LIFE ebbs from such old age, unmark'd and silent,

As the slow neap-tide leaves yon stranded galley.

Late she rock'd merrily at the least impulse

That wind or wave could give; but now her keel

Is settling on the sand, her mast has ta'en

An angle with the sky, from which it shifts not.

Each wave receding shakes her less and less,

Till, bedded on the strand, she shall remain

Useless as motionless.

Chap. XL.

Old Play.

So, while the Goose, of whom the fable told,

Incumbent, brooded o'er her eggs of gold,

'And though my sun of glory set, Nor France nor England shall forget The terror of my name; And oft shall Britain's heroes rise, New planets in these southern skies, Through clouds of blood and flame.'

Chap. II.

FRAGMENT FROM ARIOSTO.

LADIES, and knights, and arms, and love's fair flame,

Deeds of emprise and courtesy, I sing;

What time the Moors from sultry

Africk came,

Led on by Agramant, their youthful king

Him whom revenge and hasty ire did bring

O'er the broad wave, in France to waste and war;

Such ills from old Trojano's death did spring,

Which to avenge he came from realms afar,

And menaced Christian Charles, the

Roman Emperor.

Of dauntless Roland, too, my strain shall sound,

In import never known in prose or rhyme,

How he, the chief of judgment deem'd profound,

For luckless love was crazed upon a time

Chap. XVI.

MOTTOES.

In the wide pile, by others heeded not, Hers was one sacred solitary spot,

Look round thee, young Astolpho: Here's the place

Which men (for being poor) are sent to starve in,

Rude remedy, I trow, for sore disease. Within these walls, stifled by damp and stench,

Doth Hope's fair torch expire; and at the snuff,

Ere yet 'tis quite extinct, rude, wild, and wayward,

The desperate revelries of wild depair,

Kindling their hell-born cressets, light to deeds

That the poor captive would have died ere practised,

Till bondage sunk his soul to his condition.

Chap. XXII.

The Prison, Act i. Sc. iii.