The Fall Of Hebe. A Dithyrambic Ode.

'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]