a

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavour,

Now now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells !
What a tale their terror tells

Of Despair!

a

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air.

Yet the ear it fully knows,

By the twanging,

And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling,

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells ;

Of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells, bells,
In the clamour and the clangour of the bells,

a

Hear the tolling of the bells—

Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!

In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people--ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,
And who toiling, toiling, toiling,

In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-

They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

Rolls

a

Lake Leman by Night.

205

Α.
pæan

from the bells !
And his

merry

bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells !
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells-

Of the bells :
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells
Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-

To the tolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-

Bells, bells, bells-
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

43.-LAKE LEMAN BY NIGHT.

LORD BYRON.

22

"

[With Byron rose a new, more lofty, and more finished style of poetry than any that had preceded his, that of Shakspeare and Milton alone excepted. To the smooth versification of Pope he added the grandeur of imagery and the power of description. His first efforts, which were certainly but feeble, were sneered at by the Edinburgh Reviewers. In 1807, the “Hours of Idleness" was published; five years afterwards the opening Cantos of “Childe Harold had made him famous.' “The Prisoner of Chillon,” “Manfred,” “ Lament of Tasso," followed in rapid succession; then came the completion of “Childe Harold;" afterwards Mazeppa," and the commencement of “Don Juan;" the latter defying public “proprieties," but astonishing the world by its bursts of poetic grandeur. Then came the Dramas, never intended for the stage, but which the cupidity of managers subsequently dragged upon the boards. Of Byron's ill-starred marriage and subsequent excesses, something too much has already been written. His whole life reads like a romance of the most startling kind; his death, an attack of fever, almost an inevitable consequence. He died in Greece 1824, at the age of thirty-six, and was buried in the family vault at Hucknall, near Newstead.]

CLEAR, placid Leman! that contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring

Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk yet clear,
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear

Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more.

He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,

Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,—'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with

you;

for A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

All heaven and earth are still, though not in sleep,
But breathless as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep :-
All heaven and earth are still. From the high host
Of stars, to the lull’d lake and mountain coast,
All is concenter'd in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,

But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,
The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty:-'twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.

Not vainly did the early Persian make
His altar the high places and the peak

a

ye are

Of earth-o’ergazing mountains, and thus take
A fit and unwall’d temple, there to seek
The spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak,
Upreard of human hands. Come, and compare
Columns and idol-dwellings, Goth or Greek,

With nature's realms of worship, earth and air,
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy pray'r!

44.- ELIHU.

ALICE CAREY.

66

“O SAILOR, tell me, tell me true,
Is

ту little lad—my Elihu-
A sailing in your ship ?”
The sailor's eyes were dimmed with dew.
“Your little lad? your Elihu ?”

He said with trembling lip;

“What little lad—what ship?"
What little lad ? -as if there could be
Another such a one as he !

What little lad, do you say ?”
Why, Elihu, that took to the sea
The moment I put him off my

knee.
It was just the other day

The Gray Swan sailed away.”
The other day? The sailor's eyes
Stood wide open with surprise.

• The other day?--the Swan ?".
His heart began in his throat to rise.
'Ay, ay, sir; here in the cupboard lies
The jacket he had on.”

“ And so your lad is gone!
“Gone with the Swan.” “ And did she stand
With her anchor clutching hold of the sand,

For a month, and never stir ?”
Why, to be sure! I've seen from the land,
Like a lover kissing his lady's hand,

The wild sea kissing her

A sight to remember, sir.” “But, my good mother, do

you

know,
All this was twenty years ago

?
I stood on the Gray Swan's deck,
And to that lad I

you

throwTaking it off, as it might be so—

66

a

a

saw

the wrong

The kerchief from your neck;

Ay, and he'll bring it back.
“ And did the little lawless lad,
That has made you sick, and made you sad,

Sail with the Gray Swan's crew ?”
“Lawless! the man is going mad;
The best boy mother ever had;

Be sure, he sailed with the crew

What would you have him do ?”
“And he has never written line,
Nor sent you word, nor made you sign,
To
say

he was alive po
Hold-if 'twas
wrong,

is mine;
Besides, he may be in the brine;
And could he write from the grave ?

Tut, man! what would you have ?”
“Gone twenty years ! a long, long cruise ;
'Twas wicked thus your love to abuse;

But if the lad still live,
And come back home, think you you can
Forgive him "

“ Miserable man!
You're mad as the sea; you rave-

What have I to forgive ?”
The sailor twitched his shirt so blue,
And from within his bosom drew

The kerchief. She was wild :
“My God !-my Father!-is it true?
My little lad-my Elihu ?
And is it?-is it?—is it you?

My blessed boy-my child-
My dead-my living child !"

1

45.-TO MARY IN HEAVEN.

ROBERT BURNS. [Born in 1759, and dying in 1796, “more,” says Mr. Allan Cunningham, "of a broken heart than any other illness,” Robert Burns's birth stands on the threshold of the Centenary of British Bards whose writings are most familiar to the present generation. The most convincing proof that the gift of poesy is not the result of "learning overmuch,” is found in the fact that Burns was born a peasant, and that bis education was only in accordance with his station. He threshed in the barn, reaped, mowed, and held the plough before he was fifteen. Burns's fugitive pieces naturally passed from hand to hand, and attracted the attention of a few discerning individuals: by their aid he was enabled, in 1786, to publish his first volume. The result was, his name and fame flashed like sunshine over the land: the shepherd on the hill, the maiden at her wheel, learnt his songs by heart, and the first scholars of Scotland