Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sun-beams; Or likest hovering dreams The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. 10 But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue; 15 Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove To set her beauties' praise above 20 The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended; Yet thou art higher far descended; Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore To solitary Saturn bore; His daughter she (in Saturn's reign And looks commercing with the skies, Thou fix them on the earth as fast: 19. Ethiop queen; Cassiope, who was so beautiful that the Nereids determined on her destruction. She was carried, it is said, to the skies, and made a star of: hence the epithet. |