That sin-wrecked being! and I saw her laid
Where never worldly joy a visit paid:
That world receding fast! the world to come
Concealed in terror, ignorance, and gloom;
Sins, sorrow, and neglect: with not a spark
Of vital hope,-all horrible and dark.-
It frightened me!--I thought, and shall not I
Thus feel?-thus fear?-this danger can I fly?
Do I so wisely live that I can calmly die?

Still as I went came other change-the frame
And features wasted, and yet slowly came
The end; and so inaudible the breath,

And still the breathing, we exclaimed-'Tis death!
But death it was not: when indeed she died
I sat and his last gentle stroke espied:
When-as it came-or did my fancy trace
That lively, lovely flushing o'er the face?
Bringing back all that my young heart impressed!
It came and went!-She sighed, and was at rest!

From Moore, happily still a living poet, and one whose works are in the hands of all, we will make only one short extract-a specimen of his brilliant Orientalism, which may be compared with that of Southey's in a preceding page. Here is the exquisitely beautiful description in the Fire Worshippers, the finest of the four tales composing Lalla Rookh,' of the calm after a storm, in which the heroine, the gentle Hinda, awakens in the war-bark of her lover Hafed, the noble Gheber chief, into which she had been transferred from her own galley while she had swooned with terror from the tempest and the fight :

How calm, how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour when storms are gone!
When warring winds have died away,
And clouds, beneath the dancing ray,

Melt off, and leave the land and sea
Sleeping in bright tranquillity—
Fresh as if day again were born,
Again upon the lap of morn!
When the light blossoms, rudely torn
And scattered at the whirlwind's will,
Hang floating in the pure air still,
Filling it all with precious balm,
In gratitude for this sweet calm :—
And every drop the thunder-showers
Have left upon the grass and flowers
Sparkles, as 'twere that lightning gem
Whose liquid flame is born of them!
When, 'stead of one unchanging breeze,
There blow a thousand gentle airs,
And each a different perfume bears,-
As if the loveliest plants and trees
Had vassal breezes of their own,
To watch and wait on them alone,
And waft no other breath than theirs!
When the blue waters rise and fall,
In sleepy sunshine mantling all;
And even that swell the tempest leaves
Is like the full and silent heaves
Of lovers' hearts when newly blest-
Too newly to be quite at rest!
Such was the golden hour that broke
Upon the world, when Hinda woke
From her long trance, and heard around
No motion but the water's sound
Rippling against the vessel's side,
As slow it mounted o'er the tide.-
But where is she?-her eyes are dark,
Are wildered still-is this the bark,
The same that from Harmozia's bay
Bore her at morn-whose bloody way
The sea-dog tracks?-No! strange and new
Is all that meets her wondering view.
Upon a galliot's deck she lies,

Beneath no rich pavilion's shade,
No plumes to fan her sleeping eyes,
Nor jasmin on her pillow laid.

But the rude litter, roughly spread
With war-cloaks, is her homely bed,
And shawl and sash, on javelins hung,
For awning o'er her head are flung.
Shuddering she looked around-there lay
A group of warriors in the sun
Resting their limbs, as for that day
Their ministry of death were done;
Some gazing on the drowsy sea,
Lost in unconscious reverie;

And some, who seemed but ill to brook
That sluggish calm, with many a look
To the slack sail impatient cast,
As loose it flagged before the mast.

BYRON.

Byron was the writer whose blaze of popularity it mainly was that threw Scott's name into the shade, and induced him to abandon verse. Yet the productions which had this effect-the เ Giaour,' the Bride of Abydos,' the Corsair,' &c., published in 1813 and 1814 (for the new idolatry was scarcely kindled by the two respectable, but somewhat tame, cantos of 'Childe Harold,' in quite another style, which appeared shortly before these effusions), were, in reality, only poems written in what may be called a variation of Scott's own manner- —Oriental lays and romances, Turkish Marmions and Ladies of the Lake. The novelty of scene and subject, the exaggerated tone of passion in the outlandish tales, and a certain trickery in the writing (for it will hardly now be called anything else), materially aided by the mysterious interest attaching to the personal history of the noble bard, who, whether he sung of Giaours, or Corsairs, or Laras, was always popularly believed to be "himself the great sublime he drew," wonderfully excited and intoxicated the public mind at

first, and for a time made all other poetry seem tame and wearisome; but, if Byron had adhered to the style by which his fame was thus originally made, it probably would have proved transient enough. Few will now be found to assert that there is anything in these earlier poems of his comparable to the great passages in those of Scott-to the battle in Marmion,' for instance, or the raising of the clansmen by the fiery cross in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or many others that might be mentioned: But Byron's vigorous and elastic genius, although it had already tried various styles of poetry, was, in truth, as yet only preluding to its proper display. First, there had been the very small note of the Hours of Idleness;' then, the sharper, but not more original or much more promising, strain of the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' (a satirical attempt in all respects inferior to Gifford's 'Baviad and Mæviad,' of which it was a slavish imitation); next, the certainly far higher and more matured, but quiet and somewhat commonplace, manner of the two first cantos of Childe Harold;' after that, suddenly the false glare and preternatural vehemence of these Oriental rhapsodies, which yet, however, with all their hollowness and extravagance, evinced infinitely more power than anything he had previously done, or rather were the only poetry he had 'yet produced that gave proof of any remarkable poetic genius. The Prisoner of Chillon' and 'Parisina,' the 'Siege of Corinth' and 'Mazeppa,' followed, all in a spirit of far more truth, and depth, and beauty than the other tales that had preceded them; but the highest forms of Byron's poetry must be sought for in the two last cantos of 'Childe Harold,' in his 'Cain' and ' Manfred,' and,

4

above all, in his 'Don Juan.' The last-mentioned extraordinary work, unfinished as it is, may justly claim to be accounted on the whole the greatest English poem produced in the present century, or indeed in the preceding. It contains some, nay, much poetry, as high as is to be found in any other, and no other displays a poetic genius nearly so rich and various-so great in the most opposite kinds of writing, from the lightest play of wit and satire up to the noblest strains of impassioned song. We will give the letter of Julia to Juan in the First Canto, which may be compared with the letter of Constance in Campbell's 'Theodric,' given a few back:

They tell me 'tis decided; you depart;

'Tis wise-'tis well, but not the less a pain;
I have no further claim on your young heart;
Mine is the victim, and would be again;
To love too much has been the only art

I used; I write in haste, and, if a stain
Be on this sheet,' tis not what it appears;
My eyeballs burn and throb, but have no tears.

I loved, I love you, for this love have lost

pages

State, station, heaven, mankind's, my own esteem,
And yet cannot regret what it hath cost,

So dear is still the memory of that dream;
Yet, if I name my guilt, 'tis not to boast;
None can deem harshlier of me than I deem ;
I trace this scrawl because I cannot rest-
I've nothing to reproach, or to request.

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;

'Tis woman's whole existence;-man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,

And few there are whom these cannot estrange
Men have all these resources, we but one,—
To love again, and be again undone.