hand, and closed;
    To show how eloquence expands the soul,
    And logic boasts a close and nervous whole. 
    And there Cleanthes drew the mighty line
    That led his pupils on, with heart divine,
    Through time’s fallacious joys, by Virtue’s road,
    To the bright palace of the sovereign good.—­
    But here the weary Muse forsakes the throng,
    Too numerous for the bounds of mortal song.

    BOYD.

THE TRIUMPH OF TIME.

Dell’ aureo albergo con l’ Aurora innanzi.

      Behind Aurora’s wheels the rising sun
    His voyage from his golden shrine begun,
    With such ethereal speed, as if the Hours
    Had caught him slumb’ring in her rosy bowers. 
    With lordly eye, that reach’d the world’s extreme,
    Methought he look’d, when, gliding on his beam,
    That winged power approach’d that wheels his car
    In its wide annual range from star to star,
    Measuring vicissitude; till, now more near,
    Methought these thrilling accents met my ear:—­
    “New laws must be observed if mortals claim,
    Spite of the lapse of time, eternal fame. 
    Those laws have lost their force that Heaven decreed,
    And I my circle run with fruitless speed;
    If fame’s loud breath the slumb’ring dust inspire,
    And bid to live with never-dying fire,
    My power, that measures mortal things, is cross’d,
    And my long glories in oblivion lost. 
    If mortals on yon planet’s shadowy face,
    Can match the tenor of my heavenly race,
    I strive with fruitless speed from year to year
    To keep precedence o’er a lower sphere. 
    In vain yon flaming coursers I prepare,
    In vain the watery world and ambient air
    Their vigour feeds, if thus, with angels’ flight
    A mortal can o’ertake the race of light! 
    Were you a lesser planet, doom’d to run
    A shorter journey round a nobler sun;
    Ranging among yon dusky orbs below,
    A more degrading doom I could not know: 
    Now spread your swiftest wings, my steeds of flame,
    We must not yield to man’s ambitious aim. 
    With emulation’s noblest fires I glow,
    And soon that reptile race that boast below
    Bright Fame’s conducting lamp, that seems to vie
    With my incessant journeys round the sky,
    And gains, or seems to gain, increasing light,
    Yet shall its glories sink in gradual night. 
    But I am still the same; my course began
    Before that dusky orb, the seat of man,
    Was built in ambient air:  with constant sway
    I lead the grateful change of night and day,
    To one ethereal track for ever bound,
    And ever treading one eternal round.”—­
    And now, methought, with more than mortal ire,
    He seem’d to lash along his steeds of fire;
    And shot along the air with