Is number'd with the generations gone.

Yet not to me hath God's good providence
Given studious leisure,1 or unbroken thought,
Such as he owns, a meditative man,

Who from the blush of morn to quiet eve
Ponders, or turns the page of wisdom o'er,
Far from the busy crowd's tumultuous din:
From noise and wrangling far, and undisturb'd
With Mirth's unholy shouts. For me the day
Hath duties which require the vigorous hand
Of steadfast application, but which leave
No deep improving trace upon the mind.
But be the day another's: let it pass!

The night's my own! They cannot steal my night!
When Evening lights her folding-star on high,

I live and breathe; and in the sacred hours

Of quiet and repose my spirit flies,

Free as the morning, o'er the realms of space,

And mounts the skies, and imps her wing for heaven. 80 Hence do I love the sober-suited maid;

Hence Night's my friend, my mistress, and my theme,
And she shall aid me now to magnify

The night of ages-now when the pale ray
Of starlight penetrates the studious gloom,
And, at my window seated, while mankind
Are lock'd in sleep, I feel the freshening breeze
Of stillness blow, while, in her saddest stole,
Thought, like a wakeful vestal at her shrine,
Assumes her wonted sway.

Behold the world
Rests, and her tired inhabitants have paused
From trouble and turmoil. The widow now
Has ceased to weep, and her twin orphans lie

'The author was then in an attorney's office.

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Lock'd in each arm, partakers of her rest.
The man of sorrow has forgot his woes;
The outcast that his head is shelterless,
His griefs unshared. The mother tends no more
Her daughter's dying slumbers, but, surprised
With heaviness, and sunk upon her couch,
Dreams of her bridals. Even the hectic, lull'd
On Death's lean arm to rest, in visions wrapp'd,
Crowning with Hope's bland wreath his shuddering nurse,
Poor victim! smiles. Silence and deep repose
Reign o'er the nations; and the warning voice
Of Nature utters audibly within

The general moral: tells us that repose,
Deathlike as this, but of far longer span,
Is coming on us-that the weary crowds,
Who now enjoy a temporary calm,
Shall soon taste lasting quiet, wrapp'd around
With graveclothes; and their aching, restless heads
Mouldering in holes and corners unobserved,
Till the last trump shall break their sullen sleep.
Who needs a teacher to admonish him

That flesh is grass-that earthly things are mist?
What are our joys but dreams? and what our hopes
But goodly shadows in the summer cloud?
There's not a wind that blows but bears with it
Some rainbow promise: not a moment flies
But puts its sickle in the fields of life,

And mows its thousands, with their joys and cares.
'Tis but as yesterday since on yon stars,
Which now I view, the Chaldee shepherd 1 gazed,
In his mid watch observant, and disposed

The twinkling hosts as fancy gave them shape.

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'Alluding to the first astronomical observations made by the Chaldean shepherds.

Yet in the interim what mighty shocks

Have buffeted mankind-whole nations razed-
Cities made desolate-the polish'd sunk

To barbarism, and once barbaric states
Swaying the wand of science and of arts;
Illustrious deeds and memorable names
Blotted from record, and upon the tongue
gray Tradition! voluble no more.

Of

Where are the heroes of the ages past?
Where the brave chieftains, where the mighty ones.
Who flourish'd in the infancy of days?

All to the grave gone down! On their fallen fame
Exultant, mocking at the pride of man,
Sits grim Forgetfulness. The warrior's arm
Lies nerveless on the pillow of its shame;
Hush'd is his stormy voice, and quench'd the blaze
Of his red eyeball. Yesterday his name
Was mighty on the earth. To-day-'tis what?
The meteor of the night of distant years,
That flash'd unnoticed, save by wrinkled eld,
Musing at midnight upon prophecies,
Who at her lonely lattice saw the gleam
Point to the mist-poised shroud, then quietly
Closed her pale lips, and lock'd the secret up
Safe in the charnel's treasures.

Oh, how weak
Is mortal man! how trifling-how confined
His scope of vision! Puff'd with confidence,
His phrase grows big with immortality,
And he, poor insect of a summer's day!
Dreams of eternal honours to his name;
Of endless glory and perennial bays.
He idly reasons of eternity,
As of the train of ages, when, alas!

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Ten thousand thousand of his centuries
Are, in comparison, a little point

Too trivial for account. Oh, it is strange,
'Tis passing strange, to mark his fallacies;
Behold him proudly view some pompous pile,
Whose high dome swells to emulate the skies,
And smile, and say, My name shall live with this
Till time shall be no more; while at his feet,
Yea, at his very feet, the crumbling dust
Of the fallen fabric of the other day

Preaches the solemn lesson. He should know
That Time must conquer; that the loudest blast
That ever fill'd Renown's obstreperous trump
Fades in the lapse of ages, and expires.
Who lies inhumed in the terrific gloom
Of the gigantic pyramid? or who

Rear'd its huge walls? Oblivion laughs, and says,
The prey is mine! They sleep, and never more
Their names shall strike upon the ear of man,
Their memory burst its fetters.

Where is Rome?
She lives but in the tale of other times;
Her proud pavilions are the hermit's home,
And her long colonnades, her public walks,
Now faintly echo to the pilgrim's feet,
Who comes to muse in solitude, and trace,
Through the rank moss reveal'd, her honour'd dust.
But not to Rome alone has fate confined
The doom of ruin; cities numberless,
Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Babylon, and Troy,
And rich Phoenicia-they are blotted out,
Half razed from memory, and their very name
And being in dispute. Has Athens fallen ?
Is polish'd Greece become the savage seat

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Of ignorance and sloth? and shall we dare

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And empire seeks another hemisphere.
Where now is Britain?

Her palaces and halls?

Where her laurell'd names,
Dash'd in the dust.
Some second Vandal hath reduced her pride,
And with one big recoil hath thrown her back
To primitive barbarity. Again,

Through her depopulated vales, the scream
Of bloody Superstition hollow rings,
And the scared native to the tempest howls
The yell of deprecation. O'er her marts,
Her crowded ports, broods silence; and the cry
Of the low curlew, and the pensive dash
Of distant billows, breaks alone the void;
Even as the savage sits upon the stone
That marks where stood her capitols, and hears
The bittern booming in the weeds, he shrinks
From the dismaying solitude. Her bards
Sing in a language that hath perished;

And their wild harps, suspended o'er their graves,
Sigh to the desert winds a dying strain.

Meanwhile the Arts, in second infancy,

Rise in some distant clime, and then, perchance,
Some bold adventurer, fill'd with golden dreams,
Steering his bark through trackless solitudes,
Where, to his wandering thoughts, no daring prow
Hath ever plough'd before, espies the cliffs

Of fallen Albion. To the land unknown
He journeys joyful; and perhaps descries
Some vestige of her ancient stateliness:
Then he, with vain conjecture, fills his mind

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