DARKNESS. BYRON. I had a dream, which was not all a dream. Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came, and went--and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires-and the thrones, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons: cities were consumed, And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up The pall of a past world; and then again upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd, And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes All earth was but one thought—and that was death, Died-and their bones were tombless as their flesh; Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, But with a piteous and perpetual moan And they were enemies; they met beside For an unholy usage; they raked up, And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands Blew for a little life, and made a flame Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died— And their masts fell down peacemeal; as they dropp'd The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon their mistress had expired before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need CURRAN, IN DEFENCE OF OWEN KIRWAN. It has become my painful duty to state to the court and jury the defence of the prisoner. I was chosen for this very unpleasant task without my concurrence or knowledge-but as soon as I was apprized of it, I accepted it without hesitation. To assist a human being labouring under the most awful of all situations, trembling in the dreadful alternative of honorable life, or ignominious death, is what no man, worthy of the name ought to refuse. I cannot, however, but confess, that I feel no small consolation when I compare my present with my former situations upon similar occasions. In those sad times, to which I allude, it was frequently my fate to come forward to the spot where I now stand, with a body sinking under infirmity and disease, and a mind broken with the consciousness of public calamity, created and exasperated by public folly. It has pleased heaven that I should live to survive both these afflictions, and I am grateful for its mercy. I now come here through a quiet and peaceful city. I read no expression in any face, save such as mark the ordinary feelings of social life, or the various characters of civil occupation. I see no frightful spectacle of infuriated power or suffering humanity. I see no tortures.-I hear no shrieks.I no longer see the human heart charr'd in the flame of its own vile and angry passions-black and bloodless--capable only of catching and communicating that destructive fire by which it devours and is itself devoured. I no longer behold the ravages of that odious bigotry by which we were deformed, and degraded, and disgraced;—a bigotry against which no honest man should ever miss an opportunity of putting his countrymen of all sects and denominations upon their guard; it is the accursed and promiscuous progeny of servile hypocrisy-of remorseless lust of power of insatiate thirst of gain-labouring for the destruction of man, under the specious pretence of religion her banner stolen from the altar of God, and her allies congregated from the abysses of hell, she acts by votaries to be restrained by no compunctions of humanity-for they are dead to mercy; to be reclaimed by no voice of reason-for refutation is the bread on which their folly feeds; they are outlawed alike from their species and their God; the object of their crime is social life-and the wages of their sin is social death; for though it may happen that a guilty individual should escape from the law which he has broken, it cannot be so with nations;—their guilt is too extensive and unweildy for such escape;-they may rest assured it has in the natural connexion between causes and effects, established a system of retributive justice, by which the crimes of nations are soon |