And laid it on his brow, and said, " Be clean!"
And lo! the scales fell from him, and his blood
Coursed with delicious coolness through his veins,
And his dry palms grew moist, and on his brow
The dewy softness of an infant's stole.
His leprosy was cleansed, and he fell down
Prostrate at Jesus' feet, and worshipped him.

PARRHASIUS.

"Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, amongst those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man; and when he had him at his house, put him to death with extreme torture and torment, the better, by his example, to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was then about to paint."

BURTON'S ANAT. OF MEL.

THERE stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-haired and majestical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from his place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.

He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze

Of curious scorn.

The Jew had taunted him

For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came

And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,

And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on, and when, with weariness o'erspent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,

Th' inhuman soldier smote him, and with threats

Of torture to his children summoned back
The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

'Twas evening, and the half descended sun Tipped with a golden fire the many domes Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere

Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street

Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up With a stout heart that long aud weary day,

Haughtily patient of his many wrongs,

But now he was alone, and from his nerves

The needless strength departed, and he leaned

Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts

Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of him,
Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,

Gazing upon his grief. Th' Athenian's cheek
Flush'd as he measured with a painter's eye

The moving picture. The abandon'd limbs,
Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins
Swollen to purple fulness; the gray hair,
Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes,
And as a thought of wilder bitterness
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,
And the fast workings of his bloodless face
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.

The golden light into the painter's room
Streamed richly, and the hidden colours stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere

Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.
The walls were hung with armour, and about
In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms

Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away

Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,
And, like a veil of filmy mellowness,

The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.

Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully

Upon his canvass. There Prometheus lay,
Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus,
The vulture at his vitals, and the links

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh,
And as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And colour clad them, his fine, earnest eye,
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip

Were like the winged God's, breathing from his flight.

66

Bring me the captive now!

My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift