After dark visions,

when the spectral forms That lodge and haunt there, turmoil all my soul. Some mystery some strange antipathy

Torments me with abhorrence and distrust.
Let not his beauty or his tongue entice thee:
He hath an eye bright as the morning star,
But pride, and fiendlike cunning, glance from it,
And sin is couched in his lascivious smile.

K. Dav. If intimations visit thee from Heaven,
We owe obedience, else, as man to man,

We speak. His daughter's welfare I would leave
To Absalom. He hath a mind mature,

Is politic to judge, and loves the maid

Even to her rich deservings. They best know
Their Syrian kinsman, long beneath their roof.

Nath. Hath she escaped Syria's foul rites, to yield,

Even in the precincts of the sanctuary,

To an uncircumcised, the heart where faith
Glowed like the burning censer ! - O, beware
Of crafty policy! It wears a face

Too like ambition. Geshur cleaves to him,
League but Damascus with his power in Israel
And Absalom may bend his father's bow.

K. Dav. Wrong not my son.
Nath. I would not; but I fear

The sin of Lucifer hath snared his heart!

Say why such state attends him? - why he rides
In a proud chariot drawn by fiery steeds,
While Israel's monarch sits upon a mule ?
Why dazzling guards surround him? Why he still
Stands in the gates saluting all who pass,
And greeting in the streets the common people,
As they were brothers? True humility

K. Dav. You misinterpret venial things

Nath. He doth insult the throne, and take from age, And royalty, their reverence.

K. Dav. You love him not, and ever strained his faults. Nath. Why are the Chiefs and Princes of the Tribes, Who come to solemnize our holy feasts,

Caressed about his table till they deem

The crown upon his brows? - Your chiefest men,

Ancients, and reverend Judges, flock to hear

His Syrian Parasite sweeten their cups

With honeyed flattery, and golden hopes,

And promises of days when Absalom

VOL. L. No. 106.

31

Shall make the desert blossom, and the rock
Drop as the vine and olive.

K. Dav. Days like these

Were welcome, Seer.

Nath. You know not what you

utter;

Woe to the hour of his anointing! - King!

A dreadful vintage shall be trod that day,

With purple garments!-Lo! the noise of arms,
Chariots, and horsemen, and the shout of Nations,
Are in my ears! - the wail of Zion! - Hark!
A cry, a cry, comes from her royal towers,
Of bitter anguish, like a Monarch's voice!
My Son my People! Woe, alas !

K. Dav. Say on, Heaven's will is ours.

Nath. 'Tis gone

It passed me, like a cloud of blood, with sounds
Confused, like battle,

K. Dav. (after a pause.) Nought from thy hallowed lips
Falls unrespected. He who changed yon crook

For Israel's sceptre, may refuse, or grant,

The same to Absalom. His will be done!
But, Man of God, I harbour no distrust.
Familiar with the pomp of older kingdoms,
My son but antedates the day of Israel.
He, ever, loved the ornaments of life,
Arms and the glistering face of war, and bore
Himself, from his most tender years,
like one
Conscious of nobleness, born to sustain

A kingdom's burden.

Nath. Son of Jesse,

K. Dav. What! hath he not, since fourteen summers old, Served with me in the field, slept in my tent,

Hungered, and suffered, watched, and toiled with me;

Shed his young blood by veteran captains' sides,
And wielded those bright weapons you dispraise

Beneath mine eyes, in dire and mutual hazards,
Like a true son and soldier ?

Nath. Son of Jesse,

K. Dav. (waving his hand)

'Tis near the hour of sacrifice.

We'll pause ere we decide the Syrian's suit.

Nath. (making obeisance.)

Dwell, ever, in the hollow of His hand!

(Exit NATHAN. King DAVID retires into his closet.) "

-

- Pp. 10

- 108.

Of the remaining piece in the first volume, the writer says;

"If the artless structure of Demetria,' now for the first time published, disappoint, the author takes refuge under the plea, that it was an early work, the earliest written of the three. If, on the other hand, it be objected to him, that it is, in some respects, more deeply wrought than either of the others, and they argue no improvement, he rejoins, that it is the last finished."

This beautiful poem is certainly not the less effective on account of the perfect simplicity of its plot; nor, on the other hand, has any of the ample time, which has been given to a minute finish of the details, been lost. It is a story of love crossed by jealousy, and is wrought up to that painful degree of interest, which is only within the power of genius and study united. The lovers are thus introduced in the first scene. Cosmo has just returned from the wars. Nothing can be more exquisite than the manner in which the passionate character of the interview is subdued by the memory of the departed mother of Demetria.

"An apartment communicating with the garden; glass doors
thrown open in the moonlight: COSMO and DEMETRIA.
Cosmo. Now, as thou sit'st, absorbed and motionless,
Checkered with silvery gleams and quivering shadows,
Thou look'st some pale, fair statue garlanded,

Some Nymph, or Muse, such as the old Greek herdsmen,
Imagined haunting round their wood-girt temples!
Or, if a nun-like fancy please thee better,

One of the choir, (as holy legends have it,)
Heard tuning their clear strings and glancing viols
In the blue depths of such a night as this! -
Nor word? nor smile? I'll improvise no more.
Sure, never goddess lovelier, or more mute,
Drew homage to her pedestal.

Demetria. O, Cosmo,

This is a sacred anniversary,

An ever-hallowed season, when my heart
Is busy with the past; and thy return
But freshens sad remembrance.

Cos. Think me not

Incapable of sympathy. Thou know'st

How dear I loved her. - But to be, once more,
At Belvideré turns me to a prattler.

Dem. Hither we came, that last sad night, to breathe

The freshness. There she sat. - I see, still see
The pale light on her cheek, and in her eyes
The fatal brightness! O, could I recount
Her thoughts anticipations retrospects!
The treasury of past years, our happy years,
Was opened, when no parting e'er was thought on ; -
When thou wert here, and dwelt as one of us.
Remind him (so she said) of my fond love,
And bid him be a brother to my orphans.

Cos. (snatching her hand.) Then hear, Demetria
Dem. Not on this vigil,

"Tis hers, 't is consecrated solemnly, —

And images of grief are up before me.

I joy that thou art here, at last; yet O!
What a drear interval !— While she remained,
Sweet sympathy was left; but when she parted,
My broken heart went with her to the tomb.
For, Cosmo, I despaired, ever to meet thee,
So lengthened and so dismal seemed the time.

Cos. But now, my gentle one, the dark dream's o'er; We wake, we wake, to blissful certainty.

Dwell, now, on brighter days,

on the fair future,

And deem the sainted parent we adore
Looks down with blessings and approval.

Dem. Ah!

She promised,

sometimes to be near me,

To hover round me, if such favor might be.

- oft

(A lively measure strikes up beyond the garden wall.)

Cos. Savoyards! O! the jocund strain Chimes here; but o'er the wild Hungarian hills, When years divided me from Italy,

Beshrew the rogues! they minted from me tears

As fast as florins. - Merry vagabonds!

Come, shall we list their lays? - or whither wilt thou?

Come forth a while; for like familiar faces

The slopes and shadows of the garden look ;
Heavenly, to me, after my weary exile !
How oft, by night, by day, has this dear scene
Stood in my fancy visible as now! -

Let us revisit the old myrtle walk :

Rememberest thou our last hour there? - Come, come,
We sin against the heavens to be in doors.

(They pass into the garden.)" - pp. 7-9.

The next scene is between Olivia, an elder sister of Deme

tria, and Jacquelina, her attendant, the villain (if that word be feminine) of the piece. Olivia cherishes a desperate love for Cosmo. Jacquelina had been dismissed from Demetria's service, and partly from revenge and an essential devilishness of disposition, and partly with a view to such rewards of treachery as she sees the means of gaining, she encourages Olivia to contrive obstacles in the course of that true love, which was never yet known to run smooth. The art, with which Jacquelina, marking the chafed mood of her mistress, works upon her envy of Demetria, and her love for Cosmo, is conceived in the highest style of dramatic talent. The vulgar, and, at the same time, adroit, determined, and unscrupulous, character of the confidant is admirably brought out on her first appearance. She tempts Olivia to a plot against her sister's life, by telling her a story of a Venetian lady, who, under similar circumstances, had made away with her rival, by shutting her in a chest with a spring lock, like that which is the subject of one of the poems in Rogers's "Italy"; but, finding this scheme too bold to be well received, she follows it up with another suggestion, to which Olivia assents, that Barbadeca, a rejected lover of Demetria, who had, at the same time, a grudge against Cosmo on account of some other offence, shall be used in such way as Jacquelina may devise, to bring about a misunderstanding between Cosmo and his mistress. And so, with the end of the first act, the woof of mischief is spread.

-

At the beginning of the second act, Barbadeca, who, for obvious reasons of his own, had been easily won to be an accomplice in the plot, furnishes Jacquelina with the envelope, addressed to him in the handwriting of Demetria, which had conveyed her rejection of his suit. In this, Jacquelina encloses a letter of her former mistress, of which she had possessed herself, 66 one of her scores of tender notes to Cosmo, seen only by herself;" and, placing herself in Cosmo's way, in a manner to excite his curiosity, is prevailed upon, with much show of reluctance, to surrender the letter to his examination, and to add explanations of her own. His generous, but too credulous, nature is at once imposed upon, if the reader thinks too easily, yet not more easily, perhaps, than Othello's before him, and he gives himself up to the misery of thinking his mistress faithless. We cannot say, that this scene is entirely to our taste. We cannot get entirely rid of the idea, that so great a ruin is somewhat too cheaply wrought.