Each glance that wins us, and the life that throws

A spell which will not let our looks repose,
But turn to gaze again, and find anew
Some charm that well rewards another view.
These are not lessen'd, these are still as bright,
Albeit too dazzling for a dotard's sight;
And those must wait till every charm is gone,
To please the paltry heart that pleases none;-
That dull cold sensualist, whose sickly eye
In envious dimness pass'd thy portrait by;
Who rack'd his little spirit to combine
Its hate of Freedom's loveliness, and thine.

ELEGIAC STANZAS.

ON THE DEATH OF SIR PETER PARKER, BART. THERE is a tear for all that die,

A mourner o'er the humblest grave; But nations swell the funeral cry,

And triumph weeps above the brave.
For them is Sorrow's purest sigh

O'er Ocean's heaving bosom sent:
La vain their bones unburied lie,
All earth becomes their monument!
A tomb is theirs on every age,
An epitaph on every tongue :
The present hours, the future age,
For them bewail, to them belong.

For them the voice of festal mirth

Grows hush'd, their name the only sound; While deep Remembrance pours to Worth The goblet's tributary round.

A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,

Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?

And, gallant Parker! thus enshrined

Thy life, thy fall, thy fame shall be; And early valour, glowing find

A model in thy memory.

But there are breasts that bleed with thee
In woe, that glory cannot quell;
And shuddering hear of victory,

Where one so dear, so dauntless, fell. Where shall they turn to mourn thee less? When cease to hear thy cherish'd name? Time cannot teach forgetfulness,

While Grief's full heart is fed by Fame. Alas! for them, though not for thee, They cannot choose but weep the more; Deep for the dead the grief must be, Who ne'er gave cause to mourn before.

TO BELSHAZZAR. BELSHAZZAR! from the banquet turn, Nor in thy sensual fulness fall; Behold! while yet before thee burn The graven words, the glowing wall. Many a despot men miscall

Crown'd and anointed from on high; But thou, the weakest, worst of allIs it not written, thou must die? Go! dash the roses from thy browGrey hairs but poorly wreath with them; Youth' garlands misbecome thee now, More than thy very diadein,

Where thou hast tarnish'd every gem.

Then throw the worthless bauble by,
Which, worn by thee, ev'n slaves conter:
And learn like better men to die!
Oh! early in the balance weigh'd,

And ever light of word and worth,
Whose soul expired ere youth decay'd,
And left thee but a mass of earth.
To see thee moves the scorner's mirth:
But tears in Hope's averted eye
Lament that ever thou hadst birth-
Unfit to govern, live, or die.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

THERE be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem'd dreaming:
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee:
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

"O Lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo: quater
Felix! in imo qui scatentem

Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit.”
GRAY'S Poemata.

THERE'S not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;

'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness

Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of

Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruined turret wreath,

All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath.

Oh! could I feel as I have felt-or be what I have been,

Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanish'd scene;

brackish though they be,

So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

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 volcanoes, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contained;
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
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

And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers 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 stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; 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!

MONODY ON THE DEATH

OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN.
SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

WHEN the last sunshine of expiring day
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower!
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes
While nature makes that melancholy pause,
Her breathing moment on the bridge where

Time

Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime,
Who hath not shared that calm, so still and deep,
The voiceless thought which would not speak
but weep,

A holy concord, and a bright regret,
A glorious sympathy with suns that set?
'Tis not harsh sorrow, but a tenderer woe,
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below,
Felt without bitterness, but full and clear,
A sweet dejection, a transparent tear,
Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain,
Shed without shame, and secret without pain.

Even as the tenderness that hour instils
When summer's day declines along the hills,
So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes,
When all of Genius which can perish dies
A mighty spirit is eclipsed-a power

Of light no likeness is bequeathed-no name,
Focus at once of all the rays of Fame !
The flash of Wit, the bright Intelligence,
The beam of Song, the blaze of Eloquence,
Set with their Sun, but still have left behind
The enduring produce of immortal Mind;
Fruits of a genial morn, and glorious noon,
A deathless part of him who died too soon.
But small that portion of the wondrous whole,
These sparkling segments of that circling soul,
Which all embraced, and lighten'd over all,
To cheer, to pierce, to please, or to appal.
From the charm'd council to the festive board,
Of human feelings the unbounded lord;
In whose acclaim the loftiest voices vied,
The praised, the proud, who made his praise
their pride.

When the loud cry of trampled Hindostan
Arose to Heaven in her appeal from man,
His was the thunder, his the avenging rod,
The wrath-the delegated voice of God!
Which shook the nations through his lips, and
blazed

Till vanquish'd senates trembled as they praised.
And here, oh! here, where yet all young and

warm,

The gay creations of his spirit charm,
The matchless dialogue, the deathless wit,
Which knew not what it was to intermit;
The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring
Home to our hearts the truth from which they
spring;

These wondrous beings of his fancy, wrought
To fulness by the fiat of his thought,

Here in their first abode you still may meet,
Bright with the hues of his Promethean heat;
A halo of the light of other days,
Which still the splendour of its orb betrays.

But should there be to whom the fatal blight
Of failing Wisdom yields a base delight,
Men who exult when minds of heavenly tonc
Jar in the music which was born their own,
Still let them pause-ah! little do they know
That what to them seemed Vice might be but
Woe.

Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze
Is fix'd for ever to detract or praise;
Repose denies her requiem to his name,
And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.
The secret enemy whose sleepless eye
Stands sentinel, accuser, judge, and spy;
The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain,
The envious, who but breathe in others' pain
Behold the host! delighting to deprave,
Who track the steps of glory to the grave,
Waen every fault that daring Genius owes
Half to the ardour which its birth bestows,
Distort the truth, accumulate the lie,
And pile the pyramid of Calumny!
These are his portion-but if join'd to these
Gaunt Poverty should league with deep Disease:
If the high Spirit must forget to soar,
And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,
To soothe Indignity-and face to face
Meet sordid rage, and wrestle with Disgrace;
To find in Hope but the renew'd caress,
The serpent-fold of further Faithlessnes:
If such may be the ills which men assaul

What marvel if at last the mightiest fail? Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling's given

Bear hearts electric-charged with fire from heaven,

Black with the rude collision, inly torn,

By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds borne, Driven o'er the lowering atmosphere that nurst Thoughts which have turn'd to thunder-scorch, and burst.

But far from us and from our mimic scene, Such things should be-if such have ever been; Ours be the gentler wish, the kinder task, To give the tribute Glory need not ask, To mourn the vanish'd beam, and add our mite Of praise in payment of a long delight. Ye Orators! whom yet our councils yield, Mourn for the veteran Hero of your field! The worthy rival of the wondrous Three, Whose words were sparks of Immortality! Ye Bards! to whom the Drama's Muse is dear, He was your master-emulate him here! Ye men of wit and social eloquence! He was your brother-bear his ashes hence! While powers of mind almost of boundless range, Complete in kind, as various in their change; While Eloquence, Wit, Poesy, and Mirth, That humbler Harmonist of care on Earth, Survive within our souls-while lives our sense Of pride in Merit's proud pre-eminence, Long shall we seek his likeness, long in vain, And turn to all of him which may remain, Signing that Nature form'd but one such man, And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan!

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE.

A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED.

I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed

With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd

The Gardener of that ground, why it might be That for this plant strangers his memory task'd,

Through the thick deaths of half a century? And thus he answer'd: "Well, I do not know Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so; He died before my day of Sextonship,

And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I thought-and do we rip
The vale of Immortality, and crave

I know not what of honour and of light.
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight,
So soon, and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's
thought,

Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers ;-as he caught
As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun,
Thus spoke he: "I believe the man of whom
You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,
Was a most famous writer in his day,
And therefore travellers step from out their way
To pay him honour, and myself whate'er

Your honour pleases." Then most pleased I shook

From out my pocket's avaricious nook
Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently :-Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I: for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that old Sexton's natural homily,
In which there was Obscurity and Fame---
The glory and the Nothing of a Name.

PROMETHEUS.

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise,
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
Thy godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

vulse.

Itself and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry

Its own concentred recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory!

A FRAGMENT.

COULD I remount the river of my years,
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
But bid it flow as now-until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this Death?-a quiet of the heart? The whole of that of which we are a part? For life is but a vision-what I see Of all that lives alone is life to me; And being so-the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud around us, and invest With sad remembrances our hours of rest.

The absent are the dead-for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,-or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided-equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both-but one day end it must,
In the dark union of insensate dust.

The under-earth inhabitants-are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being?-darken'd and intense
As midnight in her solitude?--O Earth!
Where are the past?-and wherefore had they
birth?

The dead are thy inheritors-and we
But bubbles on thy surface; and the key
Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom-hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more.

SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN, ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and De Staël

Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,*

A mighty lesson we inherit :

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To mortals of their fate and force, Like thee Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose

594

He quits his mule, and mounts his horse, And through the street directs his course; Through the street of Zacatin

To the Alhambra spurring in.

Woe is me, Alhama!

When the Alhambra walls he gain'd,
On the moment he ordain'd
That the trumpet straight should sound
With the silver clarion round.

Woe is me, Alhama!

And when the hollow drums of war
Beat the loud alarm afar,
That the Moors of town and plain
Might answer to the martial strain.
Woe is me, Alhama!

Then the Moors, by this aware

That bloody Mars recall'd them there,
One by one, and two by two,
To a mighty squadron grew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

Out then spake an aged Moor
In these words the king before,
"Wherefore call on us, O King?
What may mean this gathering?"

Woe is me, Alhama!

"Friends! ye have, alas! to know
Of a most disastrous blow;
That the Christians, stern and bold,
Have obtain'd Alhama's hold."

Woe is me, Alhama!

Out then spake old Alfaqui,
With his beard so white to see:
"Good King! thou art justly served,
Good King! this thou hast deserved.
Woe is me, Alhama!

"By thee were slain, in evil hour,
The Abencerrage, Granada's flower;
And strangers were received by thee
Of Cordova the Chivalry.

Woe is me, Alhama!

"And for this, O King! is sent
On thee a double chastisement:
Thee and thine, thy crown and realm,
One last wreck shall overwhelm.

Woe is me, Alhama!

"He who holds no laws in awe, He must perish by the law;

And Granada must be won,
And thyself with her undone."
Woe is me, Alhama!

Fire flash'd from out the old Moor's eyes,
The Monarch's wrath began to rise,
Because he answer'd, and because
He spake exceeding well of laws.
Woe is me, Alhama!

"There is no law to say such things
As may disgust the ear of kings:'
Thus, snorting with his choler, said
The Moorish King, and doom'd him dead.
Woe is me, Alhama !

Moor Alfaqui! Moor Alfaqui!
Though thy beard so hoary be,
The King hath sent to have thee seized,
For Alhama's loss displeased.

Woe is me, Alhama!

And to fix thy head upon
High Alhambra's loftiest stone;
That this for thee should be the law,
And others tremble when they saw.
Woe is me, Alhama!

"Cavalier, and man of worth!
Let these words of mine go forth!
Let the Moorish Monarch know,
That to him I nothing owe.

Woe is me, Alhama!
"But on my soul Alhama weighs,
And on my inmost spirit preys;
And if the King his land hath lost,
Yet others may have lost the most.
Woe is me, Alhama!

"Sires have lost their children, wives
Their lords, and valiant men their lives;
One what best his love might claim
Hath lost, another wealth, or fame.
Woe is me, Alhama!

"I lost a damsel in that hour,
Of all the land the loveliest flower;
Doubloons a hundred I would pay,
And think her ransom cheap that day."
Woe is me, Alhama !

And as these things the old Moor said,
They sever'd from the trunk his head;
And to the Alhambra's wall with speed
'Twas carried, as the King decreed.

Woe is me, Alhama!

And men and infants therein weep
Their loss, so heavy and so deep;
Granada's ladies, all she rears
Within her walls, burst into tears.
Woe is me, Alhama!

And from the windows o'er the walls
The sable web of mourning falls;
The King weeps as a woman o'er
His loss, for it is much and sore.
Woe is me, Alhama!

STANZAS FOR MUSIC. THEY say that hope is happiness; But genuine love must prize the past, And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose the first-they set the last; And all that Memory loves the most Was once our only Hope to be,