Enigma de J. J. Rousseau [pp. 95]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
Here is an elaborate image. We have the shadow
and the sun.'Wherle is the substance? An unimaginative man might read this without missing any thing.
Not so with himi before wvhose mental vision the images
of the poet's dream "flit palpably."
"And thou, grey convent, whose inspiring chime
Measures the hours with prayer, that morn and eve,
Life mnay ascend the ladder of the angels
And climib to heaven."
WVe give this as a specimen of common-place rhapsody, stolen, apparently, from the Methodist pulpit. It
is such a thought as might be supposed to have a place
in one of Mr. Irving's sermons in an unknown tongue,
the proper vehicle for incomprehensible ideas
"At court,
Vice, to win followers, takes the front of virtue,
And looks the dull plebeian things called moral
To scorn, until they blush to be unlike her."
What means this? Vice pays to virtue the tribute
of hypocrisy, and takes its semblance, and at the same
time treats it with scorn!!! Can this be so?
"If love's sun, once set, bequeaths a twilight,
'TwouLld only hover o'er some form, whom chance
Had linked with Louis."
Bragelone, foreboding the fate of the Bourbon race,
says to Louis:
"When the sage, who saddens o'er the end,
Traclks back the causes, tremble lest he find
The se ds-thy wars, thy pomp, and thy profusion
Sowed in a heartless court and breadless people,
Grew to the tree firom w hich men shaped the scaffold."
"Chen, on the misic ot the l eaves of life
Chill silence failis."
Unriddle this nwho can.
We will but add some notice of Mr. Bulwer's wit.
This shows itself chiefly in puns, and puns in a French
court on English idioms.
Grammonet. "Thie women say she's plain,"
(the modern English for homely).
Lauizun. "The women. Oh!
The case it is that's plain. She must be beautiful."
They stick a pair of long white feathers on the fool
Montespan's head, and Lauzun tells him:
" Would you be safe, show always the white feather."
LOAN TO THE MESSENGER.
NTO. VI.
My Dear Jessenger,-Thle following lines were addressed by
one of the sweetest poets of our country, to a mutual friend on
her wedding day. Hlaving been favored with an opportunity to
steal a copy, I transcribe thiem for you with much pleasure.
Yours, &c. J. F. O.
Beautiful bride!'tis thine
Of opening years, of joyfulness to dream,
Like morning breakitng with a golden gleam:
To weep, alas! is mine!
For I, in other years,
The mountain path, with footsteps free,
And gorge, and green glen trod, with thee
In joy,-alone, in tears!
Beautiful bride!'twas thine
To pour a living lustre round those days,
When thine eye kindled with a glorious gaze, To dream of them is mine!
But go! and on thy brow
Meet, in a band that time nor change shall sever,
Those lights of love that beam anew forever,
Radiant and warmn as towv! G.M.
November 10, 1S36.
LINES.
Oh Lady, I told you, that since I've been old,
No vision of fancy my brain has inspired,
That to beauty I'm blind, and my bosom is cold,
To whatever in youth I had loved or admired.
And so truly I thought; for alas!'tis so long
Since the gay dream of iife's early morning has fled,
And my soul's warm emotions were poured out in song,
That my heart, I supposed, "was as grey as my head."
But when you fixed on me those heavenly eyes,
Which the silken lash shaded while bent to the ground,
The icicles melting, I felt with surprise,
That hung round the heart, I had fancied ice-bound.
ENIGMA DE J. J. ROUSSEAU.
Enfant de'art, enfant de la nature,
Sans prolonger les jours J'empeche (le mourir.
Plus je suis vrai, plus je fais d'imposture,
Et je devins trop jeune a force de vieller.
Le m6t est "Portrait."
TRANSLATED.
Then the feathers are likened to horns, and he is told
"You are not the first courtier who has plumed
Himself upon his horns."
Lauzun, when disgraced, is told
" You've played the knave, and throtwne away the king."
And this (the last is borrowed from George Selwyn)
is the wit of the Augustan court of Louis XIV.
Child of art and not less child of nature,
To each alike I owe my every feature;
Features that age ne'er wrinkles, since I'm told,
I grow too young by dint of growing old.
But what perhaps you scarcely will believe,
When I'm most faithful, I the most deceive;
And though'tis far beyond my feeble power,
To add to mortal life one fleeting hour,
Your pensive tears confess that I can save
A friend beloved from dark oblivion's grave.
The word is "Portrait.'
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