The stirring memory of a thousand years;

And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each Clansman's ears!

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves

Dewy with Nature's tear drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
Over the unreturning brave,-alas!

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass,

Which now beneath them, but above shall grow

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass

Of living valor, rolling on the foe

And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,

Last eve in beauty's circle proudly gay,

The midnight brought the signal sound of strife,

The morn the marshalling in arms,--the day
Battle's magnificently stern array!

The thunder clouds close o'er it, which when rent,
The earth is covered thick with other clay,

Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider, and horse,-friend, foe,-in one red burial blent!

Within a windowed niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear
That sound the first amid the festival,

And caught its tone with death's prophetic ear;
And when they smil'd because he deem'd it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well,
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;
He rush'd into the field, and foremost, fighting fell.
Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears and tremblings of distress
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness;
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes

Since upon nights so sweet such awful morn could rise?

The fourth Canto is full of beauties. The address to Rome, the descriptions of the Apollo Belvidere, and the Venus de' Medici, and especially of the Dying Gladiator, the stanzas on the death of the Princess Charlotte, are all exquisitely fine. In selecting another passage to adorn our pages, we are only em

barrassed with the difficulty of making a choice. The address to the ocean, which forms the conclusion of the work, is conceived and written in a high style of sublimity.

Oh! that the desert were my dwelling place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements !-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes;
By the deep sea, and music in its roar :
I love not Man the less but nature more.
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon the paths,―thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth,-there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs makes
Their clay creator the vain title take

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts—not so thou,
Unchangeable save thy wild waters' play,
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow,
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convuls'd-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime—
The Image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the fresh'ning sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here.

My task is done-my song hath ceased-my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me-and the glow

Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint, and low.

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-
A sound which makes us linger ;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought, which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,

If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain.

The minor narrative poems of a serious kind, including the Corsair, and Lara, the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos, Parisina, the Siege of Corinth, &c. are, in our opinion, much inferior in merit, as well as importance, to Childe Harold. These compositions are, in reality, what they profess to be, narrative; and not like Harold, descriptive and moral poems in disguise. We must, therefore, judge them by the principles that ought to govern in this department of the art. Now it is the first and most essential requisite in a narrative poem, that the characters presented, and the incidents related, should conform to the truth of nature. This rule is constantly violated by Lord Byron. His characters are all drawn upon the same plan, and are all wholly unnatural and impossible. His Corsairs, Alps, and Giaours, are beings of whom no prototype ever existed since the creation of the world. They unite the most delicate refinements of sentimental love with the habitual practice of highway robbery, piracy, murder, arson, and other agreeable amusements of the same description. Such a combination would be wholly intolerable, if the scenes were laid in civilised countries. It becomes a little less monstrous, when these heroes of a new description are presented under foreign names and dresses, and supposed to perform their exploits in semibarbarous regions. power and splendor occasionally displayed in the versification and imagery also blind us, in some degree, to the vicious texture of the substance. But even the language is far from being so elegant and easy as that of Childe Harold. It is often harsh and strained, and sometimes negligent. Upon the whole, we doubt whether these poems would have been received with much approbation, had it not been for the great previous popularity of the author. They contain, however, VOL. XX. No. 46.

5

The

some passages of exquisite beauty; as for example the song of Medora in the Corsair.

Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for ever more,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.

2.

There, in its centre-a sepulchral lamp,

Burns the slow flame eternal--but unseen;
Which not the darkness of despair can damp,
Though vain its rays as it had never been.

3.

Remember me-oh! pass not thou my grave,
Without one thought, whose relics there recline;
The only pang my bosom dare not brave,
Would be to find forgetfulness is thine.

4.

My fondest-faintest-latest accents hear;
Grief for the Dead not Virtue can reprove;
Then give me all I ever ask'd, a te,

The first-last-sole reward of so much love!

The story of Mazeppa differs in character from the other poems of this class, and is, to us, by far the most agreeable of them. The fable, or rather the event described, (for it is a real one,) is as wild and singular as any fairy tale, but is still perfectly within the compass of nature, and is told with an easy and flowing gaiety of manner, that contrasts very happily with the strangeness of the incidents. The description of the hasty encampment of Charles Twelfth, and his suite, including Mazeppa, is a perfect picture.

A band of chiefs! alas how few,
Since but the fleeting of a day

Had thinn'd them; but this wreck was true

And chivalrous; upon the clay

Each sate him down, all sad and mute,

Beside his monarch and his steed,
For danger levels man and brute,
And all are fellows in their need.
Among the rest Mazeppa made
His pillow in an old oak's shade—