uits, with flow'rs successive bloom.
Pleas'd, their light limbs on beds of roses press'd,
In slight undress recumbent Beauties rest;
On tiptoe steps surrounding Graces move,
And gay Desires expand their wings above.

HERE young DIONE arms her quiver'd Loves,
Schools her bright Nymphs, and practises her doves;
Calls round her laughing eyes in playful turns,
The glance that lightens, and the smile that burns; 100
Her dimpling cheeks with transient blushes dies,
Heaves her white bosom with seductive sighs;
Or moulds with rosy lips the magic words,
That bind the heart in adamantine cords.

Behind in twilight gloom with scowling mien
The demon PAIN, convokes his court unseen;
Whips, fetters, flames, pourtray'd on sculptur'd stone,
In dread festoons, adorn his ebon throne;
Each side a cohort of diseases stands,
And shudd'ring Fever leads the ghastly bands; 110
O'er all Despair expands his raven wings,
And guilt-stain'd Conscience darts a thousand stings.

Deep-whelm'd beneath, in vast sepulchral caves,
OBLIVION dwells amid unlabell'd graves;
The storied tomb, the laurell'd bust o'erturns,
And shakes their ashes from the mould'ring urns.--
No vernal zephyr breathes, no sunbeams cheer,
Nor song, nor simper, ever enters here;
O'er the green floor, and round the dew-damp wall,
The slimy snail, and bloated lizard crawl; 120
While on white heaps of intermingled bones
The muse of MELANCHOLY sits and moans;
Showers her cold tears o'er Beauty's early wreck,
Spreads her pale arms, and bends her marble neck.

So in rude rocks, beside the AEgean wave,
TROPHONIUS scoop'd his sorrow-sacred cave;
Unbarr'd to pilgrim feet the brazen door,
And the sad sage returning smil'd no more.

[Footnote: _Trophonius scoop'd_, l. 126. Plutarch mentions,
that prophecies of evil events were uttered from the cave of
Trophonius; but the allegorical story, that whoever entered
this cavern were never again seen to smile, seems to have
been designed to warn the contemplative from considering too
much the dark side of nature. Thus an ancient poet is said to
have written a poem on the miseries of the world, and to have
thence become so unhappy as to destroy himself. When we
reflect on the perpetual destruction of organic life, we