Heap dust and ashes for, this cold drear world Is but thy prison-house. Alas! for him Who has thy dangerous gifts, for they are like The fatal ones that evil spirits give,- Bright and bewildering, leading unto death! Oh, not amid the chill and earthly cares That waste our life, may those fine feelings live That are the Painter's or the Poet's light.
Amid the many graves which in the shade Of Rome's dark cypresses are graved with names Of foreign sound to Italy's sweet tongue, Was one, an English name was on the stone;— There that young Painter slept :-around the sod Were planted flowers and one or two green shrubs. "Twas said that they were placed in fondness there By an Italian Girl, whom he had loved! Literary Gazette.
BY THE REV. W. L. BOWLES.
WHEN last we parted thou wert young and fair; How beautiful, let fond remembrance say! Alas! since then, old Time has stol'n away
Full thirty years, leaving my temples bare.
So hath it perished like a thing of air,
The dream of Love and Youth!-Now both are grey, Yet still remembering that delightful day,
Though Time with his cold touch hath blanched my hair, Though I have suffered many years of pain
Since then; though I did never think to live To hear that voice or see those eyes again,
I can a sad, but cordial greeting give,
And for thy welfare breathe as warm a prayer, Lady, as when I loved thee young and fair! Leeds Intelligencer.
MOUNTAIN,-who reignest o'er thine Alpine peers Transcendently, and from that massive crown Of arrowy brightness dartest down thy beams Upon their lesser coronets,-all hail! Unto the souls in hallowed musing rapt, Spirits in which creation's glorious forms Do shadow forth and speak the invisible, The ethereal, the eternal, thou dost shine With emblematic brightness. Those untrod And matchless domes, though many a weary league Beyond the gazer, when the misty veil
Dies round them, start upon his dazzled sight
In vastness almost tangible; thy smooth
And bold convexity of silent snows
Raised on the still and dark blue firmament!
Mountain,-Thou image of eternity!- Oh, let not foreign feet,inquisitive, Swift in untrained aspirings, proudly tempt Thy searchless waste!—What half-taught fortitude Can balance unperturbed above the clefts
Of yawning and unfathomable ice
That moat thee round; or wind the giddy ledge Of thy sheer granite! Hath he won his way, That young investigator? Yes; but now, Quick panting on superior snows, his frame Trembles in dizziness; his wandering look Drinks pale confusion; the wide scene is dim; Its all of firm or fleeting, near or far, Deep rolling clouds beneath, and wavering mists That flit above him with their transient shades, And storm-deriding rocks, and treacherous snows, And blessed sun-light, in his dying eye Float dubious; and 'tis midnight at his heart!
Mountain, That firm and ardent Genevese, The enthusiast child of science, whose bold foot
Bounded across thine ice rents, who disdained The frozen outworks of thy steep ravines, And through a labyrinth of chrystal rocks Pressed his untired ascent, e'en he, and all His iron-band of native mountaineers, While scaling the aërial cupola
Of Nature's Temple, owned a breathless pang. Thy most attenuate element is fit
For angel roamings. True, his zealous mind Achieved its philosophic aim, and marked And measured thee; but turned to earthly climes Full soon, and bent in gladness toward the vale.
Mountain, The sons of science or of taste Need not essay such triumph. 'Tis more wise And happier till a fiery chariot wait,—
To scan from lesser heights thy glorious whole; To climb above the deep though lofty plain That wrongs thee; pass its line of envious peaks, And stationed at thy cross, sublime Flegere! Thence meditate the monarch's grandeur; while His host of subject hills are spread beneath; For scarce, till then, his own colossal might Seems disenthralled; and mute astonishment, Unquenched by doubt or dread, at each new step, Shall own his aspect more celestial still. There, in some hollow nook reclining, whence The bright-eyed chamois sprang; with tufted bells Of rhododendron blushing at my feet;
The unprofaned recess of Alpine life
Were all my world that hour; and the vast mount In his lone majesty would picture heaven.
Bright mountain,-Ah! but volumed clouds enwrap Thy broad foundations, curtain all thy steeps, And, rising as the orb of day declines, Brood on the vassal chain that flank thee round, Then thy whole self involve save, haply, when A quick and changing vista may reveal
Some spotless portion of thy front, and shew Thee not unstable, like the earth-born cloud, Brilliant though hid, abiding if unseen. Then, as the vale grows darker, and the sun Deserts unnumbered hills, o'er that high zone Of gathered vapour thou dost sudden lift Thy silver brow, calm as the hour of eve, Clear as the morning, still as the midnight, More beautiful than noon; for lo! the sun Lingers to greet thee with a roseate ray, And on thy silver brow his bright farewell Is gleaming:-Mountain, Though art half divine! Severed from earth! Irradiate from heaven!
Thus e'en the taught of heaven, with joyless eye Fixed on the sable clouds which fear hath cast O'er all the landscape of his destiny,
May fail to pierce them; but, though legioned shapes Of nether evil, though the deep array Of stern adversities, and murky hosts Of dark illusions blot his upper skies,
Yet, as they change, through that incumbent gloom Shall he catch glimpses of the hallowed mount, And weep that heaven is bright.-And at the hour Of stillness, when e'en frightful shadows fade, When night seems closing o'er his latest hopes, And his sun set for ever, then, behold, Emerging in mid heaven, thy glistening top Oh, Zion! and the God that ruled his day Hath not departed; for he poureth now His radiance on thy summits, glancing back A thrilling flood into his servant's soul! 'Joy full of glory!'-Was the noon-day dark? It was ;-but eve is cloudless; night is peace; Rapture shall gild the never-ending morn! Sheffield Iris.
WRITTEN FOR RECITATION AT THE FAREWELL DINNER IN HONOUR OF JOHN KEMBLE, ESQ.
PRIDE of the British stage, A long and last adieu !
Whose image brought the heroic age Revived to Fancy's view;
Like fields refreshed with dewy light, When the sun smiles his last, Thy parting presence makes more bright Our memory of the past;
And memory conjures feelings up,
That wine or music need not swell,
As high we lift the festal cup
To Kemble, fare-thee-well!'
His was the spell o'er hearts Which only acting lends, The youngest of the sister arts, Where all their beauty blends: For ill can Poetry express
Full many a tone of thought sublime, And Painting, mute and motionless, Steals but one glance from Time; But, by the mighty actor brought, Illusion's wedded triumphs come, Verse ceases to be airy thought, And Sculpture to be dumb.
Time may again revive,
But ne'er efface the charm, When Cato spoke in him alive, Or Hotspur kindled warm. What soul was not resigned entire
To the deep sorrows of the Moor?
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