Where the precipitate Anio1 thunders down,
And through the surging mist a Poet's house
(So some aver, and who would not believe?)
Reveals itself2. Yet cannot I forget
Him, who rejoic'd me in those walks at eve3,
My earliest, pleasantest; who dwells unseen,
And in our northern clime, when all is still,
Nightly keeps watch, nightly in bush or brake
His lonely lamp rekindling. Unlike theirs,
His, if less dazzling, through the darkness knows
No intermission; sending forth its ray

Through the green leaves, a ray serene and clear
As virtue's own.

ROGERS.

DEATH AND TIME.

TIME, taunting, said to man, with austere brow, "Thou fool, to pile up monuments of fame; Thy lesser works are durable as thou

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The Pyramids bear not the builder's name." Death, Time's dark page, to man in triumph said, Thy mighty schemes of little power resign; Millions, whence thou art sprung, are with the dead

Canst thou escape? Even Time himself is mine." Then man look'd round with a despairing eye,

And ask'd his heart and heaven if this were so; Straight from the blooming earth and beaming sky,

And from the soul, came the full answer, "No :" Then hope immortal rais'd man's brow sublime, And from him shrunk the conquerors, Death and Time.

The Falls of Tivoli. • The glow-worm.

HOWITT.

* The house of Horace.

TO THE OCEAN.

ROLL on, thou deep and dark blue ocean - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

*

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires 1, chang'd in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:- not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play — Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure browSuch as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

1 "The grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world; the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean." Dr. Johnson,

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convuls'd-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime The image of Eternity- the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

BYRON.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CALIPH'S ARMY.

WHOSE are the gilded tents that crowd the way,
Where all was waste and silent yesterday?
The city of war, which, in a few short hours,
Hath sprung up here, as if the magic powers
Of him who, in the twinkling of a star,
Built the high pillar'd halls of Chilminar 1,
Had conjur❜d up, far as the eye can see,

This world of tents and domes and sun-bright armoury!

Princely pavilions screen'd by many a fold
Of crimson cloth, and topp'd with balls of gold;
Steeds, with their housings of rich silver spun,
Their chains and poitrels glittering in the sun;
And camels, tufted o'er with Yemen's 2 shells,
Shaking in every breeze their light-ton'd bells!

The edifices of Chilminar (Persepolis,) and Balbec were supposed to have been built by the Genii, acting under the orders of Ian ben Ian.

* Arabia, or rather one of its divisions, near the Straits of Babelmandel.

But yester-eve, so motionless around,

So mute was this wide plain, that not a sound
But the far torrent or the locust bird1

Hunting among the thickets could be heard;
Yet hark! what discords now, of every kind,
Shouts, laughs, and screams are revelling in the
wind!

The neigh of cavalry; - the tinkling throngs
Of laden camels and their drivers' songs;
Ringing of arms, and flapping in the breeze
Of streamers from ten thousand canopies;
War music, bursting out from time to time
With gong and tymbalon's tremendous chime;
Or, in the pause when harsher sounds are mute,
The mellow breathings of some horn or flute,
That far off, broken by the eagle note
Of the Abyssinian trumpet 2 swell and float!

Who leads this mighty army? ask ye
"who?"
And mark ye not those banners of dark hue,
The Night and Shadow 3 over yonder tent?
It is the Caliph's glorious armament.

*

Ne'er did the march of Mahadi 4 display
Such pomp before; - not ev'n when on his way

A native of Khorassan.

This trumpet is often called in Abyssinia the note of the eagle.

The two black standards borne before the Caliphs of the house of Abbas were called, allegorically, the Night and the Shadow.

4 Mahadi, the father of Haroun al Raschid, in a single pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of gold. He fed all the pilgrims and their camels; and amongst other things with which he loaded the camels which attended him, he carried such a prodigious quantity of snow, that it served not only to refresh him and all his retinue in the burning sands of Arabia, but likewise to preserve all the fruits he took with

To Mecca's temple, when both land and sea
Were spoil'd to feed the pilgrim's luxury;
When round him, 'mid the burning sands, he saw
Fruits of the North in icy freshness thaw,
And cool'd his thirsty lip, beneath the glow
Of Mecca's sun, with urns of Persian snow :
Nor e'er did armament more grand than that
Pour from the kingdoms of the Caliphat.
First, in the van, the people of the rock 1
On their light mountain steeds of royal stock 2
Then chieftains of Damascus, proud to see
The flashing of their swords' rich marquetry;
Men from the regions near the Volga's mouth,
Mix'd with the rude, black archers of the South;
And Indian lancers, in white turban'd ranks,
From the far Sinde, or Attock's sacred banks,
With dusky legions from the land of myrrh 3,
And many a mace-arm'd Moor and mid-sea islander.
MOORE.

AUTUMN.

I HEAR a voice low in the sunset woods;
Listen, it says: "Decay, decay, decay."
I hear it in the murmuring of the floods,

And the wind sighs it as it flies away.

him in their natural freshness, and to afford him ice water to drink, during his abode at Mecca, the inhabitants of which place had scarcely seen any snow before. He furnished the inhabitants of that city with provisions for one year, and on one occasion alone distributed among them 100,000 dresses. 1 Arabia Petræa.

2 Those horses of whom a written genealogy has been kept for 2000 years.

3 Saba, the capital of the Sabæi, a people of Arabia Felix, on the borders of the Red Sea. Their country is the Sheba of the Old Testament.

H H