being; but the maintenance of its own power speaks the same dictate. The sensibilities which were opened up in the life of its childhood, are those of the whole nation. The numberless, unfathomable springs of delight which well up through its whole nature, and from which are the impulses of living energy that feed and animate its power, were all unlocked by the touches of delight which struck in earliest years on those native sensibilities. Let him dread lest those springs subside into their own silent depths, if the power be withdrawn which first solicited them to play. In those sensibilities he has possessed his power. Can he tell what that power may become without them? Let the Italian painter dare to trust to his magic pencil, not his fame alone, but his power over the minds of his people. Has he himself a moral will, or intellectual aspiration? To these his art shall find a way. From nature he shall acquire her own solemn spells; from the face of earth and sky, from the wondrous universe, he shall take those aspects of things, those mighty scenes, by which the spirit of nature holds dominion over the human soul. He shall not use a skill of vain delight; but, true to highest purposes, he shall seize, by mysterious powers, the imaginations of men, and through their imagination shall bind their hearts. Unknown to themselves, covering his moral end, in the beauty of his genius, he shall woo them by delight from the lower bent of their frailer nature, and draw them over to rejoice and to dwell in higher sensibilities, and in more solemn thought. As nature herself gives no tongue to her most dread admonitions, as her sweet persuasive influences fall silently on the heart; so genius, in the hour of its dominion, has no need to declare the end for which it works. It fulfils its own spirit, and trusts the consequences to the might of that nature, for, and with which it humbly uses its own frail instruments and feeble skill. It is scarcely to be doubt ed, that genius thus working will not only find itself richest in its own power, but will most powerfully infuse its own virtue into other hearts. It is
hard to tell in words how intellect can carry over its severe energy into the forms and colours of the pencil; yet those who have looked with understanding eyes on the shapes which sprang from Michael Angelo's stern and giant thought, on the dim and serious hues which shadow out the workings of Pousin's studious mind, they know well that intellect will bring out upon these materials its own impress, that it can find in them fit matter for its own labours, and require of others minds energy, toil, and exaltation of thought kindred to its own, rejecting from the circle of its sympathy all those who approach unprepared to the contemplation of its works. Who would wish an Indian philosopher, if the iron age of India can yet teem with the sacred birth, to found his speculations of wisdom on the almost material logic of Hartley or Locke? or who would counsel her poets to arrest the sympathy of their countrymen by spreading before them in vivid picture, the burning strife, and angry tumult of ordinary mortal life? This may be philosophy to our intelligence, and poetry to our imagination. But India has hid her spirit of thought in invisible worlds, and held her power in the spiritual being of man. There is the strength she still offers to her sons: the powers with which she broods over the continual arisings of their life. Wo to the degenerate son who should sever himself from her ancient might! She has darkened truth, and laid heavy oppression upon groaning life.
But if ever her teacher of truth shall arise, let him speak to her in the might of her own spirit-in the voice of her own tongue. If the avenger of prostrate life should ever lift up her head into liberty, let him remember the ages of the past, and give her strength which her nature can embrace, and powers in which her spirit can walk. Alas! our civilization, our knowledge, wars with her spirit; and subjugated as her strength is by our arms, her ancient mind will perhaps, be yet more prostrate under the ascendancy of our conquering intellect.
HUSHED were the tones of mirthful revelry,
Stayed were the music and the dance, as fell
On Croydon's Gothic towers and battlements,
The shades of dreary midnight. In the hall
The hearth's brands were decaying; but a flame
Lambently lighted up the vaulted roof,
And circling walls, where antlers branching wide,
And forehead skins of elk and deer were seen,
And fox's brush; the trophies of the chase;
And warriors cloaks depending, and the gleam
Of burnished armour.-
In her chamber, one
Sleepless alone remained, where all was still;
Reclining on a couch, and dreaming o'er
The thoughts-the happy scenes of other years;
And, with a sweet, seraphic countenance,
Shining in beauty and in solitude,
Like morning's rosy star, when from the sky
Her sisters have in silence disappeared.
Sorrowful Emma! were not thine of yore
Thoughts of unrest, and mournful countenance !
But sparkling eyes, that matched unclouded heaven
In their deep azure; and carnationed cheeks,
Round which the snow-drops like a halo spread ;
And an elastic footstep, like the nymph
Health, when in very wantonness of play,
She brushes from the green the dews of morn.
And why, wrapt up in cloak of eider-down,
Chilling thy beauty in the midnight air,
Breathing, in solitude, the deep-drawn sigh,
Con'st thou, unheard of all, the love-born tale,
The tale of hapless lovers, soft and sad;
And why, when all is still, and balmy sleep
Should seal the weary eyelids, dost thou sit
Mournfully beside the lattice, and attend
To the hollow murmurs of the distant sea,
Which fitfully, upon the passing gale
Break in, and die away?-
The winter's breath
Destroys the bloomy flowers-the ocean tide
Is governed by the moon; and, for thy grief,
Although unmarked by all, there is a cause !
And she hath laid her down, and silently,
As Retrospection wandered through the past,
Have her chaste eyelids closed; and, in her dream,
Lo! forests darken round with gloomy boughs,
And wolves are heard to howl; around her path
The forky lightnings flash; and deeply loud,
The thunders roll amid the blackening skies.-
Anon her steps have gained a precipice
Above the roaring sea, where, waste and wild,
The foamy billows chafe among the rocks-
The rocks whose sable heads, at intervals,
Are seen and disappear. Awfully dark
Night's shadows brood around; but, in the flash
Of the blue arrowy lightnings, far away
A vessel is descried upon the deep;
While moaning sounds are heard, and dismal shrieks
O'er the tempestuous billows breaking loud;
Until its stormy fury vented forth,
And the winds hushed to silence and to rest,
And the bright stars appearing, and the clouds
Breaking away, like armies from the field
When battle's clangor ceases,she beholds,
Pallid beneath a cliff, the form of him,
Her chosen hero, bleached by wave and wind,
Unconscious of the seamew with a shriek
Hovering around-the victim of the storm!
Anon the vision changes; armies throng
The arid fields of Palestine afar,
And, glittering in the setting sun, she sees
The Moorish crescent over Salem's walls,
The Infidel victorious, and the hosts
Of baffled Christendom dispersed: she sees
Disasters and defeat the lot of those,
Who, 'neath Godfredo's banner, daring, left
On perilous enterprise their native shore.-
The battle's voice hath ceased; the trumpet's note
Hath died upon the west-wind; bird and beast,
From mountain cliff on high, and woody dell,
Lured by the scent of blood, have come to gorge
On the unburied dead. Rider and horse,
The lofty and the low, commingled, lie
Unbreathing, and the balmy evening gale
Fitfully lifts the feathers on the crest
Of one, who slumbers with his vizor up!
Starting she wakes; and, o'er the eastern hill,
Lo! beautiful the radiant morn appears,
And, thro' the lattice, steadily streams in
The flood of crimson light; while, sitting there
Upon the outward ivy wreath, in joy
Happy the robin sings; his lucid tones
Of harmony delight her listening ear,
Dispel the gathered sadness of her heart,
And, tell her that her fears are but a dream.
But hark! why sounded is the warder's horn?—
Doth danger threaten, or do foes approach?—
The guard are at their station; and, she hears
The ring of brazen arms, as anxious there
The soldiers, girding on their swords, draw up;
The bugle's sound of peace is faintly heard,
Mournfully pleasing, in a dying strain,
Melodious-melancholy-far away!
An answer is returned; heavily down
Sinks the huge drawbridge and the iron tramp
Of steeds is heard fast-crossing. Joy to her,
To long forsaken Emma, joy to her!-
Obscured by tempests dark, and brooding storms,
The sun may wander through the sky unseen
The livelong day; until, above the tops
Of the steep western mountains, forth he glows,
Glorious, the centre of a crimson flood,
In brightness unapproachable: so oft
The span of human life is measured out:
Sorrow and care, companions of our steps,
Hover around us, blotting out the hopes
We long had cherished; banishing the bliss
We oft have tasted, till our path is dark;
Then lo! amid the gloom of hope deferred,
Breaks in a blessed light, a living day,
Like that of polar regions, glowing bright,
Unclouded, and unconscious of an end.-
A group of happy faces throng the hall,
And scarce hath Emma entered, like a flower
Blushing, and beautiful, with downcast eyes,
And palpitating bosom, ere her knight,
Young Ethelrid, from holy wars returned
With laurels on his crest to part no more,
Kneels faithful at her feet in ecstasy,
And lifts her snowy fingers to his lips.
Κατέσχε με σκοτος δεινον.
I CALL upon thee in the night,
When none alive are near ;
I dream about thee with delight,—
And then thou dost appear
Fair, as the day-star o'er the hill,
When skies are blue, and all is still.
Thou stand'st before me silently,
The spectre of the past;
The trembling azure of thine eye,
Without a cloud o'ercast;
Calm as the pure and silent deep,
When winds are hush'd and waves asleep.
Thou gazest on me!-but thy look
Of angel tenderness,
So pierces, that I less can brook
Than if it spoke distress,
Or came in anguish here to me
To tell of evil boding thee!
Around thee robes of snowy white,
With virgin taste are thrown;
And, at thy breast, a lily bright,
In beauty scarcely blown :-
Calmly thou gazest-like the moon
Upon the leafy woods of June.
The auburn hair is braided soft
Above thy snowy brow :-
Why dost thou gaze on me so oft!
I cannot follow now !
It would be crime, a double death
To follow by forbidden path.
But let me press that hand again,
I oft have pressed in love,
When sauntering thro' the grassy plain,
Or summer's evening grove ;
Or pausing, as we marked afar,
The twinkling of the evening star.
It is a dream, and thou art gone;
The midnight breezes sigh;
And downcast-sorrowful-alone-
With sinking heart, I lie
To muse on days, when thou to me
Wert more than all on earth can be!
Oh! lonely is the lot of him,
Whose path is on the earth,
And when his thoughts are dark and dim,
Hears only vacant mirth;
A swallow left, when all his kind
Have crossed the seas, and winged the wind.
REFLECTIONS ON A BRUMAL SCENE.
I HAVE an old remembrance-there are hours,
When clouds, that mantle o'er, with folds opaque,
The calm, clear mirror of the soul, disperse
Like icebergs from the pole; and leave behind
The pristine feelings of our youth unchanged,
Our boyish visions and romantic dreams,
Like landscapes pictured in a quiet lake.
I have an old remembrance-many a year
Hath come, and passed away; and many a smile
Been chased; and many a clamorous wo appeased;
And many a chance and change come o'er my lot,
Since then-but, from the shadows of the past,
It streams like sunbeams o'er an eastern hill,
And all its feelings thrill along my soul!
Chill is the air; the spirit of the frost
Reigns, with his icy sceptre; vale and field
Are sprinkled o'er with snowy offerings;
And from each leafless bough-what time the wind
Low-toned sighs past-a thousand glimmering shreds
Descending, tinkle on the ground beneath.
Chained are the sluggish waters to the shore;
And icicles, from overhanging shrubs,
Gleam in the sunshine with a sparry light:
Far o'er the surface comes the shadowy depth
Of the steep mountain-banks; and from the ledge,
Over whose downward rocks the river falls,
Comes back the chastened murmur with a tone,
Whose memory conjures up departed years.-
How pale is now the sunshine, pale and soft,
And tender as the faint smiles of a child;
Not on the far blue concave of the sky
Gleams forth one fleecy cloudlet, from the depth
Above me, to the hoary mountain tops,
Far distant, that engird the horizon in.
Enough. Between these banks precipitous,
When school hours were departed, oft-how oft,
Along the crackling ice, with glittering heel,
All eager have I glided; breathing out
The smoky breath in the clear frosty air;
When round me all was motion; and the ice
With many a winding semicerque was traced,
Whitening around, a labyrinthine clue.
Too soon gloomed twilight's feeble ray around,
Too soon the sun departed, while serene,
Above the hills, peeped forth the evening star.
How many a loved companion revelled here-
Alive in every fibre to the smile,
And thrilling touch of pleasure; boisterous
And noisy in their mirth,-like ocean waves,
When winds are piping loud,—but innocent,
And all unpractised in the guileful world.
My soul recoils-I dare not number them-
Oh! fast, and fearfully hath the spoiler death
Thinned their young ranks ;-this, sickened at his home;
And this, in far off lands; this, like the beam
Of daylight on the western hemisphere,
Died with a slow, invisible decay!
Yea, many, but all changed; with blackening wing,
The demon of the world hath seared their hearts
With sorrow, and with sufferings, and with guilt;
And what they were, can be but faintly traced
In what we find them now; a grievous change
Hath shadowed them ; nor more resemblance they
Bear to themselves of yore, than doth the year,
Wrapt in the glorious garment of the spring,
To bleak November on her hill of storms!
How piercing is the air; far distant things,
Girt by a pure translucent atmosphere,
Seem near: with hoary scalps, the mountains high
Stretch their gigantic pyramids to heaven;
So, to the Roman bard's domestic eye,
In golden ages past, Soracte stood,
White with its diadem of snow. 'Tis we,
Who change, alas! not nature; and where I,
Now moralizing, stray, shall others stray
To moralize, when I shall be no more!
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