you never would return hither, as I have never heard that any had
returned from Paradise, nor from Hell, and so I arose and eat the
bread by myself.- From an old edition of Lasarillo de Tormes.
APPARITIONS.
CYNTHIA, Propertius's mistress, did appear to him after her death,
with the beryl-ring on her finger. See Propertius, eleg. 7. lib.
"Sunt aliquid manes, letum non omnia finit,
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.
Cynthia namque meo visa est incumbere fulcro,
Murmur ad extremae nuper humata viae:
Quum mihi ab exequiis somnus penderet amaris.
Et quererer lecti frigida regna mei.
Eosdem habuit secum, quibus est elata, capillos,
Eosdem oculos. Lateri vestis adusta fuit.
Et solitum digito beryllon adederat ignis,
Summaque Lethoeus triverat ora liquor:
Spirantisque animos, & vocem misit, at illi
Pollicibus fragiles increpuere manus."
Thus translated by Mr. DART.
Manes exist, when we in death expire,
And the pale shades escape the funeral fire;
For Cynthia's form beside my curtain's stood,
Lately interr'd near Aniens' murm'ring flood.
Thoughts of her funeral would, not let me close
These eyes, nor seek the realms of still repose;
Around her shoulders wav'd her flowing hair,
As living Cynthia's tresses soft and fair:
Beauteous her eyes as those once fir'd my breast,
Her snowy bosom bare, and sing'd her breast.
Her beryl-ring retain'd the fiery rays,
Spread the pale flame, and shot the funeral blaze;
As late stretch'd out the bloodless spectre stood,
And her dead lips were wet with Lethe's flood.
She breath'd her soul, sent forth her voice aloud,
And chaf'd her hands as in some angry mood.
St. Augustin affirms that he did once see a satyr or daemon.
The antiquities of Oxford tell us, that St. Edmund, Arch-Bishop of
Canterbury, did sometimes converse with an angel or nymph, at a spring
without St. Clement's parish near Oxford; as Numa Pompilius did with
the nymph Egeria. This well was stopped up since Oxford was a
garrison.
Charles the Simple, King of France, as he was hunting in a forest, and
lost his company, was frighted to simplicity by an apparition.
Philip Melancthon writes that the apparition of a venerable person
came to him in his study, and bade him to warn his friend Grynseus to
depart from him as soon as he could, or else the inquisitors would
seize on him; which monitory dream saved Grynaeus's life.
Mr. Fynes Moryson, in his travels, saith, that when he was at Prague,
the apparition of his father came to him; and at that very time his
father died.
In the life of JOHN DONNE, Dean of St. Paul's, London, writ by
Isaak Walton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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