The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

FROM A LATE LONDON PAPER.
OXFORD PRIZE POEM.
ON THE BELVIDERE APOLLO

Heard ye the arrow hurtle in the sky?
Heard ye the dragon monster's deathful cry?
In settled majesty of fierce disdain,
Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain,
The heav'nly archer stands no human birth,
Nor perishable denizen on earth:
Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face,
A God in strength, with more than godlike grace:
All, all divine no struggling muscle glows,
Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows,
But animate with deity alone,
In deathless glory lives the breathing stone.
Bright kindling with a conqueror's stern delight,
His keen eye tracks the arrow's fatal flight;
Burns his indignant cheek with vengeful fire.
And his lip quivers with insulting ire:
Firm fix'd his tread, yet light, as when on high
He walks th' impalpable and pathless sky;
The rich luxuriance of his hair confin'd
In graceful ringlets, wantons on the wind,
That lifts in sport his mantle's drooping fold
Proud to display that form of faultless mould.
Mighty Ephesian! with an eagle's flight
Thy proud soul mounted through the fields of light,
View'd the bright conclave of heaven's blest abode,
And the cold marble leapt to life a God:
Contagious awe through breathless myriads ran,
And nations bowed before the work of man.
For mild he seem'd, as in Elysian bowers,
Wasting in careless ease the joyous hours
Haughty, as bards have sung, with princely sway,
Curbing the fierce flame-breathing steeds of day:
Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep
By holy maid of Delphi's haunted steep,
Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove,
Too fair to worship, too divine to love.
Yet on that form in wild delirious trance
With more than rev'rence gaz'd the maid of France.
Day after day the love-sick dreamer stood
With him alone, nor thought it solitude:
To cherish grief, her last, her dearest care,
Her one fond hope—to perish of despair.
Oft as the shifting light her sight beguil'd
Blushing, she shrunk, and thought the marble smil'd;
Oft breathless list'ning heard, or seem'd to hear,
A voice of musick melt upon her ear.
Slowly she wan'd, and cold and senseless grown,
Clos'd her dim eyes, herself benumb'd to stone.
Yet love in death a sickly strength supplied,
Once more she gaz'd, then feebly smil'd, and died.
HENRY HART MILMAN,
Brazenose College.
Agasias of Ephesus.
NOTE—The Apollo is in the act of watching
the arrow with which he slew the serpent Python.
NOTE.
—The foregoing fact is related in the
work of Mons. Pinel on Insanity.