'Twas on a day

When the immortals at their banquet lay;

      The bowl

  Sparkled with starry dew,

The weeping of those myriad urns of light,

  Within whose orbs, the Almighty Power,

  At nature's dawning hour,

Stored the rich fluid of ethereal soul.

      Around,

Soft odorous clouds, that upward wing their flight

      From eastern isles

(Where they have bathed them in the orient ray,

And with rich fragrance all their bosoms filled).

In circles flew, and, melting as they flew,

A liquid daybreak o'er the board distilled.

      All, all was luxury!

  All must be luxury, where Lyaeus smiles.

    His locks divine

      Were crowned

    With a bright meteor-braid,

Which, like an ever-springing wreath of vine,

  Shot into brilliant leafy shapes,

And o'er his brow in lambent tendrils played:

    While mid the foliage hung,

      Like lucid grapes,

A thousand clustering buds of light,

Culled from the garden of the galaxy.

Upon his bosom Cytherea's head

Lay lovely, as when first the Syrens sung

      Her beauty's dawn,

And all the curtains of the deep, undrawn,

Revealed her sleeping in its azure bed.

      The captive deity

    Hung lingering on her eyes and lip,

      With looks of ecstasy.

      Now, on his arm,

    In blushes she reposed,

  And, while he gazed on each bright charm,

To shade his burning eyes her hand in dalliance stole.

And now she raised her rosy mouth to sip

    The nectared wave

    Lyaeus gave,

And from her eyelids, half-way closed,

  Sent forth a melting gleam,

  Which fell like sun-dew in the bowl:

While her bright hair, in mazy flow

  Of gold descending

Adown her cheek's luxurious glow,

  Hung o'er the goblet's side,

And was reflected in its crystal tide,

  Like a bright crocus flower,

 Whose sunny leaves, at evening hour

  With roses of Cyrene blending,[1]

Hang o'er the mirror of some silvery stream.

      The Olympian cup

      Shone in the hands

  Of dimpled Hebe, as she winged her feet

        Up

      The empyreal mount,

To drain the soul-drops at their stellar fount;[2]

        And still

      As the resplendent rill

  Gushed forth into the cup with mantling heat,

    Her watchful care

  Was still to cool its liquid fire

With snow-white sprinklings of that feathery air

The children of the Pole respire,

  In those enchanted lands.[3]

Where life is all a spring, and

  north winds never blow.

      But oh!

    Bright Hebe, what a tear,

    And what a blush were thine,

  When, as the breath of every Grace

Wafted thy feet along the studded sphere,

  With a bright cup for Jove himself to drink,

  Some star, that shone beneath thy tread,

    Raising its amorous head

  To kiss those matchless feet,

    Checked thy career too fleet,

    And all heaven's host of eyes

  Entranced, but fearful all,

Saw thee, sweet Hebe, prostrate fall

  Upon the bright floor of the azure skies;

    Where, mid its stars, thy beauty lay,

    As blossom, shaken from the spray

      Of a spring thorn,

Lies mid the liquid sparkles of the morn.

Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade,

The worshippers of Beauty's queen behold

An image of their rosy idol, laid

  Upon a diamond shrine.

    The wanton wind,

  Which had pursued the flying fair,

  And sported mid the tresses unconfined

    Of her bright hair,

Now, as she fell,—oh wanton breeze!

Ruffled the robe, whose graceful flow

Hung o'er those limbs of unsunned snow,

  Purely as the Eleusinian veil

    Hangs o'er the Mysteries!

  The brow of Juno flushed—

  Love blest the breeze!

  The Muses blushed;

And every cheek was hid behind a lyre,

While every eye looked laughing through the strings.

But the bright cup? the nectared draught

Which Jove himself was to have quaffed?

  Alas, alas, upturned it lay

  By the fallen Hebe's side;

While, in slow lingering drops, the ethereal tide,

As conscious of its own rich essence, ebbed away.

Who was the Spirit that remembered Man,

      In that blest hour,

    And, with a wing of love,

  Brushed off the goblet's scattered tears,

As, trembling near the edge of heaven they ran,

And sent them floating to our orb below?

  Essence of immortality!

    The shower

  Fell glowing through the spheres;

While all around new tints of bliss,

    New odors and new light,

    Enriched its radiant flow.

      Now, with a liquid kiss,

  It stole along the thrilling wire

    Of Heaven's luminous Lyre,

  Stealing the soul of music in its flight:

  And now, amid the breezes bland,

That whisper from the planets as they roll,

  The bright libation, softly fanned

  By all their sighs, meandering stole.

    They who, from Atlas' height,

      Beheld this rosy flame

  Descending through the waste of night,

Thought 'twas some planet, whose empyreal frame

  Had kindled, as it rapidly revolved

Around its fervid axle, and dissolved

    Into a flood so bright!

      The youthful Day,

    Within his twilight bower,

    Lay sweetly sleeping

On the flushed bosom of a lotos-flower;[4]

  When round him, in profusion weeping,

    Dropt the celestial shower,

        Steeping

    The rosy clouds, that curled

      About his infant head,

Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed.

    But, when the waking boy

Waved his exhaling tresses through the sky,

        O morn of joy!

        The tide divine,

  All glorious with the vermil dye

  It drank beneath his orient eye,

  Distilled, in dews, upon the world,

And every drop was wine, was heavenly WINE!

  Blest be the sod, and blest the flower

  On which descended first that shower,

All fresh from Jove's nectareous springs;—

  Oh far less sweet the flower, the sod,

  O'er which the Spirit of the Rainbow flings

  The magic mantle of her solar God![5]

[1] We learn from Theopbrastus, that the roses of Cyrene were particularly fragrant.

[2] Heraclitus (Physicus) held the soul to be a spark of the stellar essence.

[3] The country of the Hyperboreans. These people were supposed to be placed so far north that the north wind could not affect them; they lived longer than any other mortals; passed their whole time in music and dancing, etc.

[4] The Egyptians represented the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a lotos. Observing that the lotos showed its head above water at sunrise, and sank again at his setting, they conceived the idea of consecrating this flower to Osiris, or the sun.

[5] The ancients esteemed those flowers and trees the sweetest upon which the rainbow had appeared to rest; and the wood they chiefly burned in sacrifices, was that which the smile of Iris had consecrated.