In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, And a resolute endeavour, How they clang, and clash, and roar! And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells; Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, In the clamour and the clangour of the bells, Hear the tolling of the bells- What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! How we shiver with affright From the rust within their throats Lake Leman by Night. A Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 205 43.-LAKE LEMAN BY NIGHT. LORD BYRON. [With Byron rose a new, more lofty, and more finished style of poetry than any that had preceded his, that of Shakspeare and Milton alone excepted. To the smooth versification of Pope he added the grandeur of imagery and the power of description. His first efforts, which were certainly but feeble, were sneered at by the Edinburgh Reviewers. In 1807, the "Hours of Idleness" was published; five years afterwards the opening Cantos of "Childe Harold " had "made him famous." "The Prisoner of Chillon," "Manfred," "Lament of Tasso," followed in rapid succession; then came the completion of "Childe Harold;" afterwards "Mazeppa," and the commencement of "Don Juan;" the latter defying public "proprieties," but astonishing the world by its bursts of poetic grandeur. Then came the Dramas, never intended for the stage, but which the cupidity of managers subsequently dragged upon the boards. Of Byron's ill-starred marriage and subsequent excesses, something too much has already been written. His whole life reads like a romance of the most startling kind; his death, an attack of fever, almost an inevitable consequence. He died in Greece 1824, at the age of thirty-six, and was buried in the family vault at Hucknall, near Newstead.] CLEAR, placid Leman! that contrasted lake, To waft me from distraction; once I loved That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. It is the hush of night, and all between There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt A truth, which through our being then doth melt, The soul and source of music, which makes known Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone, Binding all things with beauty:-'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm. Not vainly did the early Persian make His altar the high places and the peak Elihu. Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus take The spirit, in whose honour shrines are weak, 207 Ay, ay, sir; here in the cupboard lies The jacket he had on." 66 And so your lad is gone!— "Gone with the Swan." "And did she stand With her anchor clutching hold of the sand, For a month, and never stir ?" Why, to be sure! I've seen from the land, Like a lover kissing his lady's hand, The wild sea kissing her— A sight to remember, sir." "But, my good mother, do you know, I stood on the Gray Swan's deck, The kerchief from your neck; Ay, and he'll bring it back. "And did the little lawless lad, That has made you sick, and made you sad, 66 Be sure, he sailed with the crew- is mine; "And he has never written line, "Gone twenty years! a long, long cruise; And come back home, think you you can "Miserable man! You're mad as the sea; you rave- The sailor twitched his shirt so blue, [Born in 1759, and dying in 1796, "more," says Mr. Allan Cunningham, "of a broken heart than any other illness," Robert Burns's birth stands on the threshold of the Centenary of British Bards whose writings are most familiar to the present generation. The most convincing proof that the gift of poesy is not the result of "learning overmuch," is found in the fact that Burns was born a peasant, and that his education was only in accordance with his station. He threshed in the barn, reaped, mowed, and held the plough before he was fifteen. Burns's fugitive pieces naturally passed from hand to hand, and attracted the attention of a few discerning individuals: by their aid he was enabled, in 1786, to publish his first volume. The result was, his name and fame flashed like sunshine over the land: the shepherd on the hill, the maiden at her wheel, learnt his songs by heart, and the first scholars of Scotland |