SAD city of the silent place!
Queen of the dreary wilderness,
No voice of life, no passing sound
Disturbs thy dreadful calm around;
Save the wild desert-dweller's roar,
Which tells the reign of man is o'er,
Or winds that through thy portals sigh
Upon their night course flitting by!
The' eternal ruins frowning stand,
Like giant spectres of the land ;
Or o'er the dead like mourners hang,
Bent down by speechless sorrow's pang;
Where time, and space, and loneliness,
All, o'er the saddened spirit press,
Around in leaden slumbers lie
The dread wastes of infinity,
Where not a gentle hill doth swell,
Where not a hermit shrub doth dwell;
And where the song of wandering flood Ne'er voiced the fearful solitude.
How sweetly sad our pensive tears
Flow o'er each broken arch that rears
Its grey head through the mists of years!
And where are now the dreams of Fame,
The promise of a deathless name?
Alas! the deep delusion's gone!
And all, except the mouldering stone,
The wreath that decked the victor's hair,
Hath, like his glory, withered there.
And Time's immortal garlands twine
O'er desolation's mournful shrine,
Like youth's embrace around decline.
O'er Beauty's dark and desert bed
Ages of dreamless sleep have fled,
And in the domes where once she smiled,
The whispering weeds are waving wild ;
The prince's court is the' jackall's lair,
He peep's through Time's cold windows there;
Broken the harp, and all unstrung,
Perished the strains the minstrel sung.
The moss of ages is their pall,
And dull oblivion hides them all!
Yet there, though now no mortal eye
•Looks forth upon the earth and sky,
The evening star steals out as mild,
Above the lone and mighty wild,
As when young lovers hailed its light,
Far in the dark-blue fields of night;
And dews as brightly gem the ground,
As when a garden smiled around.
Go read thy fate, thou thing of clay,
In wrecks of ages rolled away;
Read it in this dread book of doom,
A city crumbled to a tomb!
Where the lorn remnants of the past
Shed deeper sadness o'er the waste,
Where Melancholy breathes her spell,
And chroniclers of ruin dwell.
Constable's Edinburgh Magazine.
ON THE BLINDNESS OF MILTON.
WHEN Milton's eye ethereal lights first drew,
Earth's gross and cumberous objects checked his view ;-
Quick, to remove these barriers from his mind,
Nature threw wide the' expanse and struck him blind.
To him a nobler vision then was given !—
He closed his eyes on earth, to look on heaven!
Brighton Gazette.
As dreams are made off; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
Он, man! before thy feverish brain
What thousand visions rise!
Like colours on the evening main,
Each loveliest, till it dies.
First bends the burning heart of youth
Before some heart untried;
Deems like its own, a stranger's truth,
And scorns the world beside!
Then life is one enchanted dream!
The hours too swift roll on ;
The heart is on the fatal stream,
We haste to be undone;
Pray but for life our faith to prove,
And call the early folly-Love!
But soon life's dangerous morn is past,
And well for us 'tis so
And well if o'er its sun be cast
No cloud of lasting woe.
Then tears must fall, as sad as vain,
The homage to our pride;
Yet, broken once the worthless chain, That bond no more is tied.
We wake, the light is round us shed,—
The prized are prized no more;
The passion of the hour is fled,—
The fondness, frenzy, o'er;
In wisdom we our idol fly,
And this is called-Inconstancy!
Then worldly dreams the spirits sway,
And still the waking's pain;
And hopeless still we turn away,
And hopeless turn again :
And faster, as the phantoms fly,
Pursues their willing slave;
And while their lustre fills the eye,
O'erlooks the opening grave.
But years will stoop the brow at last,—
The wintry hour will come;
Then, remnant, ruin of the past,
And trembling o'er her tomb,
To heaven, a last resource-we fly,
And dare to call it-Piety!
WIND the shell, bind the spell ;-
What is in it? Fond farewell!
Wreathed with drops from azure eyes,
Twilight vows, and midnight sighs.
Bind it on the maiden's soul!
Suns may set, and years may roll;
Yet, beneath the tender twine
All the spirit shall be thine.
Oceans may between you sweep, But the spell's as strong and deep! Anguish, distance, time are vainDeath alone can loose the chain. Literary Gazette.
I KNEW not that the world contained
A form so lovely as thine own;
Nor deemed that where such beauty reigned
Humility would fix her throne;
For I had marked, where eyes were bright,
Too well their owners knew their power,
And armed them with that dazzling light
The sun emits at noontide's hour;-
Too proud to veil a single ray,
Or one effulgent glance surrender,
And glittering with the blaze of day,
And scorning twilight's softer splendour.
I knew not, where the form displayed
Such symmetry and grace as thine,
That intellect would lend its aid,
And sentiment there raise her shrine;
For I had marked where form and face
Had beauty's varied charms combined, There oft was wanting feeling's traceThe beam of soul-the ray of mind! And vain has been each studied art,
And futile every cold endeavour!— The light that comes not from the heart A moment shines-then fades for ever.
But I, at last, have turned from those
Whom once I knew, to gaze on thee,-
On thee, whose cheek's divinest glows
Reveal thy bosom's purity!
The summer sky is calm-serene—
The summer-ocean mildly fair,
As if some bright-some heavenly scene
In beauty were reflected there ;—
And thus when on thy brow I gaze,
And view the lights around it gleaming,
They seem to be the living rays
From heart, and soul, and spirit beaming. London Magazine.
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