575 "So when on Lebanon's sequester'd hight The fair ADONIS left the realms of light, Bow'd his bright locks, and, fated from his birth To change eternal, mingled with the earth;-- With darker horror shook the conscious wood, 580 Groan'd the sad gales, and rivers blush'd with blood; On cypress-boughs the Loves their quivers hung, Their arrows scatter'd, and their bows unstrung; And BEAUTY'S GODDESS, bending o'er his bier, Breathed the soft sigh, and pour'd the tender tear.-- 585 Admiring PROSERPINE through dusky glades Led the fair phantom to Elysian shades, Clad with new form, with finer sense combined, And lit with purer flame the ethereal mind. --Erewhile, emerging from infernal night, 590 The bright Assurgent rises into light, Leaves the drear chambers of the insatiate tomb, And shines and charms with renovated bloom.-- While wondering Loves the bursting grave surround, And edge with meeting wings the yawning ground, 595 Stretch their fair necks, and leaning o'er the brink View the pale regions of the dead, and shrink; Long with broad eyes ecstatic BEAUTY stands, Heaves her white bosom, spreads her waxen hands; Then with loud shriek the panting Youth alarms, 600 "My Life! my Love!" and springs into his arms." [_Adonis_. l. 576. The very antient story of the beautiful Adonis passing one half of the year with Venus, and the other with Proserpine alternately, has had variety of interpretations. Some have supposed that it allegorized the summer and winter solstice; but this seems too obvious a fact to have needed an hieroglyphic emblem. Others have believed it to represent the corn, which was supposed to sleep in the earth during the winter months, and to rise out of it in summer. This does not accord with the climate of Egypt, where the harvest soon follows the seed-time. It seems more probably to have been a story explaining some hieroglyphic figures representing the decomposition and resuscitation of animal matter; a sublime and interesting subject, and which seems to have given origin to the doctrine of the transmigration, which had probably its birth also from the hieroglyphic treasures of Egypt. It is remarkable that the cypress groves in the ancient greek writers, as in Theocritus, were dedicated to Venus; and afterwards became funereal emblems. Which was probably occasioned by the Cypress being an accompaniment of Venus in the annual processions, in which she was supposed to lament over the funeral of Adonis; a ceremony which obtained over all the eastern world from great antiquity, and is supposed to be referred to by Ezekiel, who accuses the idolatrous woman of weeping for Thammus.]