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,

And all that Hope adored and lost Hath melted into Memory.

Alas! it is delusion all;

The future cheats us from afar,

Nor can we be what we recall,

Nor dare we think on what we are.

TO THOMAS MOORE.

My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,

Here's a double health to thee'
Here's a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on:
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.
Were't the last drop in the well,
As I gasp'd upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,

'Tis to thee that I would drink. With that water, as this wine,

The libation I would pour Should be-Peace with thine and mine, And a health to thee, Tom Moore.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. ABSENT or present, still to thee,

My friend, what magic spells belong! As all can tell, who share, like me,

In turn thy converse and thy song. But when the dreaded hour shall come, By Friendship ever deem'd too nigh, And "MEMORY" o'er her Druid's tomb Shall weep that aught of thee can die, How fondly will she then repay

Thy homage offer'd at her shrine, And blend, while ages roll away,

Her name immortally with thine!

ODE ON VENICE. 1818. I.

OH Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,

A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?-anything but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers-as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,
Are they to those that were; and thus they
creep,

Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping

streets.

Oh! agony-that centuries should reap
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears,
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,

And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats
The echo of thy tyrant's voice along
The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the
throng

Of gondolas-and to the busy hum

Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors,
The weeds of nations in their last decay,
When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd
terrors,

And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And Hope is nothing but a false delay,
The sick man's lightning half an hour ere
death,

When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,
And apathy of limb, the dull beginning
Of the cold staggering race which Death is
winning,

Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirit soaring-albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek:
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him, and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round, and shadows
busy,

At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,
And all is ice and blackness,-and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.

II.

There is no hope for nations!-Search the page
Of many thousand years-the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us nought, or little: still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and

wear

Our strength away in wrestling with the air:
For 'tis our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order-they must go
Even where their driver goads them, though to
slaughter.

Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,

What have they given your children in return? A heritage of servitude and woes,

A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. What! do not yet the red-hot plough-shares burn,

O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the real;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme! Ye see and

read,