And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd! Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the Universe.

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 veil 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 shock
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,

* Charles Churchill, author of the Roscind, &c.

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 Faine,-
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.

SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN.

ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and De Staci-
Leman* these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,

But they have made them lovelier, for the lo: 3
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core

Of human hearts the ruin of a wall

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by ee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory ree!!

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 rook, 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 thy cannot kil

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,

* Geneva, Ferney, Copet, Lausanne.--B.

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 strenghen 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 concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

[The pieces following, to the end, are, from their great beauty and unobjectionable character, extracted from Don Juan, a poem unfit to be printed, in this collection. entire.]

FIRST LOVE.

"Tis sweet to hear

At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep
The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,

By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep;
"Tis sweet to see the evening star appear;

"Tis sweet to listen as the night-winds creep From leaf to leaf; 'tis sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.

"Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark

Bay deep-mouth'd welcome as we draw near home; "Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark

Our coming, and look brighter when we come ;

"Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark,

Or lull'd by falling waters; sweet the hum
Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.
Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth
Purple and gushing: sweet are our escapes
From civic revelry to rural mirth;
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,
Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth,
Sweet is revenge-especially to women,
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.
'Tis sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,
By blood or ink; 'tis sweet to put an end

To strife; 'tis sometimes sweet to have our quarreis,
Particularly with a tiresome friend:

Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels ;

Dear is the helpless creature we defend

Against the world; and dear the school-boy spot
We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.

But sweeter still than this, than these, than all,
Is first and passionate love-it stands alone,

Like Adam's recollection of his fall;

The tree of knowledge has been pluck'd-all's knɔwnAnd life yields nothing further to recall

Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown,

No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven

Fire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven.

VAIN REGRETS.

BUT now at thirty years my hair is grey

(I wonder what it will be like at forty?

I thought of a peruke the other day-)

My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I
Have squander'd my whole summer while 'twas May,
And feel no more the spirit to retort; I

Have spent my life, both interest and principal,
And deem not, what I deem'd, my soul invincible.
No more no more-Oh! never more on me
The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,
Which out of all the lovely things we see
Extracts emotions beautiful and new,
Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee,
Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew?
Alas! 'twas not in them, but in thy power
To double even the sweetness of a flower.

No more no more-Oh! never more, my heart,
Canst thou be my sole world, my universe!
Once all in all, but now a thing apart,

Thou canst not be my blessing or my curse:
The illusion's gone for ever, and thou art
Insensible, I trust, but none the worse,
And in thy stead I've got a deal of judgment,
Though heaven knows how it ever found a lodginent.
Ambition was my idol, which was broken

Before the shrines of Sorrow, and of Pleasure;
And the two last have left me many a token,

O'er which reflection may be made at leisure: Now, like Friar Bacon's brazen head, I've spoken,

"Time is, Time was, Time's past :"-a chymic treasure Is glittering youth, which I have spent betimesMy heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.

FAME.

WHAT is the end of Fame? 'tis but to fill

A certain portion of uncertain paper:

Some liken it to climbing up a hill,

Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;

For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,

And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"

To have, when the original is dust,

A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King

Cheops erected the first pyramid

And largest, thinking it was just the thing

To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;

But somebody or other rummaging

Burglarously broke his coffin's lid:

Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.

THE SHIPWRECK.

The wind

Increased at night, until it blew a gale;

And though 'twas not much to a naval mind,
Some landsmen would have look'd a little pale,

For sailors are, in fact, a different kind:

At sunset they began to take in sail,

For the sky show'd it would come on to blow,
And carry away, perhaps, a mast or so