There was their Dacian1 mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday!

All this rushed with his blood.-Shall he expire,
And unavenged ?—Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!
Byron.

TIME'S SONG.

go,

O'ER the level plain where mountains greet me as I
O'er the desert waste where fountains at my bidding flow
On the boundless beam by day, and on the cloud by night,
I am rushing hence away;—who will chain my flight?

War his weary watch was keeping;-I have crushed his spear:
Grief within her bower was weeping;-I have dried her tear.
Pleasure caught a minute's hold; then I hurried by,
Leaving all her banquet cold and her goblet dry.

Power had won a throne of glory!-where is now her fame?
Genius said: "I live in story;"-who hath heard his name?
Love beneath a myrtle bough, whispered "why so fast ?"
And the roses on his brow withered as I past.

I have heard2 the heifer lowing o'er the wild waves' bed,
I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle fed ;-
Where began my wanderings ?-Memory will not
say !
Where will rest my weary wings ?-Science turns away!

THE BALLOON.

SEE on the shoreless air the intrepid Gaul3
Launch the vast concave of his buoyant ball;
Journeying on high, the silken castle glides,
Bright as a meteor through the azure tides;
O'er towns, and towers, and temples, wins its way,
Or mounts sublime, and gilds the vault of day.

1 Dacian-The ancient Dacia included the modern Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bessarabia.

2 I have heard, &c.-In allusion to the geological changes that have upheaved the present surface of the earth, which, there is every reason to believe, was once the wild waves' bed." The corresponding depression is

referred to in the next line.

3 Intrepid Gaul-Montgolfier, a Frenchman, who became very celebrated as the first inventor of air balloons.

Silent, with upturned eyes, unbreathing crowds
Pursue the floating wonder to the clouds;

And flushed with transport, or benumbed with fear,
Watch, as it rises, the diminished sphere.

Now less and less!-and now a speck is seen!
And now the fleeting rack1 intrudes between!
The calm philosopher in ether sails,

Views broader stars, and breathes in purer gales;
Sees, like a map, in many a waving line
Round earth's blue plains her lucid waters shine;
Sees at his feet the forked lightnings glow,
And hears innocuous thunders roar below.

Darwin.

THE POWER OF STEAM.2

THE giant-power, from earth's remotest caves,
Lifts with strong arm her dark reluctant waves;
Each caverned rock, and hidden den explores,
Drags her dark coals, and digs her shining ores.
Next, in close cells of ribbed oak confined,

Gale after gale, he crowds the struggling wind;
The imprisoned storms3 through brazen nostrils roar,
Fan the white flame, and fuse the sparkling ore.
Here high in air the rising stream he pours,
To clay-built cisterns, or to lead-lined towers:
Fresh through a thousand pipes the wave distils,
And thirsty cities drink the exuberant rills.
There the vast mill-stone, with inebriate whirl,
On trembling floors his forceful fingers twirl,
Whose flinty teeth the golden harvests grind,
Feast without blood! and nourish human kind.
Now his hard hands on Mona's+ rifted crest,
Bosomed in rock, her azure ores arrest;

2 These lines very ingeniously master the difficulty of subjecting scientific details, to poetical numbers.

3 Storms-a strong hyperbole for the blasts of the forge-bellows.

4 Mona-The Isle of Anglesea. It is noted for its mineral riches, both in copper and lead.

5 Azure ores-the ores of copper are of a blueish tint,

With iron lips1 his rapid rollers seize

The lengthening bars, in thin expansion squeeze;
Descending screws with ponderous fly-wheels wound
The tawny plates, the new medallions round;
Hard dies of steel the cupreous circles cramp,
And with quick fall his massy hammers stamp.
The Harp, the Lily, and the Lion join,
And George and Britain guard the sterling coin.
Soon shall thy arm,3 unconquered Steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the fields of air.

Darwin.

ANCIENT BRITAIN.

Now borne upon the wings of truth sublime,
Review thy dim original and prime.

This island, spot of unreclaimed rude earth,
The cradle that received thee at thy birth,
Was rocked by many a rough Norwegian blast,
And Danish howlings scared thee as they passed;
For thou wast born amid the din of arms,
And sucked a breast that panted with alarms.
While yet thou wast a grovelling puling chit,
Thy bones not fashioned, and thy joints not knit,
The Roman taught thy stubborn knee to bow,
Though twice a Cæsar could not bend thee now.
His victory was that of orient light,

When the sun's shafts disperse the gloom of night;
Thy language at this distant moment shows
How much the country to the conqueror owes;
Expressive, energetic, and refined,

It sparkles with the gems he left behind:
He brought thy land a blessing when he came,
He found thee savage, and he left thee tame;

1 With iron lips, &c.-The lines which follow describe the process of coining. 2 The harp, &c. - The characteristic emblems of Ireland, France, and England.

3

Soon shall thy arm, &c.-These lines are curious and interesting, viewed as a kind of prophecy, for they were written several years before steam-boatsmuch less steam-carriages, had come into use.

P

Taught thee to clothe thy pinked1 and painted hide,
And grace thy figure with a soldier's pride;
He sowed the seeds of order where he went,
Improved thee far beyond his own intent,
And, while he ruled thee by the sword alone,
Made thee at last a warrior like his own.
Religion, if in heavenly truths attired,
Needs only to be seen to be admired;

But thine, as dark as witcheries of the night,
Was formed to harden hearts and shock the sight;
Thy Druids struck the well-hung harps they bore
With fingers deeply dyed in human gore;
And while the victim slowly bled to death,

Upon the rolling chords rang out his dying breath.

Cowper.

THE PROCESSION OF RIVERS.

AND afterwards the famous rivers came,
Which do the earth enrich and beautify;

The fertile Nile, which creatures new2 doth frame;
Long Rhodanus,3 whose source springs from the sky;
Fair Ister, flowing from the mountains high;
Divine Scamander, purpled yet with blood

Of Greeks and Trojans, which therein did die;
Pactolus+ glistening with his golden flood;

And Tigris fierce whose streams of none may be withstood;

Great Ganges, and immortal Euphrates,
Deep Indus, and Mæander intricate;
Slow Peneus, and tempestuous Phasides,5
Swift Rhine, and Alpheus, still immaculate,6
Araxes feared for great Cyrus' fate,
Tibris renowned for the Roman's fame.

1 Pinked-pierced with small holes-punctured-in allusion to the custom of tattooing, practised by our British ancestors. See Pictorial History of England, vol. i, p. 129.

2 Creatures new, &c.-The mud of the Nile used to have a fabulous reputation for producing, in consequence of its singular richness, new and monstrous animals. Rhodanus-the Rhone.

4 Pactolus-see note 4, p. 9.

3

6 Immaculate-in allusion to the fable of this river's passing under the sea to Sicily without mingling its waters.

Rich Orinoko though but knowen late;

And that huge river which doth bear the name Of warlike Amazons which do possess the same;

The noble Thames, with all his goodly train;
The Ouse, whom men do rightly Isis name;
The bounteous Trent, that in himself enseams1
Both thirty2 sorts of fish, and thirty streams;
The chalky Kennet, and the Thetis3 grey,
The morish Colne, and the soft-sliding Breane,+
The wanton Lea that oft doth lose his way,
And the still Darent, in whose waters clean

Ten thousand fishes play, and deck his pleasant stream.

There was the speedy Tamar, which divides
The Cornish and the Devonish confines;

Through both whose borders swiftly down it glides,
And meeting Plym, to Plymouth thence declines;
And Dart, nigh choked with sands of tinny mines;
But Avon marchéd in more stately path,
Proud of his adamants5 with which he shines
And glistens wide, as als of wondrous Bath,

And Bristol fair, which on his waves he builded hath.

Next these the plenteous Ouse came far from land,
By many a city and by many a town,

And many rivers taking underhand

Into his waters, as he passeth down—

The Clo, the Were, the Guant, the Stour, the Rowne;—
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,7
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a crown
He doth adorn, and is adorned of it

With many a gentle muse, and many a learned wit.

1 Enseams-Critics are not agreed whether this word means here, encloses,

or fattens, nourishes.

2 Thirty, &c.-See note 12, p. 146.

3 Thetis-it is difficult to say what river is meant here.

4 Breane-perhaps the Brent is intended.

5 Adamants-the quartz crystals found at Clifton, and usually called Bristol diamonds.

6 Als-also.

* Cambridge Alit-the Cam is a tributary of the Ouse, but poetically the Ouse may be said to flow past Cambridge.