Now approaching, they wreathed their chaplet round his head; now kneeling, the youngest of the three proffered him the bowl, from which the wine of Lesbos foamed and sparkled. The youth resisted no more, he grasped the intoxicating cup, the blood mantled fiercely through his veins. He sank upon the breast of the nymph who sat beside him, and turning with swimming eyes to seek for Arbaces, whom he had lost in the whirl of his emotions, he beheld him seated beneath a canopy at the upper end of the table, and gazing upon him with a smile that encouraged him to pleasure. He beheld him, but not as he had hitherto seen, with dark and sable garments, with a brooding and solemn brow: a robe that dazzled the sight, so studded was its whitest surface with gold and gems, blazed upon his majestic form; white roses, alternated with the emerald and the ruby, and shaped tiara-like, crowned his raven locks. He appeared, like Ulysses, to have gained the glory of a second youth--his features seemed to have exchanged thought for beauty, and he towered amidst the loveliness that surrounded him, in all the beaming and relaxing benignity of the Olympian god. 'Drink, feast, love, my pupil!' said he, 'blush not that thou art passionate and young. That which thou art, thou feelest in thy veins: that which thou shalt be, survey!' With this he pointed to a recess, and the eyes of Apaecides, following the gesture, beheld on a pedestal, placed between the statues of Bacchus and Idalia, the form of a skeleton. 'Start not,' resumed the Egyptian; 'that friendly guest admonishes us but of the shortness of life. From its jaws I hear a voice that summons us to ENJOY.' As he spoke, a group of nymphs surrounded the statue; they laid chaplets on its pedestal, and, while the cups were emptied and refilled at that glowing board, they sang the following strain: BACCHIC HYMNS TO THE IMAGE OF DEATH I Thou art in the land of the shadowy Host, Thou that didst drink and love: By the Solemn River, a gliding ghost, But thy thought is ours above! If memory yet can fly, Back to the golden sky, And mourn the pleasures lost! By the ruin'd hall these flowers we lay, Where thy soul once held its palace; When the rose to thy scent and sight was gay, And the smile was in the chalice, And the cithara's voice Could bid thy heart rejoice When night eclipsed the day. Here a new group advancing, turned the tide of the music into a quicker and more joyous strain. II Death, death is the gloomy shore Where we all sail-- Soft, soft, thou gliding oar; Blow soft, sweet gale! Chain with bright wreaths the Hours; Victims if all Ever, 'mid song and flowers, Victims should fall!