Whose face so many worlds have gaz'd upon;
The placid moon, beneath whose pensive beam
We all have loved to wander and to dream,
Dyed into blood, shall glare from pole to pole,
And light the airy tempests as they roll;
And those sweet stars, that, like familiar eyes,
Are wont to smile a welcome from the skies,
Thick as the hail-drops, from their depths will bound, And far terrific meteors flash around;
But while the skies are scatter'd by the war
Of planet, moon, rent-cloud, and down-shot star,
Stupendous wreck below-a burning world!
As if the flames of hell were on the winds unfurl'd!
Around the horizon wheels one furnace blaze,
Streaking the black heavens with gigantic rays;
Now bursting into wizard phantoms bright,
And now immingled in a sea of light;
Till racing hurricanes unrol on high,
And whirl the fire-clouds quiv'ring through the sky
Like sea-foam flung upon a mountain-side,
When maniac winds upon the surges ride.
And, lo! the Sea: along her ruin'd shore
The white waves gallop with delirious roar,
Till Ocean, in her agonizing throe,
Bounds, swells, and sinks, like heaping hills of snow!
While downward vollied crags and torrents sweep,
And wildly mingle with the blaze-lit deep.
And now, while shadowy worlds career around,
While mountains tremble, and while earthquakes sound,
While waves and winds rush roaring to the fray,
Who shall abide the horrors of the day?
How shall we turn our terror-stricken eye,
To gaze upon the fire-throned DEITY?
Hark! from the deep of heaven, a trumpet sound Thunders the dizzy universe around;
From north to south, from east to west, it rolls,
A blast that summons all created souls;
And swift as ripples rise upon the deep,
The dead awaken from their dismal sleep:
The Sea has heard it;-coiling up with dread,
Myriads of mortals flash from out her bed!
The graves fly open, aud with awful strife,
The dust of ages startles into life!
All who have breath'd, or mov'd, or seen, or felt;
All they around whose cradles Kingdoms knelt:
Tyrants and warriors, who career'd in blood;
The great and mean, the glorious and the good,
Are raised from every isle, and land, and tomb,
To hear the changeless and eternal doom.
But while the universe is wrapt in fire,
Ere yet the splendid ruin shall expire,
Beneath a canopy of flame behold,
With starry banners at his feet unroll'd
Earth's Judge: around seraphic minstrels throng,
Breathing o'er golden harps celestial song;
While melodies aerial and sublime
Weave a wild death-dirge o'er departing Time.
Imagination! furl thy wings of fire,
And on Eternity's dread brink expire;
Vain would thy red and raging eye behold
Visions of Immortality unroll'd!
The last, the fiery chaos hath begun,
Quench'd is the moon! and blacken'd is the sun!
The stars have bounded through the airy roar;
Crush'd lie the rocks, and mountains are no more;
The deep unbosom'd, with tremendous gloom
Yawns on the ruin like Creation's tomb!" pp. 107-112.
Besides, "The Omnipresence of the Deity," this little volume contains some minor poems that are not without merit. We have not space for more than the following specimens:
CÆSAR ON THE BANKS OF THE RUBICON.
“Amid the roar of revelry
Within th' Alesian dome,
He moved, with glad, but musing eye,-
The vanquisher of Rome!
His spirit mingled with the gay,
And flash'd the gloom of war away.
And there he joyed, till darkling Night
Threw round her dewy veil,
And mist wreath'd round each Alpine height
That beetled o'er the dale;
Then Cæsar rose, his bosom fraught
With incommunicable thought.
And swiftly sped the hero on,
Along his shadowy road;
And reach'd where roll'd the Rubicon,
That from the mountains flow'd;
And there his giant thought's control
Chain'd down a dauntless Cæsar's soul
Before him heav'd the river-bound
Between great Rome and Gaul;
If cross'd-what trumpet-clangs would sound;
How many a foeman fall!
The vision'd Future, wild with woes,
Before him, like a spectre rose.
He mused on battle, war, and blood,
On plunder'd cities' storm;
The ready daggers of the good
Against a tyrant's form;
On all the mountain-perils thrown
"Tween Rome and triumph,-for his own!
Of what the unborn Times would say,
At Rubicon's grand name,
Of him who track'd with blood his way,
And with it built his fame;
Would he not seem a demon then,
Who ravish'd all the rights of men?
And thus the mighty Cæsar stood,
And battled with his mind;
Then gazed upon the fatal flood,
And dash'd his doubts behind!
Like a bent bow, his pride return'd,
And all the Roman in him burn'd.
"The die is cast!-the die is cast!"
With reckless fire he cried;
Then swift the Rubicon he pass'd,
And reach'd the Roman side;
Ere day had dawn'd he drew the sword,
And Ariminum hailed him lord." pp. 145-148.
We were not aware that the penultimate in Ariminum was ever long.
"All pale, and pillow'd on a chair, she lay,-
The beautiful, the passionate Corinne !
The beamy language of her eyes no more
Darted around such eloquence of soul,
As when, amid the crowd, her feelings flash'd
From out their burning balls; while she herself
Was living poetry! Deep pensiveness,
And intense looks, that tell the blighted heart,
Effus'd a dreamy langour round her form.
Ere yet her spirit breath'd itself to heaven,
She sat, to gaze upon the shrouded Moon,
Riding the mellow skies: Athwart her face
Floated that fatal cloud; the same she saw
When Melville woo'd her by the winding shore:
On him, enamour'd kneeling at her feet,
She look'd, and in one look condens'd
The buried anguish of a broken heart;
Her white lips feebly parted, then re-clos'd
For ever! Gazing then upon the sky,
She faintly beckon'd to the gleaming moon,
While down her neck her streamy ringlets fell,
Like dropping sunbeams on a pallid cloud!
And now a change came on; the blood sunk back
Beneath her radiant cheek, her eye-lids mov'd
Like melting snow-flakes from the noon-tide glow,
And all her beauty quite empyreal turn'd,
As if refining, ere it went to heaven;
Her hand fell downward with her farewell sigh-
Her spirit had departed!" pp. 153–154.
"No priestly prayer, avail'd: gaunt Famine stalk'd
Through Cairo's streets by day and night, and suck'd
The life-blood from her hungry thousands there;
From wall to wall, from house to house, were heard
The gasping yells of famish'd men, and wails
Of mothers, with dead infants at their breasts,
Whose baked lips, and eyelids curling up
Like wither'd violet leaves, and fleshless hands,
Were blasted by the pest of Famine's touch.
Some gnaw'd their nails in agony; some groan'd,
And work'd their eye-balls with a horrid glare,
Rooted their tresses, and expired! And here,
Pale groups, with bony cheek and beamless stare,
Did stagger out, and choke themselves with cries
For death! while others, 'neath funeral palls,
Moved slowly on, like sable thunder-clouds,
Then sat, and howl'd upon the new-dug graves!
So deadlike look'd the bloodless shapes around,
That Cairo seemed a charnel-house revived,
Whose dregs were crawling into life again!
In vain the priests exhaled their souls to heaven
In agonizing prayers; no Mercy smiled
An answer to their vows. Still Famine swept
Her thousands into dust; still every wind
Wing'd to the skies the howlings of despair,
At length unspotted babes, whose milk-white robes
Gleam'd pure as dove-wings in the radiant air,
By Imans led, climb'd up the min❜ret spires,
To sue a pestilence,-the famine's cure:
There, on the gilded peaks, their hands were raised,
In adoration clasp'd, as if instinct with prayer;
And while their cherub mouths in lisping tones
Besought the plague, the pale-eyed crowd below,
Stirr'd like a waking wind upon the deep,
Moved their lean lips, and mutter'd-" Let it be !"
Heaven heard the prayer: a Pestilence came down,
And made an atmosphere of death! Men dropp'd
Into corruption thick as wintry blights
Upon the blacken'd bushes. Hill and dale,
Hamlet and city, groan'd with ghastly piles
Of green-eyed dead: the houses turned to tombs,
And they who roam'd the desert's dewless wilds
Were plague-smit by the way, and moulder'd there,
Like scathed branches from a forest tree:
And thus was Cairo curs'd, till by the dead
The plague itself corrupted, died away." pp. 169-171.
Page 51, line 4, dele "and"-line 5, read and we beheld, &e.
"25, for construction read institution.
"101, note, instead of lib. ii. Tit. 59, read 56.
"102, line 35, for Jona read Ionia.
4 from bottom, dele comma after ungenerous. "27, for immediate read immoderate.
6, for comparably read incomparably.
In the first part of the article "Malaria," Dr. MacCulloch's name is mis-spelt. Note. For the second sentence in page 49, beginning "The former is found," &c. read, They are found in no other language than in the Spanish, says Bouterwek, while Sismondi tells us, they were proper to all the popular songs in the languages of the South, though none but the Spaniards ever subjected them to rules.
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