And under planets brighter than our own:
The nights of palmy isles, that she will see
Lit boundless by the fire-fly-all the smells
Of tropic fruits that will regale her-all
The pomp of nature, and the inspiriting
Varieties of life she has to greet,
Come swarming o'er the meditative mind.

True, to the dream of Fancy, Ocean has
His darker tints; but where's the element
That chequers not its usefulness to man
With casual terror? Scathes not Earth sometimes
Her children with Tartarean fires, or shakes
Their shrieking cities, and, with one last clang
Of bells for their own ruin, strews them flat
As riddled ashes-silent as the grave?
Walks not Contagion on the Air itself?
I should-old Ocean's Saturnalian days
And roaring nights of revelry and sport
With wreck and human woe-

-be loth to sing ;

For they are few and all their ills weigh light
Against his sacred usefulness, that bids

Our pensile globe revolve in purer air.

Here Morn and Eve with blushing thanks receive
Their freshening dews, gay fluttering breezes cool
Their wings to fan the brow of fever'd climes,
And here the Spring dips down her emerald urn
For showers to glad the earth.

Infinity of ages ere we breathed

Old Ocean was

Existence and he will be beautiful

When all the living world that sees him now
Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun.
Quelling from age to age the vital throb
In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate
The pulse that swells in his stupendous breast,
Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound

In thundering concert with the quiring winds;
But long as Man to parent Nature owns
Instinctive homage, and in times beyond
The power of thought to reach, bard after bard
Shall sing thy glory, BEATIFIC SEA.

FALL'N as he is, this king of birds still seems
Like royalty in ruins. Though his eyes
Are shut, that look undazzled on the sun,
He was the sultan of the sky, and earth
Paid tribute to his eyry. It was perch'd
Higher than human conqueror ever built

His banner'd fort. Where Atlas' top looks o'er
Zahara's desert to the equator's line:

From thence the winged despot mark'd his prey,
Above th' encampments of the Bedouins, ere
Their watchfires were extinct, or camels knelt
To take their loads, or horsemen scour'd the plain,
And there he dried his feathers in the dawn,
Whilst yet th' unwaken'd world was dark below.

There's such a charm in natural strength and power, That human fancy has for ever paid

Poetic homage to the bird of Jove.

Hence, 'neath his image, Rome array'd her turms
And cohorts for the conquest of the world.

And figuring his flight, the mind is fill'd

With thoughts that mock the pride of wingless man.

True the carr'd aeronaut can mount as high;

But what's the triumph of his volant art?

A rash intrusion on the realms of air.
His helmless vehicle, a silken toy,

A bubble bursting in the thunder-cloud;
His course has no volition, and he drifts

The passive plaything of the winds. Not such
Was this proud bird: he clove the adverse storm,
And cuff'd it with his wings. He stopp'd his flight

As easily as the Arab reins his steed,

And stood at pleasure 'neath Heaven's zenith, like A lamp suspended from its azure dome.

Whilst underneath him the world's mountains lay
Like molehills, and her streams like lucid threads.
Then downward, faster than a falling star,
He near'd the earth, until his shape distinct
Was blackly shadow'd on the sunny ground;
And deeper terror hush'd the wilderness,
To hear his nearer whoop. Then, up again
He soar'd and wheel'd. There was an air of scorn
In all his movements, whether he threw round
His crested head to look behind him; or
Lay vertical and sportively display'd

In

The inside whiteness of his wing declined,
and undulations full of grace,
An object beautifying Heaven itself.

gyres

He-reckless who was victor, and above
The hearing of their guns-saw fleets engaged
In flaming combat. It was nought to him
What carnage, Moor or Christian, strew'd their decks.
But if his intellect had match'd his wings,

Methinks he would have scorn'd man's vaunted power
To plough the deep; his pinions bore him down
To Algiers the warlike, or the coral groves,
That blush beneath the green of Bona's waves;
And traversed in an hour a wider space
Than yonder gallant ship, with all her sails
Wooing the winds, can cross from morn till eve.
His bright eyes were his compass, earth his chart,