Floating sleep! who in the sun

Art an icy coronal;
And, beneath the viewless dun,

Throw'st o'er barks a wavy pall;
Shining Death upon the sea!

Wend thee to the southern main ;
Bend to God ihy melting knee,
Mingle with the wave again!

ROCKWELL.

RIENZI TO THE ROMANS.

men

Romans! look round you--on this sacred place

There once stood shrines, and gods, and godlike What see you now? what solitary trace

Is left of all that made Rome's glory then? The shrines are sunk, the sacred mount bereft

Even of its name—and nothing now remains But the deep memory of that glory, left

To whet our pangs, and aggravate our chains ! But shall this be?-our sun and sky the same,

Treading the very soil our fathers trode What withering curse hath fallen on soul and frame.

What visitation has there come from GOD, To blast our strength and rot us into slaves,

Here, on our great forefathers' glorious graves ?
It cannot be-rise up, ye Mighty Dead!

If we, the living, are too weak to crush
These tyrant priests, that o'er your empire tread,

Till all but Romans at Rone's tameness blush.
Happy PALMYRA! in thy desert domes,

Where only date-trees sigh and serpents hiss ; And thou, whose pillars are but silent homes

For the stork's brood, superb PERSEPOLIS! Thrice happy both that your extinguish'd race Have left no embers-no half-living tracem

No slaves to crawl around the once-proud spot.
Till past renown in present shame 's forgot ;
While Rome, the Queen of all, whose very wrecks,

If lone and lifeless through a desert hurid,
Would wear more true magnificence than decks

The assembled thrones of all the existing world.Rome, Rome alone, is haunted, stain'd, and cursed,

Through every spot her princely Tiber laves, By living things—the deadliest, the worst,

That earth engenders—tyrants and their slaves ! And we-oh shame!-we, who have ponder'd o'er

The patriot's lesson and the poet's lay; Have mounted up the streams of ancient lore,

Tracking our country's glories all the wayEven we have

tamely, basely kiss d the ground Before that Papal Power, that Ghost of Her, The world's Imperial Mistress--sitting, crown'd

And ghastly, on her mouldering sepulchre ! But this is past-too long have lordly priests

And priestly lords led us, with all our pride Withering about us-like devoted beasts,

Dragg’d to the shrine, with faded garlands tied 'Tis o'er-the dawn of our deliverance breaks! Up from his sleep of centuries awakes The Genius of the Old Republic, free As first he stood, in chainless majesty, And sends his voice through ages yet to come, Proclaiming Rome, Rome, Rome, Eternal Rome!

MOORE

INTEMPERANCE.
MAN, with raging drink inflamed,
Is far more savage and untamed ;
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barb'rousness and insolence;
Believes himself, the less he's able,
The more heroic, and formidable ;

Lays by his reason in his bowls,
As Turks are said to do their souls,
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodgings, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of's life, as vignerons
Cut short the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o'wine;
And that which nature did intend
T' enlarge his life, perverts its end.

BUTLER.

THE SAME SUBJECT. Fly drunkenness, whose vile incontinence Takes away both the reason and the sense ; Till with Circæan cups thy mind possest Leaves to be man, and wholly turns a beast. Think while thou swallowest the capacious bowl, Thou let'st in seas to sack and drown thy soul. That hell is open, to remembrance call, And think how subject drunkards are to fall. Consider how it soon destroys the grace Of human shape, spoiling the beauteous face Puffing the cheeks, blearing the curious eye, Studding the face with vicious heraldry. What pearls and rubies dose the wine disclose, Making the purse poor to enrich the nose ! How does it nurse disease, infect the heart, Drawing some sickness into every part!

RANDOLPH

ܪ

DUELLING.
'Tis hard indeed, if nothing will defend
Mankind from quarrels but their fatal end ;
That now and then a hero must decease,
That the surviving world may live in peace.

Perhaps at last close scrutiny may show
The practice dastardly, and mean and low;
That men engage in it compellid by force,
And fear, not courage, is its proper source;
The fear of tyrant custom, and the fear
Lest fops should censure us, and fools should sneer
At least to trample on our Maker's laws,
And hazard life for any or no cause.

COWPER.

DEATH Why start at death? Where is he? death arrived, Is past ; not come or gone, he's never here. Ere hope, sensation fails ; black-boding man Receives, not suffers death's tremendous blow. The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, The deep damp vault, the darkness and the worm; These are the bugbears of a winter's eve, The terrors of the living, not the dead. Imagination's fool, and error's wretch, Man makes a death, which nature never made; Then on the point of his own fancy falls ; And feels a thousand deaths, in fearing one.

YOUNG.

WILLIAM TELL IN THE FIELD OF GRUTLI.

Tell. Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again! I hold to you the hands you first beheld, To show they still are free. Methinks I hear A spirit in your echoes answer me, And bid your tenant welcome to his home Again 0 sacred forms, how proud you look! How high you lift your heads into the sky! How huge you are! how mighty and how free! Ye are the things that tower, that shine - whose

smile Makes glad-whose frown is terrible-whose forms,

Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear
Of awe divine. Ye guards of liberty,
I'm with you once again-1 call to you,
With all my voice !-1 hold my hands to you
To show they still are free. I rush to you
As though I could embrace you!

-Scaling yonder peak,
I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow
• O'er the abyss :-his broad expanded wings
Lay calin and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there without their aid,
By the sole act of his unlorded will,
That buoy'd him proudly up. Instinctively
1 bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still
His airy circle, as in the delight
Of measuring the ample range beneath
And round about. Absorb d, he heeded not
The death that threaten'd him. I could not shoot!
"T was liberty - turn'd my bow aside,
And let him soar away!

KNOWLES.

THE TORCH OF LIBERTY.

I saw it all in Fancy's glass

Herself, the fair, ihe wild magician,
That bid this splendid day-dream pass,

And named each gliding apparition.
'T was like a torch-race—such as they

Of Greece perform’d, in ages gone,
When the fleet youths in long array,

Pass'd the bright torch triumphant on.
I saw the expectant nations stand,

To catch the coming flame in turn-
I saw, from ready hand to hand,

The clear, but struggling glory burn.