C. C. COLTON,

THE author of "Lacon," was educated at Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. He entered the established church, and though he held the vicarage of Kew with Petersham, in Surrey, he was a well-known frequenter of the gaming-table; and, suddenly disappearing from his usual haunts in the metropolis, about the time of a murder that attracted much attention, it was suspected he had fallen by the hand of an assassin. It was however afterwards ascertained that he had absconded, to avoid his creditors; and, in 1828, a successor was appointed to his living. He then went to reside in America: but subsequently lived in Paris, a professed gamester. He committed suicide at Fontainebleau, in 1832. His principal poems are in three volumes, entitled "The Conflagration of Moscow," "Hypocrisy," and "Modern Antiquity, and other poems."

LIFE.

How long shall man's imprisoned spirit groan

"Twixt doubt of heaven and deep disgust of earth? Where all worth knowing never can be known,

And all that can be known, alas! is nothing worth.

Untaught by saint, by cynic, or by sage,

And all the spoils of time that load their shelves,

We do not quit, but change our joys in age—

Joys framed to stifle thought, and lead us from ourselves.

The drug, the cord, the steel, the flood, the flame,
Turmoil of action, tedium of rest,

And lust of change, though for the worst, proclaim
How dull life's banquet is: how ill at ease the guest.

Known were the bill of fare before we taste,

Who would not spurn the banquet and the boardPrefer th' eternal, but oblivious fast,

To life's frail-fretted thread, and death's suspended sword?

He that the topmost stone of Babel planned,

And he that braved the crater's boiling bed

Did these a clearer, closer view command

Of heaven or hell, we ask, than the blind herd they led?

Or he that in Valdarno did prolong

The night, her rich star-studded page to readCould he point out, midst all that brilliant throng,

His fixed and final home, from fleshy thraldom freed?

Minds that have scanned creation's vast domain,
And secrets solved, till then to sages sealed,
Whilst nature owned their intellectual reign

Extinct, have nothing known or nothing have revealed.

Devouring grave! we might the less deplore

Th' extinguished lights that in thy darkness dwell, Wouldst thou, from that last zodiac, one restore,

That might th' enigma solve, and doubt, man's tyrant, quell.

To live in darkness-in despair to die

Is this indeed the boon to mortals given?

Is there no port—no rock of refuge nigh?

There is—to those who fix their anchor-hope in heaven.

Turn then, O man! and cast all else aside:

Direct thy wandering thoughts to things above

Low at the cross bow down-in that confide,

Till doubt be lost in faith, and bliss secured in love.

34

REGINALD HEBER.

THIS eminent person was born at Malpas, in Cheshire, on the 21st of April, 1783, and in the seventeenth year of his age, he entered Brazen Nose College, Oxford, where he obtained the chancellor's prize for a Latin poem, and greatly distinguished himself by an English poem, entitled "Palestine." Leaving the University, he travelled on the continent, and on his return was presented with a living in Shropshire, where for several years he devoted himself with much 28siduity to his profession. It was here that he wrote most of his hymns and other poems, made his translations from Pindar, and prepared his edition of Jeremy Taylor. In 1822, he was appointed Bishop of Calcutta, and soon after his arrival in India, he died of apoplexy, at Trichinopoli. Heber was one of the sweetest of the poets who have sung of religion. His hymns are for the Christian what the unchaste songs of Moore are for the sensualist.

THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.

FOR many a coal-black tribe and cany spear,
The hireling guards of Mizraim's throne, were there;
On either wing their fiery coursers check

The parched and sinewy sons of Amalek,

While close behind, inured to feast on blood,

Decked in Behemoth's spoils, the tall Shangalla strode.
Mid blazing helms and bucklers rough with gold,
Saw ye how swift the scythed chariots rolled?
So these are they, whom lord of Afric's fates,

Old Thebes, has poured through all her hundred gates.
Mother of armies! How the emerald glowed,
Where flushed with power and vengeance Pharaoh rode;
And stoled in white, those blazing wheels before

Osiris' ark his swarthy wizards bore:

And still reponsive to the trumpet's cry,

The priestly sistrum murmured "Victory."

Why swell these shouts that rend the desert's gloom,
Whom come ye forth to combat? warrior, whom?
These flocks and herds, this faint and weary train,

Red from the scourge, and weary from the chain?
Friend of the poor! the poor and friendless save—
Giver and Lord of freedom! help the slave.
North, south, and west the sandy whirlwinds fly
The circling pall of Egypt's chivalry.

On earth's last margin throng the weeping train,
Their cloudy guide moves on-And must we sweep the main ?
Mid the light spray the snorting camels stood,

Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood.
He comes-their leader comes-the man of God
O'er the wide water lifts his mighty rod,
And onward treads; the circling waves retreat
In hoarse deep murmurs from his holy feet:
And the chafed surges, inly roaring, show
The hard wet sand and coral hills below.

With limbs that falter and with hearts that swell,
Down, down they pass a deep and slippery dell;
Round them arise, in pristine chaos hurled,
The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world;
And flowers that blush beneath the ocean green,
And caves, the sea-calf's low-roofed haunts, are seen.
Down, safely down the narrow pass they tread,
The seething waters storm above their head;
While far behind retires the sinking day,
And fades on Edom's hills its latest ray.
Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light,

Or dark to them or cheerless came the night;

Still in the van along that dreadful road

Blazed broad and fierce the brandished torch of God,
Its meteor glare a tenfold lustre gave

On the long mirror of the rosy wave;
While its blest beams a sunlike heat supply,
Warm every cheek and dance in every eye-
To them alone :-for Mizraim's wizard train

Invoke for light their monster gods in vain :
Clouds heaped on clouds their struggling sight confine,
And tenfold darkness broods along their line;

Yet on they go by reckless vengeance led,

And

range unconscious through the ocean's bed.

Till midway now that strange and fiery form,

Showed his dread visage, lightening through the storm,
With withering splendor blasted all their might,

And brake their chariot wheels and marred their coursers' flight. "Fly, Mizraim, fly," the ravenous floods they see,

And fiercer than the floods, the Deity!

"Fly, Mizraim, fly," from Edom's coral strand,
Again the prophet stretched his dreadful wand:
With one wild crash the thundering waters sweep,
And all is waves-a dark and lonely deep:
Yet o'er those lonely waves such murmurs passed,
As mortal wailing swelled the nightly blast,
And strange and sad the whispering surges bore
The groans of Egypt to Arabia's shore.

Oh! welcome came the morn, where Israel stood
In trustless wonder by the avenging flood!
Oh! welcome came the cheerful morn to show
The drifted wreck of Zoan's pride below;
The mingled limbs of men, the broken car,
A few sad relics of a nation's war:
Alas, how few! Then soft as Elim's well,
The precious tears of new-born freedom fell;
And he whose hardened heart alike had borne
The hours of bondage and the oppressor's scorn,
The stubborn slave, by hope's new beams subdued,
In faltering accents sobbed his gratitude.

Till, kindling into warmer zeal around,

The virgin timbrel waked its silver sound;

And in fierce joy no more by doubt suppressed,
The struggling spirit throbbed in Miriam's breast.
She-with bare arms, and fixing on the sky

The dark transparence of her lucid eye

Poured on the winds of heaven her wild sweet harmony.
“Where now,” she sang,
the tall Egyptian spear,
Oris' sunlike shield and Zoan's chariot, where?
Above their ranks the whelming waters spread;
Shout Israel! for the Lord hath triumphed !"