And beauty, by the hand of Power divine
Lavished on all its works. Eternity
Shall thus roll on with ever fresh delight;
No pause of pleasure or improvement; world
On world still opening to the instructed mind
An unexhausted universe, and time
But adding to its glories. While the soul,
Advancing ever to the Source of light
And all perfection, lives, adores, and reigns
In cloudless knowledge, purity, and bliss.
"Look not upon the Wine when it is red."-N. P. WILLIS.
Look not upon the wine when it
Is red within the cup!
Stay not for Pleasure when she fills
Her tempting beaker up!
Though clear its depths, and rich its glow,
A spell of madness lurks below.
They say 'tis pleasant on the lip,
And merry on the brain:
They say it stirs the sluggish blood,
And dulls the tooth of pain.
Ay-but within its glowing deeps
A stinging serpent, unseen, sleeps.
Its rosy lights will turn to fire,
Its coolness change to thirst;
And, by its mirth, within the brain
A sleepless worm is nursed.
There's not a bubble at the brim
That does not carry food for him.
Then dash the brimming cup aside,
And spill its purple wine:
Take not its madness to thy lip-
Let not its curse be thine.
'Tis red and rich-but grief and wo
Are hid those rosy depths below.
on the Death of a Friend.-ANDREws Norton.
O STAY thy tears; for they are blessed,
Whose days are passed, whose toil is done;
Here midnight care disturbs our rest,
Here sorrow dims the noon-day sun.
For laboring virtue's anxious toil,
For patient sorrow's stifled sigh,
For faith that marks the conqueror's spoil,
Heaven grants the recompense, to die.
How blessed are they, whose transient years
Pass like an evening meteor's flight;
Not dark with guilt, nor dim with tears;
Whose course is short, unclouded, bright.
O cheerless were our lengthened way;
But heaven's own light dispels the gloom,
Streams downward from eternal day,
And casts a glory round the tomb.
Then stay thy tears; the blessed above
Have hailed a spirit's heavenly birth,
Sung a new song of joy and love;
And why should anguish reign on earth?
Dirge of Alaric the Visigoth.-EDWARD EVERETT
Alaric stormed and spoiled the city of Rome, and was afterwards buried in the channel of the river Busentius, the water of which had been diverted from its course that the body might be interred.
WHEN I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear;
For I will die as I did live,
Nor take the boon I cannot give.
Ye shall not raise a marble bust
Upon the spot where I repose;
Ye shall not fawn before my dust,
In hollow circumstance of woes;
Nor sculptured clay, with lying breath,
Insult the clay that moulds beneath.
Ye shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of power to rest;
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was "the scourge of God."
But ye the mountain stream shall turn,
And lay its secret channel bare,
And hollow, for your sovereign's urn,
A resting-place for ever there:
Then bid its everlasting springs
Flow back upon the king of kings;
And never be the secret said,
Until the deep give up his dead
My gold and silver ye shall fling
Back to the clods, that gave them birth ;-
The captured crowns of many a king,
The ransom of a conquered earth:
For, e'en though dead, will I control
The trophies of the capitol.
But when, beneath the mountain tide,
Ye've laid your monarch down to rot,
Ye shall not rear upon its side
Pillar or mound to mark the spot;
For long enough the world has shook
Beneath the terrors of my look;
And, now that I have run my race,
The astonished realms shall rest a space.
My course was like a river deep,
And from the northern hills I burst,
Across the world, in wrath to sweep,
And where I went the spot was cursed,
Nor blade of grass again was seen
Where Alaric and his hosts had been.
See how their haughty barriers fail
Beneath the terror of the Goth,
Their iron-breasted legions quail
Before my ruthless sabaoth,
And low the queen of empires kneels,
And grovels at my chariot-wheels.
Not for myself did I ascend
In judgment my triumphal car;
'Twas God alone on high did send
The avenging Scythian to the war,
To shake abroad, with iron hand,
The appointed scourge of his command.
With iron hand that scourge I reared
O'er guilty king and guilty realm;
Destruction was the ship I steered,
And vengeance sat upon the helm,
When, launched in fury on the flood,
I ploughed my way through seas of blood,
And, in the stream their hearts had spilt,
Washed out the long arrears of guilt.
Across the everlasting Alp
I poured the torrent of my powers, And feeble Cæsars shrieked for help,
In vain, within their seven-hilled towers;
I quenched in blood the brightest gem
That glittered in their diadem,
And struck a darker, deeper die
In the purple of their majesty,
And bade my northern banners shine
Upon the conquered Palatine.
My course is run, my errand done;
I go to Him from whom I came;
But never yet shall set the sun
Of glory that adorns my name;
And Roman hearts shall long be sick,
When men shall think of Alaric.
My course is run, my errand done;
But darker ministers of fate,
Impatient, round the eternal throne,
And in the caves of vengeance, wait;
And soon mankind shall blench away
Before the name of Attila.
Apostrophe to the Sun.-J. G. PERCIVAL.
CENTRE of light and energy, thy way
Is through the unknown void; thou hast thy throne, Morning, and evening, and at noon of day,
Far in the blue, untended and alone:
Ere the first-wakened airs of earth had blown,
On didst thou march, triumphant in thy light;
Then didst thou send thy glance, which still hath flown Wide through the never-ending worlds of night,
And yet thy full orb burns with flash unquenched and bright.
Thy path is high in heaven ;-we cannot gaze
On the intense of light that girds thy car;
There is a crown of glory in thy rays,
Which bears thy pure divinity afar,
To mingle with the equal light of star;
For thou, so vast to us, art, in the whole,
One of the sparks of night that fire the air;
And, as around thy centre planets roll,
So thou, too, hast thy path around the central soul.
Thou lookest on the earth, and then it smiles;
Thy light is hid,—and all things droop and mourn; Laughs the wide sea around her budding isles,
When through their heaven thy changing car is borne; Thou wheel'st away thy flight,-the woods are shorn Of all their waving locks, and storms awake;
All, that was once so beautiful, is torn
By the wild winds which plough the lonely lake,
And, in their maddening rush, the crested mountains shake.
The earth lies buried in a shroud of snow;
Life lingers, and would die, but thy return
Gives to their gladdened hearts an overflow
Of all the power, that brooded in the urn
Of their chilled frames, and then they proudly spurn
All bands that would confine, and give to air
Hues, fragrance, shapes of beauty till they burn, When, on a dewy morn, thou dartest there
Rich waves of gold to wreath with fairer light the fair.
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