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 his voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And in 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,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, 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
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 The dead are thy inheritors-and we [birth? 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.

Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real !

A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD
ON THE SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA,
Which, in the Arabic language, is to the fol-
lowing purport.

THE Moorish King rides up and down
Through Granada's royal town;
From Elvira's gates to those

Of Bivarambla on he goes.

Woe is me, Alhama!

Letters to the monarch tell
How Alhama's city fell;
In the fire the scroll he threw,
And the messenger he slew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

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?'
Wce 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 ine, 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 !

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 ine, Alhama!

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

Woe is me, Alhania!

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.
Wce 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 I

Perhaps at some pert speech you've dared to frown,

Perhaps your poem may have pleased the town: If so, alas! 'tis nature in the man

May Heaven forgive you, for he never can! Then be it so; and may his withering bays Bloom fresh in satire, though they fade in praise! While his lost songs no more shall steep and stink,

The dullest, fattest weeds on Lethe's brink,

But springing upwards from the sluggish mould,
Be (what they never were before) be-sold!
Should some rich bard (but such a monster now,
In modern physics, we can scarce allow),
Should some pretending scribbler of the court,
Some rhyming peer-there's plenty of the sort-
All but one poor dependent priest withdrawn,
(Ah! too regardless of his chaplain's yawn!)
Condemn the unlucky curate to recite
Their last dramatic work by candle-light,
How would the preacher turn each rueful leaf,
Dull as his sermons, but not half so brief!
Yet, since 'tis promised at the rector's death,
He'll risk no living for a little breath.
Then spouts and foams, and cries at every line,
(The Lord forgive him!) 'Bravo! grand!
divine!'

Hoarse with those praises (which, by flatt'ry fed,
Dependence barters for her bitter bread),
He strides and stamps along with creaking boot;
Till the floor echoes his emphatic foot,
Then sits again, then rolls his pious eye,
As when the dying vicar will not die!
Nor feels, forsooth, emotion at his heart;-
But all dissemblers overact their part.

Ye, who aspire to build the lofty rhyme,'
Believe not all who laud your false sublime;'
But if some friend shall hear your work, and say,
'Expunge that stanza, lop that line away,'
And, after fruitless efforts, you return

Without amendment, and he answers, 'Burn!'

• Here will Mr Gifford allow me to introduce once more to his notice the sole survivor, the ultimus Romanorum,' the last of the Cruscanti-Edwin' the 'profound,' by our Lady of Punishment! here he is, as lively as in the days of 'well said Baviad the Correct. I thought Fitzgerald had been the tail of poesy; but, alas! he is only the penultimate.

That instant throw your paper in the fire,
Ask not his thoughts, or follow his desire;
But if (true bard!) you scorn to condescend,
And will not alter what you can't defend,
If you will breed this bastard of your brains,
We'll have no words-I've only lost my pains.

Yet, if you only prize your favourite thought,
As critics kindly do, and authors ought;
If your cool friend annoy you now and then,
And cross whole pages with his plaguy pen;
No matter, throw your ornaments aside,-
Better let him than all the world deride.
Give light to passages too much in shade,
Nor let a doubt obscure one verse you've made;
Your friend's a 'Johnson,' not to leave one word,
However trifling, which may seem absurd;
Such erring trifles lead to serious ills,
And furnish food for critics, or their quills.t

As the Scotch fiddle, with its touching tune, Or the sad influence of the angry moon, All men avoid bad writers' ready tongues, As yawning waiters fly Fitzscribble's lungs ; Yet on he mouths-ten minutes-tedious each As prelate's homily, or placeman's speech; Long as the last years of a lingering lease, When riot pauses until rents increase. While such a minstrel, muttering fustian, strays O'er hedge and ditch, through unfrequented

ways,

If by some chance he walks into a well,
And shouts for succour with stentorian yell,

A rope! help, Christians, as ye hope for grace!'
Nor woman, man, nor child will stir a pace;
For there his carcass he might freely fling,
From frenzy, or the humour of the thing.
Though this has happen'd to more bards than

one;

CHRONICLE,

What reams of paper, floods of ink,"

Do some men spoil, who never think!

And so perhaps you'll say of me,

In which your readers may agree.

Still I write on, and tell you why;
Nothing's so bad, you can't deny,
But may instruct or entertain
Without the risk of giving pain, &c., &c.

ON SOME MODERN QUACKS AND REFORMERS.
In tracing of the human mind
Through all its various courses,
Though strange, 'tis true, we often find
It knows not its resources:

And men through life assume a part
For which no talents they possess,

Yet wonder that, with all their art,
They meet no better with success, &c. &c.

The glory of that death they freely choose.

Minerva being the first by Jupiter's head-piece, and a variety of equally unaccountable parturitions upon earth, such as Madoc, &c. &c.

+A crust for the critics.'-Bayes, in the 'Rehearsal.'

And the waiters' are the only fortunate people who can 'fly' from them; all the rest, viz. the sad subscribers to the 'Literary Fund,' being compelled, by courtesy, to sit out the recitation without a hope of exclaiming, 'Sic' (that is, by choking Fitz, with bad wine, or worse poetry) 'me servavit Apello

On his table were found these words: What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong.' But Addison did not 'approve; and if he had, it would not have mended the matter. He had invited his daughter on the same water. party; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of Atticus,' and the enemy of Pope.