Sightless Mammon, may’st thou be Neither on the earth nor sea; But be thou condemned to dwell In the deepest depth of hell. For, thou eyeless god, from thee Springeth all our misery. Here we have Plato--the philosopher--tilting it in verse. _To Aristophanes, the comedian._ The Graces, seeking long to find Some temple, free from all decay, Chose, Aristophanes, thy mind, As that, which cannot pass away. _To Sappho._ Falsely they say the Muses are but nine-- A tenth is Lesbian Sappho--the divine. In the following little _morceau_, the frog is considered as a priest to the Nymphs, whose particular jurisdiction was over streams and fountains. _To a brazen frog, set up by a traveler, as an offering to the Nymphs._ Thee--the Nymphs’ servant--lover of the shower-- Moist songster, dwelling in the shallow springs-- The traveler, forming with mimetic power, A brazen offering, to the temple brings. For to the wanderer thine amphibious note Forth from thy dewy lodge, all timely, rung, And led his fainting footsteps to the spot, Where from the earth the gushing fountain sprung. _To a statue of Pan--the shepherd-god--carved with a pipe in his mouth._ Seat thee, O Pan, beneath this vocal tree, Whose high leaves whisper, as the west-winds rise. And by my gurgling springs thy pipe shall be A lull of magic to my closing eyes. _To a statue of Venus, at Cnidus, by Praxiteles._ To view her image at her Cnidian shrine. The Paphian goddess through the billows came, Looked long upon the lineaments divine, And gazed, in rapture, at the faultless frame. “Where did the sculptor view my naked form With gaze unlawful?” Cythereia cried; “’Tis the cold chisel makes the marble warm, Like me, when Ares for my beauty sighed.” Reader! should we meet again, be it kindly. HERMENEUTES. “OUR MAGAZINE.” What was contrived by the intellectual skill of many, has been accomplished by the physical energies of a few, and the first number of the “Yale Literary Magazine,” is now before the public. But, dropping this Johnsonian magnificence, indulgent reader, so little consonant with the tremulous anxiety with which we pen these closing lines--how are you pleased? As you have glanced from one article to another, till your eye meets this last page, has your brow been gathering a frown, or has a pleasant smile lit up your features? In either case, but especially the former, we pray you to remember, that in preparing this number, we have, in some respects, labored at a disadvantage. Our utter inexperience in the mechanical portion of the work--the distracting influence of the intervening vacation--with some other petty troubles, will, with your indulgence, account for some of the errors, which your sagacity has, doubtless, ere this discovered.