the son to execute. Sooth to say, the latter was not disposed to bore so deep for the waters of inspiration. His Hippocrene was no Artesian well, though it flowed naturally from a living fountain far enough beneath the surface.

Soon afterwards the subject was taken up by the splendid genius of Shelley, who brought to it vehement impulse, exhaustless fancy, the music of the spheres, and a diction glittering as sunlight in the midst of a waterfall. He did not bring a clear insight or a sane judgment. His conception, or adaptation of the mythus, stripped of its gorgeous dress, may be called vulgar, at once false and obvious. With him Jupiter is the oppression of the world, secular and religious, "the powers that be," as they appeared to his diseased vision; and Prometheus is relucting, up-surging humanity. However, a poem was produced which might well have disheartened a young contemporary from the semblance of competition.