PART I.

CONTENTS.

Canace tells her own story-deprecates Chaucer and Milton for her
presumption in attemting what they had begun.--Cambuscan, king
of Tartary, her father His hardy education-bred in obscurity, but
exalted to his station, on being fitted for it.-Her mother Elfeta---
-delivered of twins, herself and Theodora-dies.-The fondness of
the twins for each other-till by accident seeing the princes of Arabia,
each becomes attached-but neither divulging the object of her
attachment to her sister, their consequent alienation and distrust.

PART I.

CONTENTS.

Canace tells her own story-deprecates Chaucer and Milton for her presumption in attemting what they had begun.-Cambuscan, king of Tartary, her father His hardy education-bred in obscurity, but exalted to his station, on being fitted for it.-Her mother Elfeta ---delivered of twins, herself and Theodora-dies.-The fondness of the twins for each other-till by accident seeing the princes of Arabia, each becomes attached-but neither divulging the object of her attachment to her sister, their consequent alienation and distrust.

TALE OF THE WHITE ROSE,

OR, THE

STORY OF CANACE.

This tale the White Rose sang so clear,

I almost sigh again to hear;

If my male syllables harsh roll,

Her music is not in my soul.

PART I.

WHO has not heard of Canace the fair?
(So all men call us while we virgins are;
But, with the vernal bloom, and tell-tale glass,
Our beauty sickens, and our titles pass :)
Yet beauty's garland she of right may wear,
Whose untold tale a Milton sighed to hear,
And wept on Chaucer's tomb, in tuneful grief,
Glory a skeleton, epitaph and leaf;

And to his ashes would have lent a tongue;
But the old poet, wiser than the young,
Would not renew his mortal voyages past,
Sick of life's storms, and safe in port at last.

But how shall one, ungifted with their blaze, Dare shed on such a theme her twilight rays?— Pardon, dread shades! if your unfinished words I guess, no poet, or the least of bards;