On Carmel's crest; by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanished like a dream;
Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonoured vales;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea,
Around the beauteous isle of Liberty ;-
Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside ;
His home the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

PROVIDENCE.1

FROM THE ITALIAN OF FILICAJA.

Montgomery.

EVEN as a mother o'er her children bending
Yearns with maternal love-her fond embraces,
And gentle kiss to each in turn extending,
One at her feet, one on her knees she places,
And from their eyes, and voice, and speaking faces,
Their varying wants and wishes comprehending,
To one a look, to one a word addresses,

Even with her frowns a mother's fondness blending;
So o'er us watches Providence on high,
And hope to some, and help to others lends,
And yields alike to all an open ear,

2

And when she seems her favours to deny,
She for our prayers alone the boon suspends,
Or, seeming to deny, she grants the prayer.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF
CHAMOUNI.3

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning-star

In his steep course? so long he seems to pause

(1) This sonnet is extracted from the "Edinburgh Review," January, 1835. (2) For our prayers-on account of the wrong spirit of our prayers.

(3) This noble composition, which is said to be, for the most part, a translation from the German, is a suitable companion for Milton's "Morning Hymn" (see p. 338) and Thomson's "Hymn of the Seasons" (see p. 387).

On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! but when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thoughts,
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating soul,' enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink;
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,

2

Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn

(1) The dilating soul, &c.—i. e. the soul expanding, as it were, with the concep tions suggested by the sublime scene, to its natural dimensions, swelled even to heaven. A similar thought occurs in "Childe Harold" (canto iv. 155), in reference to the effect produced on the mind by the view of St. Peter's at Rome:

"Thy mind,

Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal."

(2) Thyself earth's rosy star-Mont Blanc is here spoken of as a star, because of the height of its summit above the vale-a rosy star because its peak is flushed at dawn with the rosy tints reflected from the clouds, so that it becomes in this way co-herald of the dawn, with the morning-star.

Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents,' fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,2

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ?

And who commanded-and the silence came-
"Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ?"

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven,
Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers3
Of loveliest blue, spread garments at your feet?-
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer; and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds !4
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder-GOD!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!

(1) "Besides the rivers Arvé and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides."-Coleridge. (2) Invulnerable life-The conception of some of the torrents as endued with "invulnerable life," and exhibiting all the attributes of human power, passion, and joy, is finely contrasted with that below of others "stopped at once," and converted into

"Motionless torrents! silent cataracts."

(3) Living flowers, &c.—The Gentiana major, with its lovely blue corolla, is one of the flowers found in countless myriads "skirting the eternal frost" like a garland.

(4) Soul-like sounds—i. e. such aërial sounds as might be fancifully attributed to invisible spirits.

Ye signs and wonders of the elements !
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet, the avalanche, unheard,1
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow-travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me-rise, O ever rise,

Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!

Coleridge.

ODE TO EVENING.2

Ir aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,
May hope, O pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear,
Like thy own brawling springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales,

O nymph reserved! while now the bright-haired sun
Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O'erhang his wavy bed;

(1) Unheard-from its great height.

(2) Sir Egerton Brydges says of this ode:-"Such a scene of enchanting repose was never exhibited by Claude, or any other among the happiest of painters. It is vain to attempt to analyse the charm of this ode; it is so subtle, that it escapes analysis. Its harmony is so perfect, that it requires no rhyme. The objects are so happily chosen, and the simple epithets convey ideas and feelings so congenial to each other, as to throw the reader into the very mood over which the personified being so beautifully designed presides. No other poem on the same subject has the same magic."

(3) Oaten stop-The ancient shepherd's pipe was sometimes made of oat-straw. (4) Brede (or braid) ethereal wove-The clouds, woven into a sort of airy fringe hang like a curtain over the sea-the sun's "wavy bed;" an exquisite conception

Now air is hushed,1 save where the weak-eyed bat,
With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises, 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:
Now teach me, maid composed,

To breathe some softened strain,

Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale,
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial, loved return!

For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves

Who slept in buds the day,

And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,

The pensive Pleasures sweet,
Prepare thy shadowy car.

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams.

Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That, from the mountain's side,
Views wilds and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires;
And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil.

(1) Now air, &c.-i. e. and now while, &c., teach me, maid composed, &c. (2) For, &c.-i. e. let me aid by some "softened strain" to celebrate thy loved return, for-inasmuch as-other votaries of thine-the hours, elves, &c.-are now preparing to greet thee too.

(3) That, from, &c.—" In what short and simple terms does he (Collins) open a wide and majestic landscape to the mind, such as we might view from Benlomond or Snowdon, when he speaks of the hut that, from,' &c."-Campbell.