DARKNESS.

BYRON.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came, and went--and came, and brought no

day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons: cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch :
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds

shriek'd,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,

Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:

And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

1,

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men

Died-and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,

Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,

But with a piteous and perpetual moan
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress

he died.

The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying members of an altar-place

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died-
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down peacemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the universe.

CURRAN, IN DEFENCE OF OWEN KIR

WAN.

It has become my painful duty to state to the court and jury the defence of the prisoner. I was chosen for this very unpleasant task without my concurrence or knowledge-but as soon as I was apprized of it, I accepted it without hesitation. To assist a human being labouring under the most awful of all situations, trembling in the dreadful alternative of honorable life, or ignominious death, is what no man, worthy of the name ought to refuse. I cannot, however, but confess, that I feel no small consolation when I compare my present with my former situations upon similar occasions. In those sad times, to which I allude, it was frequently my fate to come forward to the spot where I now stand, with a body sinking under infirmity and disease, and a mind broken with the consciousness of public calamity, created and exasperated by public folly. It has pleased heaven that I should live to survive both these afflictions, and I am grateful for its mercy. I now come here through a quiet and peaceful city. I read no expression in any face, save such as mark the ordinary feelings of social life, or the various characters of civil occupation. I see no frightful spectacle of infuriated power or suffering humanity. I see no tortures. - I hear no shrieks.-I no longer see the human heart charr'd in the flame of its own vile and angry passions-black and bloodless--capable only of catching and communicating that destructive fire by which it devours and is itself devoured. I no longer behold the ravages of that odious bigotry by which we were deformed, and degraded, and disgraced ;-a bigotry against which no honest man should ever miss an opportunity of putting his countrymen of all sects and denominations upon their guard; it is the accursed and promiscuous progeny of servile hypocrisy-of remorseless lust of power-of insatiate thirst of gain-labouring for the destruction of man, under the specious pretence of religion: her banner stolen from the altar of God, and her allies congregated from the abysses of hell, she acts by votaries to be restrained by no compunctions of humanity-for they are dead to mercy; to be reclaimed by no voice of reason for refutation is the bread on which their folly feeds; they are outlawed alike from their species and their God; the object of their crime is social life-and the wages of their sin is social death; for though it may happen that a guilty individual should escape from the law which he has broken, it cannot be so with nations; their guilt is too extensive and unweildy for such escape;-they may rest assured it has in the natural connexion between causes and effects, established a system of retributive justice, by which the crimes of nations are soon