THE OCEAN.1

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 thy 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.2

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ?3
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

(1) This passage has been much criticised both in a friendly spirit and otherwise. Its general effect cannot but be considered as striking, even though the taste displayed in the details be questioned. The assailants of the poet's genius quote with some plausibility a passage from "Corinne," to prove that even the "original and fundamental theme," was borrowed from Madame de Staël, who speaks of "Le spectacle de cette superbe mer, sur laquelle l'homme ne peut imprimer sa trace. La terre," she goes on to say, "est travaillée par lui, les montagnes sont coupées par ses routes, les rivières se reserrent en canaux pour porter ses marchandises; mais si les vaisseaux sillonnent un moment les ondes, la vague vient effacer aussitôt cette légère marque de servitude, et la mer reparaît telle qu'elle fût au premier jour de la création."

(2) The cynical tone and awkward phraseology of this stanza are brought to a climax in the solecism here perpetrated. "There let him lay," is quite unpar

donable.

(3) "On those shores were the four great empires of the world: the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean."-Dr. Johnson, in Boswell's Life.

Has dried
up realms to deserts :-not so thou,
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' 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 convulsed-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.

Byron.

WOMAN.1

THROUGH many a land and clime a ranger,2
With toilsome steps I've held my way,

A lonely unprotected stranger,3

To all the stranger's ills a prey.

While steering thus my course precarious,
My fortune still has been to find
Men's hearts and dispositions various,
But gentle Woman ever kind;

(1) The sentiments which are above so tastefully versified may be found in the journal of Ledyard the traveller. See his interesting "Life and Travels,"

p. 348.

(2) Ranger-Ledyard was the companion of Cook in his last voyage, and travelled much besides in the north of Europe and in Africa.

(3) Stranger-from the Latin extraneus, outside, foreign; the word is thus formed: ex, extra, extraneus, estrange (oid French), strange, stranger.

When parched with thirst, with hunger wasted,
Her friendly hand refreshment gave;
How sweet the coarsest food has tasted,
What cordial in the simple wave!1

Her courteous looks, her words caressing,
Shed comfort on the fainting soul;
Woman's the stranger's general blessing
From sultry India to the Pole!

Barbauld.

HUMAN FRAILTY.

WEAK and irresolute is man;
The purpose of to-day,

Woven with pains into his plan,

To-morrow rends away.

The bow well bent, and smart the spring;

Vice seems already slain !

But passion rudely snaps the string,

And it revives again.

(1) Wave-The precise words of the journal are:-"These actions have been performed in so free and kind a manner that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught, and, if hungry, ate the coarse morsel with a double relish."

(2) Bow-the "bow" is reason, whose decisions are too often thwarted by passion.

Some foe to his upright intent
Finds out his weaker part,
Virtue engages his assent,

But pleasure wins his heart.

'Tis here the folly of the wise,
Through all his art1 we view;
And while his tongue the charge denies,
His conscience owns it true.

Bound on a voyage of awful length,
And dangers little known,
A stranger to superior strength,
Man vainly trusts his own.

But oars alone can ne'er prevail

To reach the distant coast;

The breath of heaven must swell the sail,

Or all the toil is lost.

Cowper.

DEATH'S FINAL CONQUEST.3

THE glories of our blood and state*
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,

And plant fresh laurels where they kill;5

(1) His art-The art with which he attempts to conceal his inconsistency and folly.

(2) Bound, &c.-These last two stanzas are beautifully simple; the figure is well carried out, and in the line "The breath of heaven," &c., becomes particularly striking.

(3) This poom was written about the beginning of the 17th century.

(4) Blood and state-high birth and actual rank.

(5) Where they kill-plant laurels for themselves on the blood they have spilt.

And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale captives, creep to Death.

The garlands wither on your brow:

Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
Upon Death's purple altar now

See where the victor-victim bleeds!
Your heads must come

To the cold tomb;

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

Shirley.

HELVELLYN.2

I CLIMBED the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide;
All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,
And, starting, around me the echoes replied.

On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn3 was bending,
And Cathedicam its left verge was defending,

One huge nameless rock in the front was impending,

When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer1 had died.

Dark green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the pilgrims of nature lay stretched in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather,
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay :

(1) Tame, &c.-but cannot tame the great conqueror, Death.

(2) Helvellyn-A lofty mountain in Cumberland. Striden-edge and Cathedicam are parts of it.

(3) Red-tarn—a “tarn" is a small lake high up in the bosom of a mountain. (4) Wanderer-Mr. Charles Gough, of Manchester, perished in the spring of 1805, by losing his way over the mountain Helvellyn.

(5) Pilgrim-from the Italian pellegrino, which is from the Latin peregrinus, i. e. one who goes about per agrum-through the country. Hence, originally, a pilgrim was, generally, a wanderer, a traveller; then, one who travelled with a devotional purpose to some sacred spot. A "pilgrim of nature," therefore, is one who visits the shrines, i. e. the choice beauties and sublimities, of nature.