The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

Aphelia is the Delphic fair ,
With eyes of fire and golden hair,
Aphelia's are the airy feet,
And hers the harp divinely sweet;
For foot so light has never trod
The laurel'd caverns of the god,
Nor harp so soft hath ever given
A sigh to earth or hymn to heaven.

“Then tell the virgin to unfold,
“In looser pomp, her locks of gold,

“And bid those eyes more fondly shine
“To welcome down a Spouse Divine;
“Since He, who lights the path of years—
“Even from the fount of morning's tears
“To where his setting splendours burn
“Upon the western sea-maid's urn—
“Doth not, in all his course, behold
“Such eyes of fire, such hair of gold.
“Tell her, he comes, in blissful pride,
“His lip yet sparkling with the tide
“That mantles in Olympian bowls,—
“The nectar of eternal souls!
“For her, for her he quits the skies,
“And to her kiss from nectar flies.
“Oh, he would quit his star-thron'd height.
“And leave the world to pine for light,
“Might he but pass the hours of shade,
“Beside his peerless Delphic maid,
“She, more than earthly woman blest,
“He, more than god on woman's breast!”

There is a cave beneath the steep ,
Where living rills of crystal weep

O'er herbage of the loveliest hue
That ever spring begemm'd with dew:
There oft the greensward's glossy tint
Is brighten'd by the recent print
Of many a faun and naiad's feet,—
Scarce touching earth, their step so fleet,—
That there, by moonlight's ray, had trod,
In light dance, o'er the verdant sod.
“There, there,” the god, impassion'd, said,
“Soon as the twilight tinge is fled,
“And the dim orb of lunar souls
“Along its shadowy pathway rolls—
“There shall we meet,—and not ev'n He,
“The God who reigns immortally,
“Where Babel's turrets paint their pride
“Upon th' Euphrates' shining tide ,—

“Not ev'n when to his midnight loves
“In mystic majesty he moves,
“Lighted by many an odorous fire,
“And hymn'd by all Chaldæa's choir,—
“E'er yet, o'er mortal brow, let shine
“Such effluence of Love Divine,
“As shall to-night, blest maid, o'er thine.”

Happy the maid, whom heaven allows
To break for heaven her virgin vows!
Happy the maid!—her robe of shame
Is whiten'd by a heavenly flame,
Whose glory, with a lingering trace,
Shines through and deifies her race!

This poem, as well as a few others in the following volume, formed part of a work which I had early projected, and even announced to the public, but which, luckily, perhaps, for myself, had been interrupted by my visit to America in the year 1803.

Among those impostures in which the priests of the pagan temples are known to have indulged, one of the most favourite was that of announcing to some fair votary of the shrine, that the God himself had become enamoured of her beauty, and would descend in all his glory, to pay her a visit within the recesses of the fane. An adventure of this description formed an episode in the classic romance which I had sketched out; and the short fragment, given above, belongs to an epistle by which the story was to have been introduced.

In the 9th Pythic of Pindar, where Apollo, in the same manner, requires of Chiron some information respecting the fair Cyrene, the Centaur, in obeying, very gravely apologizes for telling the God what his omniscience must know so perfectly already:

Ει δε γε χρη και παρ σοφον αντιφεριξαι,
Ερεω:

Αλλ' εις δαφνωδη γυαλα βησομαι ταδε.

Euripid. Ion. v. 76.

The Corycian Cave, which Pausanias mentions. The inhabitants of Parnassus held it sacred to the Corycian nymphs, who were children of the river Plistus.

See a preceding note, Vol. I. p. 127. It should seem that lunar spirits were of a purer order than spirits in general, as Pythagoras was said by his followers to have descended from the regions of the moon. The heresiarch Manes, in the same manner, imagined that the sun and moon are the residence of Christ, and that the ascension was nothing more than his flight to those orbs.

The temple of Jupiter Belus, at Babylon; in one of whose towers there was a large chapel set apart for these celestial assignations. “No man is allowed to sleep here,” says Herodotus; “but the apartment is appropriated to a female, whom, if we believe the Chaldæan priests, the deity selects from the women of the country, as his favourite.” Lib. i. cap. 181.

Fontenelle, in his playful rifacimento of the learned materials of Van-Dale, has related in his own inimitable manner an adventure of this kind which was detected and exposed at Alexandria. See L'Histoire des Oracles, dissert. 2. chap. vii. Crebillon, too, in one of his most amusing little stories, has made the Génie Mange-Taupes, of the Isle Jonquille, assert this privilege of spiritual beings in a manner rather formidable to the husbands of the island.