_Thou_ wert thy mother's darling, thou, Light to thy father's failing eyes; Thou wert thy sisters' _dearest!_ now What _art_ thou? something to despise Yet tremble at; to hide, and be _Forgot,_ but by _their_ misery! Thou _wert_ the beautiful! the brave! Thou wert all joy, and love, and light; But oh! thy grace was for the _grave,_ Thy dawning day, for mornless night! And thou, so loving, so carest Hast sunk--unpitied--unblest! Yes, warrior! and the life-stream flows _Yet_ from thee, in thy foe-man's land, Welling before the gate of those Who _should_ stretch forth a kindly hand To save th' unhonour'd, _friendless_ dead From rushing legion's scouring tread. _Friendless_ poor soldier?--nay thy steed Stands gazing on thee, with an eye _Too_ piteous: he _felt_ thee bleed,-- He _saw_ thee, dropping from him,--_die!_ And in thine helpless, lorn estate, _He_ cannot leave thee, desolate. Nor thy poor _dog_, whose anxious gaze, On helm and bugle's lowly place, Speaks his deep sorrow and amaze! _He_, watching yet, thine icy face Licks thy pale forehead with a moan To tell thee--_Thou art not alone!_ M. L. B. * * * * * ORIGINS AND INVENTIONS. No. XXVIII. * * * * * THE SPHYNX. The Sphynx is supposed to have been engendered by Typhon, and sent by Juno to be revenged on the Thebans. It is represented with the head and breasts of a woman, the wings of a bird, the claws of a lion, and the rest of the body like a dog or lion. Its office they say, was to propose dark enigmatical questions to all passers by; and, if they did not give the explication of them,--to devour them. It made horrible ravages, as the story goes, on a mountain near Thebes. Apollo told Creon that she could not be vanquished, till some one had expounded her riddle. The riddle was--_"What creature is that, which has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?"_ Oedipus expounded it, telling her it was a man,--who when a child, creepeth on all fours; in his middle age, walketh on two legs, and in his old age, two and a staff. This put the Sphynx into a great rage, who, finding her riddle solved, threw herself down and broke her neck. Among the Egyptians, the Sphynx was the symbol of religion, by reason of the obscurity of its mysteries. And, on the same account, the Romans placed a Sphynx in the pronaos, or porch, of their temples. Sphynxes were used by the Egyptians, to show the beginning of the water's rising in the Nile; with this view, as it had the head of a woman and body of a lion, it signified that the Nile began to swell in the months of July and August, when the sun passes through the signs of Leo and Virgo; accordingly it was a hieroglyphic, which taught the people the period of the most important event in the year, as