Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/400

 The same.

There one reclined apart I saw, within the moon's pale light, With bosom through her parted robe appearing snowy white: Another danced, and floating free her garments in the breeze, She seem'd as buoyant as the wave that leaps o'er summer seas; While dusky shadows all around shrunk backward from the place, Chased by the beaming splendour shed like sunshine from her face. Beside this living picture stood a maiden passing fair, With soft round arms exposed: a fourth, with free and graceful air, Like Dian when the bounding hart she tracks through morning dew, Bared through the opening of her robes her lovely limbs to view. And oh! the image of her charms, as clouds in heaven above, Mirror'd by streams, left on my soul the stamp of hopeless love. And slumbering near them others lay, on beds of sweetest flowers, The dusky-petal'd violet, the rose of Paphian bowers, The inula and saffron flower, which on their garments cast And veils, such hues as deck the sky when day is ebbing fast; While far and near tall marjoram bedeck'd the fairy ground, Loading with sweets the vagrant winds that frolick'd all around.—

(Book xiv. § 2, p. 979.)

Poor mortal unmerry, who seekest to know What will bid thy brow soften, thy quips and cranks flow, To the house of the mother I bid thee repair— Thou wilt find, if she's pleased, what thy heart covets there.

