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46

Original Poetry.

[VOL. 4

POETRY.

From the New Monthly Magazine, August 1818.

BY LORD BYRON.

ND wilt

First save us from the blue fiend's realm,
Whose fogs the fainting soul o'erwhelm:
From gloomy frost our colonies
release,

and busy

A Sweet thou weep when I am low? That far in searchhoughts How'rs

Yet, if they grieve thee, say not so;
I would not give thy bosom pain.
My heart is sad---my hopes are gone---
My blood runs coldly through my breast:
And when I perish, thou alone

Wilt sigh above my place of rest.
And yet, methinks, a beam of peace
Doth through my cloud of anguish shine;
And, for a while, my sorrows cease

To know that heart hath felt for mine!
O Lady! blessed be that tear,

It falls for one who cannot weep;
Such precious drops are doubly dear
To those whose eyes no tears may steep.
Sweet Lady! once my heart was warm
With every feeling soft as thine;
But beauty's self has ceased to charm
A wretch---created to repine!
Then wilt thou weep when I am low ?---
Sweet Lady! speak those words again!
Yet, if they grieve thee, say not so;

I would not give thy bosom pain!

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Have stray'd from safe domestic bow'rs;
Like the lost race which home again
Norwegia's pastor call'd in vain,
When savage Greenland's giant shore
They tempted, and returned no more.

Alas! thus Folly's venturers roan
From the calm temperate zone of Home,
Of gaudy toys and plumes in quest,
Till bitter gales their speed arrest,
And bare and bruis'd their bark is hurl'
On the cold Arctic of the world,
To dwell bound up in icy chains,
While Life's long polar winter reigns,
In pomp magnificently drear
As the blank ice-field's dismal glare,
Unless, like thee, some gentle star
Of kind affection gleams from far,
And leads to social duty's track
The long-bewilder'd wanderers back.

Spirit of Hope! at thy command
You scowling death-clime shall grow bland--
Come, and with playful meteors fill
Stern Winter's empire dim and chill!
While icewinds breathe their cold monsoon,
Be thou th'unchanging Arctic Moon,
That dark and devious regions through
May lead the pilgrim's frail canoe
To some bright cove, where long unseen
Our kindred hearts bave shelter'd been !---
And though within the dread control
Of that dark zone that binds the pole,
The needle from its place may turn,
And loadstones new attraction learn,
The true heart shall not lose its skill---
Home, home shall be its magnet still!
August, 1818.

From the Literary Gazette, July, 1818.
THE OAKS.

V.

From Körner.---Written when Germany was under the French yoke, 1811. VENING begins---Day's voices all are

EVEN

still--

Yet ruddier looks the Sun's departing
glow;

Here underneath these sinuous boughs I sit,
And mournful thoughts my bosom overflow.
Faithful mementos of more ancient times!
In life's fair green your branches still are
drest,

You are the same that former ages knew,
Splendid as then appears your leafy vest.
Time has destroy'd a thousand noble works,
And much of beauty early yields its
breath,---

Now glimmering through your wreaths of
glossy leaves,

The sinking evening reddens into death.

In 1406, the seventeenth bishop of a colony settled at East Greenland was prevented from reaching them by a prodigious barrier of ice, and their fatehas never been ascertained.

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As if neglectful of your fate alone,
Time has not threatened yet your final
hour;

You seem to say from every waving twig,
True greatness shall resist Death's mighty
power.'

You have resisted long !---mid all around,
You still are drest in verdure fresh and
gay,

Beneath your arms the weary traveller
Yet halts, to shield him from the noontide
ray.

And when in Autumn your brown leaves
sball fall,

For you they droop, for you alone they

fade,

To call a progeny successive forth,

In spring to clothe you with delightful shade.

Fine image of Germania's ancient worth, As once to past, and better days 'twas known,

When her brave sons, supporting well her

cause,

Died to uphold their monarch and bis throne!

--

Ah! what avails it to recall my grief,

That grief is known throughout my native land! --

My country! once superior to the world,

But hark! while I thus musing stand,
Pours on the gale an airy note,
And breathing from a viewless band,
Soft silvery tones around me float.
They cease---but still a voice I hear,

A whispered voice of hope and joy---
Thy hour of rest approaches near,
Prepare thee, mortal! thou must die!
Yet start not! on thy closing eyes
Another day shall still unfold;
A sua of milder radiance rise,

47

A happier age of joys unfold.
Shall the poor worm that shocks thy sight,
The humblest form in nature's train,
Thus rise in new-born lustre bright,

And yet the emblem teach in vain ?
Ah! where were once her golden eyes,
Her glitt'ring wings of purple pride?
Conceal'd beneath a rude disguise!
A shapeicss mass to earth allied.
Like thee, the helpless reptile lived,
Like thee, she toiled, like thee she spun;
Like thine, her closing hour arrived,
Her labours ceased, her web was done.
And shalt thou, number'd with the dead,
No happier state of being know?
And shall no future sorrow shed,
On thee a beam of brighter glow?

Thou low art fallen---yet thy green oaks Is this the bound of Power Divine,

stand. August, 1818.

C. R---g.

To animate an insect frame ?
Or shall not he who moulded thine,
Wake at his will the vital flame ?
Go, mortal! in thy reptile state,
Enough to know to thee is given;

the birth of THE BUTTERFLY. Ge, and the joyful truth relate,

From La Belle Assemblee.

WEhe offspring of enraptured blay,

WHEN, bursting forth to life and light,

The butterfly, on pinions bright,

Launched in full splendor on the day. Unconscious of a mother's care,

No infant wretchedness it knew ; But, as she felt the vernal air,

At once to full perfection grew.

Her slender form, etherial light,

Her velvet textured wings unfold, With all the rainbow's colours bright, And dropt with spots of burnish'd gold. Trembling awhile with joy she stood,

And felt the sun's enlivening ray, Drank from the skies the vital flood,

And wondered at her plumage gay.
And balanc'd oft her broidered wings,
Thro' fields of air prepared to sai;
Then on ber ventrous journey springs,

And floats along the rising gale.
Go, child of pleasure, range the fields---
Taste all the joys that spring can give---
Partake what bounteons summer yields,
And live while yet 'tis thine to live.

Go sip the rose's fragrant dew--

The lily's honied cup explore--From flower to flower the search renew, And rifle all the woodbine's store. And let me trace thy vagrant flight, Thy moments, too, of short repose: And mark thee when, with fresh delight, Thy golden pinions ope and close.

Fail child of earth, bright heir of heaven! [Taylor's Anec. of Insects]

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gone.

And such wild sportings as he can he tries,
Before her powerful eye, and suits his dance
Swifter or slower to her wandering song.
He shoots along the violet floor, and lies
Straight as a fallen column, and as still
As its pale marble, then sweeps up his coil
Surge upon surge, and lays his gorgeous head
With its fixed,sleepless eye, i' the centre ring,
The watcher of his living citadel.

Then rolls away as loose as the sea-wave;
Anon he stoops like the wild swan, and shows
A neck as arched and silvery; then the vine

Must be outdone, and he's as lithe and curl'd,
And glistens thro' the leaves as proud a green.
But now the song grows loftier, and his pomp
Must all be worn to please his Indian queen.
He rises from his train, that on the ground
Floats in gold circles, and his burnished head
Towers in the sunset like a rising flame.
And he has put on colours that make dim
The stones of the Indian mine. His length is

sheathed

In mail, that hath for plates the mother pearl,
And for its studs the diamond. There's no ray
That strikes its arched neck from the stooping
Sun,

But rings it with a collar of rich gems,
Or sheets it in one emerald, or the flame
Of rubies, or the orient sapphire's blue.
His head is crested carbuncle, that spheres
An eye as glittering as a summer star,
Yet fix'd in all its shootings on one form,
That thanks its duty with a faint, fond smile.
So stands and shines he, till the charm is done,
And that sweet sound and sweeter smile have
sunk

In silence and in shade.

TRISSINO.

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[VOL. 4

For Memory's prism loves to strew
O'er joys long past a softer hue;
And Fancy sheds o'er pleasures flown
A lustre lovelier than their own!
The transient clouds that dim Life's infant
day,

In manhood's sterner sorrows melt away;
They are but shadows to the weight of woe
That life's maturer years are doom'd to
know;

Childhood's light griefs soon vanish from the mind.

But all its sun-bright hours remain behind !

From the New Monthly Magazine, August 1818.

THE MOSSY SEAT.

still rushes on the sparkling river; HE landscape hath not lost its look; Nor hath the gloominess forsook

Still hangs around the shadowy wood,
These granite crags that frown for ever;
Whose sounds but murmur solitude!

The raven's plaint, the linnet's song,
The stock-dove's coo, in griefrepining,
In mingled echoes steal along;

And clouds above, and hills below,
The setting sun is brightly shining,
Are brightening with his golden glow!

It is not meet, it is not fit,

Though Fortune all our hopes hath thwarted,

Whilst on the very stone I sit,

Where first we met and last we parted,
That absent from my soul should be
The thought that loves and looks to thee!

Each happy hour that we have proved,

Whilst love's delicious converse blended; As 'neath the twilight star we roved,

Unconscious where our progress tended,
Still brings my mind a sweet relief,
And bids it love the "joys of grief!"

What soothing recollections throng,

Presenting many a mournful token, That heart's remembrance to prolong, Which then was blest---but now is broken! I cannot---Oh! hast thou forgot Our early loves ?---this hallowed spot?

I almost think I see thee stand:

I almost dream I hear thee speaking;
I feel the pressure of thy baud:

Thy living glance in fondness seeking.
Here, all apart---by all unseen,
Thy form upon my arm to lean!

Though beauty bless the landscape still---
Though woods surround, and waters leave it,
My heart feels not the vivid thrill

Which long ago thy presence gave it : Mirth---music---friendship have no tone Like that which with thy voice hath flown! And memory only now remains

To whisper things that once delighted:
Still, still I love to tread these plains---

To seek this sacred haunt benighted,
And feel a something sadly sweet
In resting on this MOSSY SEAT!

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IT

ON POETRY.

From the Literary Panorama, August, 1818.

T cannot be denied that the habit assemblages, we shall act with cruelty which living Poets cultivate, of deal- towards poetical inspiration. We ing only in those impressions which therefore think Mr. Coleridge should have affected them most strongly as be allowed to introduce his owls, and individuals, contributes much to the mastiff, in his old Christabel without warmth, intensity and enthusiasm of molestation. their compositions. A Poet, in the Since the reign of Lord Byron comabstract sense of the term, is a person menced, sentiment has become the staple who seeks for imposing and interesting article. Creativeness of imagination, conceptions wherever they are to be which is quite a different thing, seems found, and who has no preference for at present to be more rare, and indeed one set of ideas more than another, ex- is very rare at all times, since we do not cept in so far as they are calculated to find a remarkable instance of it once in stir, excite, and gratify the human mind. a century. Poetical sentiment is merely This would be the character of one the strength of the moral affections who estimated the value of poetical sublimed by enthusiasm. Repeated materials philosophically. But it has instances have proved that it is comgenerally been found, that Poetry can- patible with a very limited range of not be composed by setting so coolly ideas, nay, that it is even an exclusive to work; and that, when the reasoning principle, and likes a limited range, faculties are too watchful, there is gen- because varied ideas are apt to disturb erally a dispersion of those fine feelings it—but imagination is an universal love which serve as a sort of key-note for of conceptions, images, and pictures of calling together poetical thoughts. all kinds, for their own sake, and reJudgment is quite unable to detect the joices in producing them ad infinitum, relations which bind ideas together into for the sole pleasure of viewing the Poetry. Feeling alone can do it; but pageant. Darwin is an example of a feeling is so much modified by circum- vivid imagination existing quite sepastances and associations, that we seldom rately from poetical sentiment or moral find it operating in any individual with enthusiasm. abstract propriety; and if we turn loose For strength of stimulus, the Poetry our metaphysical judgment upon its of sentiment is certainly preferable to G ATHENEUM. Vol. 4.

50

On Poetry.

[VOL. 4

tions, where like Crabbe, he takes them with such compounds as occur in real life, without attempting to abstract them into the sublime.

that composed of mere pictures and the novelist and the satirist, and even to images like Darwin's, or that of ob- the painter of moral energies and affecservation and reflection like Pope's. But as the understanding of the reader is entirely passive in perusing Poetry of sentiment, the means of excitement are soon expended. Poetry, consisting partly of reflection and observation, like that of Pope's, awakens the mind into a state of pleasing activity, which may be sustained for almost any length of time, without any feeling of weariness or monotony, since the interest of it is derived from the contrasts and comparisons of dissimilar and distant ideas, collected from a wide field, and not from the aggregation of a great many homogeneous ideas brought to bear on one point.

The range of human thoughts is not unlimited, and a considerable part of it has already been exhausted. In so far as Poetry consists in selecting the ideal beauties, either of human nature or of the external world, or in describing situations of imaginary felicity, we can hardly now expect Poets to discover any unanticipated conceptions on these subjects. Virtue and perfection are not susceptible of many different aspects, because their real elements must always be the same. David Hume observes, that truth is one thing,

Sir

So completely does the ideal beautiful appear to be exhausted, that Poets, for some years back, have been obliged to represent their heroes as villanous and immoral, retaining, of course, the staple article of strength of mind. There is no doubt a charm about the idea of great mental energy; but moral amiableness would still have been retained as an ingredient in the picture, if it had not become trite and threadbare. The case is the same on the stage. Giles Overreach, Bertram, and Richard the Third, proclaim aloud their wickedness to an applauding audience, and are answered from the closet by Conrad, Lara, Bertram, the Buccaneer, Childe Harold, and Meg Merilees, whose respective confessions make the hair of ordinary Christians stand on end. Manfred retorts again from the Alps, and is like to have the Bible thrown in his face by John Balfour of Burley, for pretending to be worse than himself; while Mokanna, with his silver veil, hopes to transcend the whole, by adding ugliness to a bad heart.

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while falsehood is unlimited in its varie- Since mankind must be furnished ties. The same thing may be said of with something to stir their sluggish the ideal beauties, both of mind and bosoms, it is very fair that Poets should matter. It is probable that the ancients employ whatever means are left for prowould perceive a cloying similarity in ducing the effect wanted. The public, the lineaments and proportions of their for its own sake, must sometimes overbest statues because no artist could look the oddness of the expedients used; diverge very far from a certain standard and if modern Poetry does not exhibit without forsaking his object. The so extensive a range of ideas as could contention and emulation of sculptors be wished, it is rather to be ascribed to would draw them closer and closer to the love of intense effect, than to the a centre. The conceptions of a Phidias want of invention. Observation is the are circumscribed within a certain nat- source from whence every thing like ural boundary; but there is no boun- real opulence of conceptions must be dary to the variety of the conceptions of derived, since imagination only reproa Hogarth, because he does not aim at duces what has been observed in a drawing perfection, but at characterising form fit for poetry: and the great fault peculiarity and imperfection, which are of modern Poets seems to be, that they infinite. In the same manner,although have exerted themselves too little to heroic Poetry may be considered as furnish their minds with materials nearly exhausted, the world will for whereupon to operate.

ever continue to supply materials to

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