A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.

The absent are the dead-for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless, or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided-equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both-but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.

The under-earth inhabitants - are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being?-darken'd and intense

As midnight in her solitude?-Oh Earth! [birth?
Where are the past? -and wherefore had they
The dead are thy inheritors—and we

But bubbles on thy surface; and the key
Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more.

SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN.

ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and De Staël-
Leman! (1) these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,

But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

Diodati, July, 1816.

(1) Geneva, Ferney, Copet, Lausanne. -[See antè, Vol. VIII. p. 163. —“ I have," says Lord Byron, " traversed all Rousseau's ground with the Héloïse before me, and am struck to a degree that I cannot express, with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. I enclose you a sprig of Gibbon's acacia and some rose-leaves from his garden, which, with part of his house, I have just seen. You will find honourable mention, in his Life, made of this acacia, when he walked out on the night of concluding his history. Madame de Staël has made Copet as agreeable as society can make any place on earth.”—B. Letters, 1816.]

ROMANCE MUY DOLOROSO

DEL

SITIO Y TOMA DE ALHAMA.