A casement high and triple-arched there was,
All garlanded with carven imageries

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device
Innumerable, of stains and splendid dyes,

As are the tiger-moth's deep damasked wings; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings.

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon; Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory like a saint: She seemed a splendid angel newly drest, Save wings, for heaven; Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

[Hymn to Pan.]

[From Endymion.]

O thou whose mighty palace-roof doth hang
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;
Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress

Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken; And through whose solemn hours dost sit and hearken

The dreary melody of bedded reeds

In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth,
Bethinking thee how melancholy loath

Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx-do thou now,
By thy love's milky brow,

By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
Hear us, great Pan!

O thou for whose soul-soothing quiet turtles Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, What time thou wanderest at eventide Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side Of thine enmossed realms: 0 thou to whom Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom Their ripened fruitage; yellow-girted bees Their golden honeycombs; our village leas Their fairest blossomed beans and poppied corn ; The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries Their summer coolness; pent-up butterflies Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year All its completions-be quickly near, By every wind that nods the mountain pine, O forester divine!

Thou to whom every faun and satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit;
Or upward ragged precipices fiit

To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw
Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
And gather up all fancifulest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while they pelt each other on the crown
With silvery oak-apples, and fir-cones brown-
By all the echoes that about thee ring,
Hear us, O satyr king!

O hearkener to the loud-clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers

A ram goes bleating: winder of the horn,
When snouted wild boars routing tender corn
Anger our huntsmen: breather round our farms,
To keep off mildews and all weather harms:
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a-swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge-see,
Great son of Dryope,

The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!

Be still the unimaginable lodge For solitary thinkings; such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven, That, spreading in this dull and clodded earth, Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth: Be still a symbol of immensity;

A firmament reflected in a sea;

An element filling the space between;

An unknown-but no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven-rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan,
Upon thy Mount Lycean!

Ode to a Nightingale.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot
But being too happy in thy happiness,

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance and Provençal song and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm south,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the queen-moon is on her throne
Clustered around by all her starry fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous blooms and winding mossy

ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vainTo thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the hill-stream, Up the hillside; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley's glades: Was it a vision or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:-do I wake or sleep?

To Autumn.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes, whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden croft,
And gathering swallows twitter from the skies.

Sonnets.

[On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.] Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific-and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien.

[The Human Seasons.]

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

[On England.] Happy is England! I could be content

To see no other verdure than its own; To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent; Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or worldling meant. Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters; Enough their simple loveliness for me; Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about their summer waters.

Lines.

[The poet Keats walked in the Highlands, not with the joyousness, the rapture, of the young Rousseau, but in that hallowed pleasure of the soul which, in its fulness, is akin to pain. The following extract of a poem, not published in his works, proves his intensity of feeling, even to the dread of madness. It was written while on his journey, soon after his pilgrimage to the birthplace of Burns, not for the gaze of the world, but as a record for himself of the temper of his mind at the time. It is a sure index to the more serious traits in his character; but Keats, neither in writing nor in speaking could affect a sentiment-his gentle spirit knew not how to counterfeit.'-New Monthly Magazine, 1822.]

There is a charm in footing slow
Across a silent plain,
Where patriot battle has been fought,
Where glory had the gain :

Deccan, Ceylon, and Madras, on his return to Bengal, performing at each station the active duties of his sacred office. His whole energies appear to have been devoted to the propagation of Christianity in the East. In 1826 the bishop made a journey to Travancore, accompanied by the Rev. Mr Doran, of the Church Missionary Society. On the 1st of April he arrived at Trichinopoly, and had twice service on the day following. He went the next day, Monday, at six o'clock in the morning, to see the native Christians in the fort, and attend divine service. He then returned to the house of a friend,

Heber's Parish Church.

and went into the bath preparatory to his dressing for breakfast. His servant, conceiving he remained too long, entered the room, and found the bishop dead at the bottom of the bath. Medical assistance was applied, but every effort proved ineffectual; death had been caused by apoplexy. The loss of so valuable a public man, equally beloved and venerated, was mourned by all classes, and every honour was paid to his memory. Much might have been anticipated, from the zeal and learning of Heber, in elucidation of the antiquities of India, and the moral and religious improvement of its people, had his valuable life been spared. At the time of his death he was only in his forty-third year-a period too short to have developed those talents and virtues which, as one of his admirers in India remarked, rendered his course in life, from the moment that he was crowned with academical honours till the day of his death, one track of light, the admiration of Britain and of India. The widow of Dr Heber has published a Memoir of his Life, with selections from his letters; and also a Narrative of his Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay. In these works the excellent prelate is seen to great advantage, as an acute and lively observer, graphic in his descriptions both of scenery and manners, and everywhere animated with feelings of Christian zeal and benevolence. As a poet, Heber is always elegant, and often striking. His hymns are peculiarly touching and impressive, and musical

in versification. The highest honours of the lyre he probably never could have attained; for he is deficient in originality, and is more rhetorical than passionate or imaginative.

Missionary Hymn.

From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand;
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver

Their land from error's chain.

Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, Across the dark-blue sea;

But ne'er were hearts so light and gay

As then shall meet in thee!

An Evening Walk in Bengal.
Our task is done !-on Gunga's breast
The sun is sinking down to rest;

And, moored beneath the tamarind bough,
Our bark has found its harbour now.
With furled sail and painted side,
Behold the tiny frigate ride:
Upon her deck, 'mid charcoal gleams,
The Moslem's savoury supper steams;
While all apart, beneath the wood,
The Hindoo cooks his simpler food.

Come, walk with me the jungle through-
If yonder hunter told us true,
Far off, in desert dank and rude,
The tiger holds its solitude;
Now-taught by recent harm to shun
The thunders of the English gun-
A dreadful guest but rarely seen,
Returns to scare the village green,
Come boldly on; no venomed snake
Can shelter in so cool a brake-
Child of the sun, he loves to lie
'Midst nature's embers, parched and dry,
Where o'er some tower in ruin laid,
The peepul spreads its haunted shade;
Or round a tomb his scales to wreathe,
Fit warder in the gate of Death.
Come on; yet pause! Behold us now
Beneath the bamboo's arched bough,
Where, gemming oft that sacred gloom,
Glows the geranium's scarlet bloom;1
And winds our path through many a bower
Of fragrant tree and giant flower-
The ceiba's crimson pomp displayed
O'er the broad plantain's humbler shade,
And dusk anana's prickly glade;
While o'er the brake, so wild and fair,
The betel waves his crest in air;
With pendent train and rushing wings,
Aloft the gorgeous peacock springs;
And he, the bird of hundred dyes,2
Whose plumes the dames of Ava prize.
So rich a shade, so green a sod,
Our English fairies never trod !
Yet who in Indian bowers has stood,
But thought on England's 'good greenwood;'
And blessed, beneath the palmy shade,
Her hazel and her hawthorn glade;
And breathed a prayer (how oft in vain !)
To gaze upon her oaks again?

A truce to thought-the jackal's cry
Resounds like sylvan revelry;

And through the trees yon failing ray
Will scantly serve to guide our way.
Yet mark, as fade the upper skies,
Each thicket opes ten thousand eyes-
Before, beside us, and above,
The firefly lights his lamp of love,
Retreating, chasing, sinking, soaring,
The darkness of the copse exploring;
While to this cooler air confest,
The broad dhatura bares her breast,
Of fragrant scent and virgin white,
A pearl around the locks of night!

1 A shrub whose deep scarlet flowers very much resemble the geranium, and thence called the Indian geranium.

2 The Mucharunga.

Still as we pass, in softened hum
Along the breezy alleys come

The village song, the horn, the drum :
Still as we pass, from bush and brier
The shrill cigala strikes his lyre;
And what is she whose liquid strain
Thrills through yon copse of sugar-cane?
I know that soul-entrancing swell,

It is it must be-Philomel!
Enough, enough, the rustling trees
Announce a shower upon the breeze,
The flashes of the summer sky
Assume a deeper, ruddier dye;
Yon lamp that trembles on the stream,
From forth our cabin sheds its beam;
And we must early sleep, to find
Betimes the morning's healthy wind.
But oh with thankful hearts confess
E'en here there may be happiness;
And He, the bounteous Sire, has given
His peace on earth-his hope of heaven.

CHARLES WOLFE.

The REV. CHARLES WOLFE (1791-1823), a native of Dublin, may be said to have earned a literary immortality by one short poem, and that copied, with considerable closeness, from a prose account of the incident which it relates. Reading in the Edinburgh Annual Register a description of the death and interment of Sir John Moore on the battle-field of Corunna, this amiable young poet turned it into verse with such taste, pathos, and even sublimity, that his poem has obtained an imperishable place in our literature. The subject was attractive-the death of a brave and popular general on the field of battle, and his burial by his companions-in-arms-and the poet himself dying when young, beloved and lamented by his friends, gave additional interest to the production. The ode was published anonymously in an Irish newspaper in 1817, and was ascribed to various authors; Shelley considering it not unlike a first draught by Campbell. In 1841 it was claimed by a Scottish student and teacher, who ungenerously and dishonestly sought to pluck the laurel from the grave of its owner. The friends of Wolfe came forward, and established his right beyond any further question or controversy; and the new claimant was forced to confess his imposture, at the same time expressing his contrition for his misconduct. Fame, like wealth, is sometimes pursued with unprincipled covetousness; but, we need hardly say, unless directed by proper motives, the chase is never honourable, and very seldom safe. The great duties of life-its moral feelings and principles-are something more important than even the brightest wreaths of fame! Wolfe was a curate in the established church, and died of consumption. His literary remains have been published, with an interesting memoir of his life by Archdeacon Russell, one of his early college-friends.

The Burial of Sir John Moore.

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corpse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeams' misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.