Scriptural Anthology [pp. 594-599]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
595
these, Mr. Brooks cannot expect or desire commendation for this performance; —but we are happy to say
that there are many, very many readers, who must
arise from a perusal of the work with the conviction
that the author is not only a man of exemplary piety,
but a poet of exquiste skill.
The first poem, and the largest in the collection, is
entitled " The Bower of Paphos," a title on which the
glance of the voluptuary might be fastened withl the
expectation of finding something congenial with his
own taste;-but in this he may be disappointed. Here
are no soft Lydian measures, no incense to that unhallowed divinity whose worship desecrated the place, but
a strain of melody such as the "nymphs of Solyma"
might be supposed to originate. The subject is the conversion to christianity of a native of Cyprus, Chrestogiton, an Archon, who had been deposed and exiled
through the machinations of a rival, named Melacomas
The exile, at the imminent hazard of his life, returns
to the place of his nativity,-the versification of the
opening stanzas is uncommonly smooth and flowing and
the diction is rich and beautiful to a degree that has
seldom been equalled:
"The day-God, off Drepanum's height,
Still lingered o'er the happy isle;And Paphos' gilded domes grew bright
Beneath his last and lovliest smile:
Bright came the opalled sunbeams down
Upon eacl mountain's golden crown,
Tinting the foliage of the treesThe purple billows of the ocean,
Swept by the pennons of the breeze,
WNVere curling with a gentle motion,
As if, in sunny smiles, their waves
Were welcoming to Tithlonus' bed
Far down amid the coral cavesThe weary God — while round his head
The crimson curtains of the west
Were drawn, as down the watery steep,
His flashing car descended deep,
Amid the golden sands to rest." p. 14.
The attachment of men to the home of their infancy
has often been the theme of song, but we do not rememinber to have seen the subject so beautifully managed
before:
"Although the exile's foot may tread
The flowery soil of fairest isles,
That dimple ocean's cheek witi smiles,
And stainless skies gleam o'er his head:
His native land,-tho' icebergs frown
In one eternal winter down
Upon its cold and barren shore,
Or tho' the red volcano's tide,
In waves of death, its plains sweep o'er,
Is fairer than all earth beside." etc. p. 14.
The feelings of the banished Chrestogiton, on revisiting the happy spot that gave himn birth, are well
described in what follows:
"And all those early joys and ties
Shrined in the heart's deep memories,
Came o'er his soul like breath of morn,
And in the beauty of those plains
That e'en the Gods had deign'd to bless
Withl presence of their holiness,
He all his burning wrongs forgotThat far from this delightful spot,
By his ungrateful country driven,
Like the spurn'd sea-weed, upwards cast
By its inconstant element,
The sport of every wind of heaven,
He had his cheerless youth's prime past
In cold and withering banishment.
While he, his hated rival, swayed,
In all the pomp of power arrayed,
The Archon's sceptre o'er a clime
By treachery won, maintained by crime.
Yes, in that holy hour when Heaven
Mingled in unison with earth,
His country's wrongs were all forgiven;
'Twas still the land that gave him birth,
And though his hopes of fame were blown
Away by faction's noisy breath,
And though the Archon's helmet shone
On Melacomas' tyrant head,
He felt, in his own isle, even death,
With all its darkness, all its dread,
Was better than to tread alone A wanderer under alien skiesA foreign solitude, unknown,
And void of beauty to his eyes." p. 17.
The glance of Chrestogiton dwells with delight on
the various objects endeared to him by early recollections;-the sacrificial pomp, the groves of date and
myrtle, the beautiful votresses of the sea-born deity,
and all that contributed to make
"The grove
A temple and a dream of love."
At length,
"As Chrestogiton strayed among
The beauties of that holy place,
Where nature's lavish hand had flung
Her gorgeous gifts, as if to trace
An image of Elysiumn there,
One of the gayest richest bowers
That ever spread its painted flowers
To the soft wooing summer air,
Broke on his vision-with a maid
Enshrined within its sweets, and fair
As snow-flakes in mount Athos' shade." p. 19.
This fair being, in whom the deposed Archon becomes immediately and powerfully interested, is a young
Roman and a christian, who with her father, Appianus,
had begun a new worship in the isle of Cyprus. While
making extracts from this delicious little poem, we feel
that we do it an injury;-it must be read entire to be
justly estimated. Chrestogiton, by falling in love with
a christian maiden, becomes converted to christianity
himself.
"Oh! purer far than sunbeams stealing
Into a dark sea-hidden mine,
Its buried treasury revealing,
Where gold and pearls and jewels shine,
Is the first dawning of those beams
Which truth and faith from heaven reflect
Upon the darkened intellect,
Obscured by clouds and pagon dreams." p. 22.
The passion of the Cyprian is reciprocated by the
young Roman
"Their's is a dream of love and heaven,
Pure as the sleeping thoughts that speak
In smiles upon an infant's cheek.
And many an eve, as day declines
Upon the mountains of the west,
Brightening the amber-colored vines,
That on their emerald bosoms rest;
And many a stilly night, when stars,