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I'll rave no more in proud despair:
My language shall be mild, though sad:
But yet I firmly, truly swear,

I am not mad, I am not mad.

2. My tyrant husband forged the tale

Which chains me in this dismal cell:
My fate unknown my friends bewail-
Oh! jailer, haste that fate to tell:
Oh! haste my father's heart to cheer:
His heart at once 'twill grieve and glad
To know, though kept a captive here,
I am not mad, I am not mad.

3. He smiles in scorn, and turns the key:
He quits the grate: I knelt in vain :
His glimmering lamp, still, still I see-
'Tis gone! and all is gloom again.
Cold, bitter cold !-No warmth! no light!—
Life, all thy comforts once I had;
Yet here I'm chained, this freezing night,
Although not mad: no, no, not mad.

4. 'Tis sure some dream, some vision vain :

What! I-the child of rank and wealth-
Am I the wretch who clanks this chain,
Bereft of freedom, friends, and health?
Ah! while I dwell on blessings fled,

Which never more my heart must glad,
How aches my heart, how burns my head,
But 'tis not mad: no, 'tis not mad.

5. Hast thou, my child, forgot, ere this,
A mother's face, a mother's tongue ?

She'll ne'er forget your parting kiss,

Nor round her neck how fast you clung;

Nor how with her you sued to stay;

Nor how that suit your sire forbade ;

Nor how I'll drive such thoughts away;
They'll make me mad, they'll make me mad.

6. His rosy lips, how sweet they smiled!

His mild blue eyes, how bright they shone!

None ever bore a lovelier child;

And art thou now forever gone?

And must I never see thee more,
My pretty, pretty, pretty lad?
I will be free! unbar the door!

I am not mad: I am not mad.

7. Oh! hark! what mean those yells and cries?
His chain some furious madman breaks:
He comes-I see his glaring eyes:

Now, now, my dungeon-grate he shakes.
Help! help!-he's gone !-oh! fearful woe,
Such screams to hear, such sights to see!
My brain, my brain—I know, I know,

I am not mad, but soon shall be.

8. Yes, soon; for, lo you !-while I speak-
Mark how yon demon's eyeballs glare!
He sees me now, with dreadful shriek,
He whirls a serpent high in air.
Horror!-the reptile strikes his tooth
Deep in my heart, so crushed and sad:
Ay, laugh, ye fiends: I feel the truth:

Your task is done-I'm mad! I'm mad!

BYRON.

XCIII.-DARKNESS.

1. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander, darkling, in the eternal space,
Rayless and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.

Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions, in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light.

And they did live by watch-fires; and the thrones,

The palaces of crowned kings, the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

Were burnt for beacons : cities were consumed,

And men were gathered round their blazing homes,

To look once more into each other's face.
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch.

2. A fearful hope was all the world contained:
Forests were set on fire; but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded; and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men, by their despairing light,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as, by fits,
The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down,
And hid their eyes, and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up,

With mad disquietude, on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses, cast them down upon the dust,

And gnashed their teeth, and howled. The wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes
Came tame, and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food.
3. And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again :-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left :
All earth was but one thought-and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious, and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails. Men

Died; and their bones were tombless as their flesh
The meager by the meager were devoured.
Even dogs assailed their masters,—all save one,

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds, and beasts, and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws: himself sought out no food,
But, with a piteous, and perpetual moan,
And a quick, desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-he died.

4. The crowd was famished by degrees. But two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies. They met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage. They raked up,

5.

And, shivering, scraped with their cold, skeleton hands,
The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame,
Which was a mockery. Then they lifted
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects-saw, and shrieked, and died;
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend.

The world was void:

The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless:
A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths.
Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped

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 withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perished: Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--she was the universe.

XCIV. THE AMBITIOUS YOUTH.

E. BURRITT.

THE incident described in this selection occurred, some years since, at the Natural Bridge, in Virginia. This bridge is an immense mass of rock, thrown by the hand of nature over a considerable stream of water, thus forming a natural passage over the stream.

1. THERE are three or four lads standing in the channel below the natural bridge, looking up with awe to that vast arch of unhewn rocks, which the Almighty bridged over these everlasting abutments, "when the morning stars sang together." The little piece of sky spanning those measureless piers, is full of stars, although it is mid-day. It is almost five hundred feet from where they stand, up those perpendicular bulwarks of limestone to the key-rock of that vast arch, which appears to them only the size of a man's hand. The silence of death is rendered more im

pressive by the little stream that falls from rock to rock down the channel. The sun is darkened, and the boys have unconsciously uncovered their heads, as if standing in the presence-chamber of the Majesty of the whole earth. 2. At last, this feeling begins to wear away: they begin to look around them. They see the names of hundreds cut in the limestone abutments. A new feeling comes over their young hearts, and their knives are in their hands, in an instant. "What man has done, man can do," is their watchword, as they draw themselves up and carve their names a foot above those of a hundred full-grown men who had been there before them. They are all satisfied with this feat of physical exertion except one, whose example illustrates perfectly the forgotten truth, that there is no royal road to intellectual eminence. This ambitious youth sees a name just above his reach, a name that will be green in the memory of the world, when those of Alexander, Cesar, and Bonaparte shall rot in oblivion. It was the name of WASHINGTON. Before he marched with Braddock to that fatal field, he had been there and left his name a foot above all his predecessors.

3. It was a glorious thought of the boy, to write his name, side by side with that of the great father of his country. He grasps his knife with a firmer hand; and, clinging to a little jutting crag, he cuts again into the limestone, about a foot above where he stands: he then reaches up and cuts another place for his hands. It is a dangerous adventure; but as he puts his feet and hands into those notches, and draws himself up carefully to his full length, he finds himself a foot above every name chronicled in that mighty wall. While his companions are regarding him with concern and admiration, he cuts his name in rude capitals, large and deep, into that flinty album. His knife is still in his hand, and strength in his sinews, and a newcreated aspiration in his heart. Again he cuts another niche, and again he carves his name in large capitals.

4. This is not enough. Heedless of the entreaties of

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