OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though To winnow fragrance round the smiling land.

small, But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, He sees his little lot the lot of all; And sensual bliss is all the nation knows. Sees no contiguous palace rear its head In florid beauty groves and fields appear, To shame the meanness of his humble shed, Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal Contrasted faults through all his manners reign ; To make him loathe his vegetable meal ; Though poor, luxurious ; though submissive, vain; But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, Though grave, yet trifling; zealous, yet untrue ; Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. And e'en in penance planning sins anew. Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose, All evils here contaminate the mind,

Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes ; That opulence departed leaves behind ;

With patient angle trolls the finny deep, For wealth was theirs ; not far removed the date Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep ; When commerce proudly flourished through the Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, state ;

And drags the struggling savage into day. At her command the palace learnt to rise, At night returning, every labor sped, Again the long-fallen column sought the skies ; He sits him down the monarch of a shed : The canvas glowed beyond e'en Nature warm, Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys The pregnant quarry teemed with human form. His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze ; Till, more unsteady than the southern gale, While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, Commerce on other shores displayed her sail ; Displays her cleanly platter on the board ; While naught remained of all that riches gave, And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, But towns unmanned, and lords without a slave : With many a tale repays the nightly bed. And late the nation found with fruitless skill Its former strength was but plethoric ill.

Yet still the loss of wealth is here supplied
By arts, the splendid wrecks of former pride ;

ITALY.
From these the feeble heart and long-fallen mind
An easy compensation seem to find.

O ITALY, how beautiful thou art !
Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp arrayed, Yet I could weep, - for thou art lying, alas !
The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade; Low in the dust; and they who come admire thee
Processions formed for piety and love,

As we admire the beautiful in death. A mistress or a saint in every grove.

Thine was a dangerous gift, the gift of beauty. By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, Would thou hadst less, or wert as once thou wast, The sports of children satisfy the child ; Inspiring awe in those who now enslave thee! Each nobler aim, represt by long control, But why despair ? Twice hast thou lived already, Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul ; Twice shone among the nations of the world, While low delights succeeding fast behind, As the sun shines among the lesser lights In happier meanness occupy the mind ; Of heaven; and shalt again. The hour shall come, As in those domes where Caesars once bore sway, When they who think to bind the ethereal spirit, Defaced by time and tottering in decay, Who, like the cagle cowering o'er his prey, There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, Watch with quick eye, and strike and strike again The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed, If but a sinew vibrate, shall consess And, wondering man could want the larger pile, Their wisdom folly. Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile.

My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey, Where rougher climes a nobler race display, Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion

VENICE. tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread ; There is a glorious City in the Sea. No product here the barren hills afford, The Sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword. Ebbing and flowing ; and the salt sea-weed No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, Clings to the marble of her palaces. But winter lingering chills the lap of May; No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the Sea, But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. Invisible ; and from the land we went,

Yet still, e'en here, content can spread a charm, As to a floating City, -- steering in, Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm, And gliding up her streets as in a dream,

SAMUEL ROGERS.

SAMUEL R

So smoothly, silently, — by many a dome

ROME.
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky;

I am in Rome! Oft as the morning ray
By many a pile in more than Eastern splendor, Visits these eyes, waking at once I cry,
Of old the residence of merchant kings; Whence this excess of joy? What has b
The fronts of some, though Time had shattered me ?
them,

And from within a thrilling voice replies, Still glowing with the richest hues of art, Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy the As though the wealth within them had run o'er. Rush on my mind, a thousand images;

And I spring up as girt to run a race !

A few in fear, Flying away from him whose boast it was Thou art in Rome ! the City that so lo: That the grass grew not where his horse haul trod, Reigned absolute, the mistress of the worl Gave birth to Venice. Like the water-fowl, The mighty vision that the prophets saw, They built their nests among the ocean waves ; And trembled ; that from nothing, from the And where the sands were shifting, as the wind The lowliest village (what but here and ti Blew from the north, the south ; where they that A reed-roofed cabin by a river-side ? ) came,

Grew into everything; and, year by year, Had to make sure the ground they stood upon, Patiently, fearlessly working her way Rose, like an exhalation, from the deep, O'er brook and field, o'er continent and s A vast Metropolis, with glittering spires, Not like the merchant with his merchand With theatres, basilicas adorned ;

Or traveller with staff and scrip exploring A scene of light and glory, a dominion,

But hand to hand and foot to foot throug! That has endured the longest among men.

Through nations numberless in battle arra

Each behind each, cach, when the other And whence the talisman by which she rose

Up and in arms, at length subdued them Towering ? ’T was found there in the barren sea. Want led to Enterprise ; and, far or near, Who met not the Venetian? — now in Cairo; Ere yet the Califa came, listening to hear THE GRECIAN TEMPLES AT PE Its bells approaching from the Red Sea coast; Now on the Euxine, on the Sea of Azoph,

Ix Pæstum's ancient fanes I trod, In converse with the Persian, with the Russ,

And mused on those strange men of The Tartar; on his lowly deck receiving

Whose dark religion could infold Pearls from the gulf of Ormus, gems from Bagdad, So many gods, and yet no God ! Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love From Georgia, from Circassia. Wandering round,

Did they to human feelings own, When in the rich bazaar he saw, displayed,

And had they human souls indeed, Treasures from unknown climes, away he went,

Or did the sternness of their creed And, travelling slowly upward, drew erelong

Frown their faint spirits into stone ? From the well-head supplying all below;

The southern breezes fan my face; Making the Imperial City of the East

I hear the hum of bees arise, Herself his tributary.

And lizards dart, with mystic eyes, Thus did Venice rise,

That shrine the secret of the place ! Thus flourish, till the unwelcome tidings came,

These silent columns speak of dread, That in the Tagus had arrived a fleet From India, from the region of the Sun,

Of lovely worship without love; Fragrant with spices, that a way was found,

And yet the warm, deep heaven aboy

Whispers a softer tale instead!
A channel opened, and the golden streain
Turned to enrich another. Then she felt
Her strength departing, and at last she fell,
Fell in au instant, blotted out and razed ;
She who had stood yet longer than the longest

COLISEUM BY MOONLIGHT. Of the Four Kingdoms, — who, as in an Ark,

FROM “MANFRED."
Had floated down amid a thousand wrecks,
Uninjured, from the Old World to the New.

The stars are forth, the moon above th
Of the snow-shining mountains. – Beaut

ROSSITER W. RAY

SAMUEL ROGERS.

inasa

I linger yet with Nature, for the night

Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, Hath been to me a more familiar face

And shadows forth its glory. There is given Than that of man; and in her starry shade Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, Of dim and solitary loveliness

A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant I learned the language of another world.

His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power I do remember me, that in my youth,

And magic in the ruined battlement, When I was wandering, – upon such a night For which the palace of the present hour I stood within the Coliseum's wall,

Must yield its pomp, and wait tillages are its dower. Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome. The trees which grew along the broken arches And here the buzz of cager nations ran, Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars In murmured pity, or loud-roared' applause, Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and And wherefore slaughtered ? wherefore, but More near from out the Caesars' palace came

because The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,

Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws, Of distant sentinels the fitful song

And the imperial pleasure. – Wherefore not? Begun and died upon the gentle wind.

What matters where we fall to fill the maws Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach Of worms, - on battle-plains or listed spot ? Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot. Within a bowshot, - where the Cæsars dwelt, And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst I sec before me the Gladiator lie ; A grove which springs through levelled battle He leans upon his hand, - his manly brow ments,

Consents to death, but conquers agony, And twines its roots with the imperial hearths. | And his drooped head sinks gradually low,Ivy usurpis the laurel's place of growth ;

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, A noble wreck in ruinous perfection,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now While Cæsar's chambers and the Augustan halls The arena swims around him, — he is gone, Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. ---, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon

wretch who won. All this, and cast a wide and tender light, Which softened down the hoar austerity

He heard it, but he hecded not, - his eyes Of rugged desolation, and filled up,

Were with his heart, and that was far away. As 't were anew, the gaps of centuries,

He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, Leaving that beautiful which still was so,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, And making that which was not, till the place There were his young barbarians all at play, Became religion, and the heart ran o'er

There was their Dacian mother, - he, their sire, With silent worship of the great of old !

Butchered to make a Roman holiday! — The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule

All this rushed with his blood. --- Shall he expire Our spirits from their urns.

And unavenged ? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your

ire!

BYRON.

THE COLISEUM.

FROM “CHILDE HAROLD."
ARCHES on arches ! as it were that Rome,
Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome,
Her Coliseum stands; the moonbeams shine
As 't were its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume
This long-explored, but still exhaustless, mine

Of contemplation; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody

steam,
And here, where buzzing nations choked the

ways,
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays;
Here, where the Roman millions' blame or praise
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,
My voice sounds much, — and fall the stars'

faint rays
On the arena void, seats crushed, walls bowed,
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strange-

ly loud.

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,

|

A ruin, — yet what ruin ! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared ;