n, turn,
My glances burn,
And thirst for a look from thee!
As the song ended, a group of three maidens, entwined with a chain of
starred flowers, and who, while they imitated, might have shamed the
Graces, advanced towards him in the gliding measures of the Ionian
dance: such as the Nereids wreathed in moonlight on the yellow sands of
the AEgean wave--such as Cytherea taught her handmaids in the
marriage-feast of Psyche and her son.

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,