Till he starting cried, from his dream awake, He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright 6 'Welcome,' he said, my dear-one's light!' Till he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark, Far he followed the meteor spark, The wind was high and the clouds were dark, But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp, Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp, EPISTLE III. TO THE MARCHIONESS DOWAGER OF D- LL. FROM BERMUDA, JANUARY, 1804. LADY, where'er you roam, whatever beam Yet, Lady! no-for song so rude as mine, Of fairy nature in these sun-born isles, Lady D., I supposed, was at this time still in Switzerland, where the powers of her pencil must have been frequently awakened. 2 The chapel of William Tell, on the Lake of Lucerne. Oh! might the song awake some bright design, Have you not oft, in nightly vision, strayed They charmed their lapse of nightless hours along! Where Virtue wakened, with elysian breeze, The morn was lovely, every wave was still, Through plantain shades that like an awning twined, 'Nothing can be more romantic than the little harbour of St. George. The number of beautiful islets, the singular clearness of the water, and the animated play of the graceful little boats, gliding for ever between the islands, and seerting to sail from one cedar-grove into another, orm altogether the sweetest miniature of nature that can be imagined. Some elfin mansion sparkled through the shade; Sweet airy being who, in brighter hours, THE GENIUS OF HARMONY. AN IRREGULAR Ode. Ad harmoniam canere mundum.-Cicero, De Nat. Deor. lib. 3. THERE lies a shell beneath the waves In many a hollow winding wreathed, Such as of old, Echoed the breath that warbling sea-maids breathed ; 1 This is an allusion which, to the few who are fanciful enough to indulge in it, renders the scenery of Bermuda particularly interesting. In the short but beautiful twilight of their spring evenings, the white cottages scattered over the slands, and but partially seen through the trees that surround them, assume often the appearance of little Grecian temples, and fancy may embellish the poor fisherman's hut with columns which the pencil of Claude might imitate. I had one favourite object of this kind in my walks,¦ which the hospitality of its owner robbed me of, by asking me to visit him. He was a plain good man, and received me well and warmly, but I never could turn his house into a Grecian temple again. Ariel. Among the many charms which Bermuda, the still vexed Bermoothes,' has for a poetic eye, we cannot for an instant forget that it is the scene of Shakspeare's Tempest, and that here he conjured up the 'delicate Ariel.' Upon its shining side, the mystic notes The Genii of the deep were wont to swell, When Heaven's eternal orbs their midnight music rolled! And, if the power Of thrilling numbers to thy soul be dear, As lap the spirit of the seventh sphere, When Luna's distant tone falls faintly on his ear! And thou shalt own, That, through the circle of creation's zone, Of the sun's arrow through an evening sky, Oh! thou shalt own this universe divine That I respire in all and all in me, Welcome, welcome, mystic shell! In the Histoire naturelle des Antilles there is an account of some curious shells, found at Curaçoa, on the back of which were lines filled with musical characters so distinct and perfect, that, the writer assures us, a very charming trio was sung from one of them. According to Cicero, and his commentator Macrobius, the lunar tone is the gravest and faintest on the planetary heptachord. Leone Hebreo, pursuing the idea of Aristotle, that the heavens are animal, attributes their harmony to per:ect and reciprocal love. This 'reciproco amore' of Leone is the peλorms of the ancient Empedocles, who seems, in his Love and Hate of the Elements, to have given a glimpse of the principles of attraction and repulsion. Leucippus, the atomist, imagined a kind of vertices in the heavens, which he borrowed from Anaxagoras and possibly suggested to Descartes. • Heraclides, upon the legories of Homer, conjectures that the idea of the harmony of the spheres originated with this poet, who, in representing the solar beams as arrows, supposes them to emit a peculiar sound in the air. 5 In the account of Africa which d'Ablancourt has translated, there is mention of a tree in that country, whose branches when shaken by the hand produce very sweet sounds. [The singing tree' of the Arabian Nights. It is found in India. The musical sounds proceed from two half shells like an opened walnut, which, struck by the air, sound like castanets.] 6 Alluding to the extinction, or at least the disappearance, of some of those fixed stars which we are taught to consider as suns, attended each by its system. Descartes thought that our earth might formerly have been a sun, which became obscured by a thick incrustation over its surface. This probably suggested the idea of a central fire. O'er the cold bosom of the ocean wept, Hath in the waters slept ! I fly, With the bright treasure to my choral sky, Walks o'er the great string of my Orphic Lyre. The winged chariot of some blissful sou!! Oh, son of earth! what dreams shall rise for thee; Thou'lt see a streamlet run, Which I have warmed with dews of melody; And I will send thee such a god-like dream, Watched the first flowing of that sacred fount, What pious ecstasy Wafted his prayer to that eternal Power, Or, dost thou know what dreams I wove, 1 Orpheus They call his lyre apxacorpoпov éптaxoрdov Opdeos. See a curious work by a professor of Greek at Venice, entitled Hebdomades, sive septem de septenario libri, lib. 4, cap. 3, p. 177. Eratosthenes, telling the extreme veneration of Orpheus for Apollo, says that he was accustomed to go to the Pangwan mountain at daybreak, and there wait the rising of the sun, that he might be the first to hail its beams. There are some verses of Orpheus preserved to us, which contain sublime ideas of the unity and magnificence of the Deity. As those which Justin Martyr has produced: Ούτος μεν χαλκείον ες ουρανον έστήρικται |