Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
And looking to the stars: they had contain'd
A spirit which with these would find a home,
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reign'd,
The Roman globe, for after none sustain'd,
But yielded back his conquests :-he was more
Than a mere Alexander, and, unstain'd

With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues still we Trajan's name adore.
Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place
Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep
Tarpeian? fittest goal of Treason's race,
The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap
Cured all ambition. Did the conquerors heap
Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below,
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep-
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes-burns with Cicero !

p. 56-59. On the accidental recurrence to his mind of the character of Numa, his spirit falls into a passionate dream of the Egerian Grot, in which there breathes that full, delicate, and perfect sense of beauty which often steals upon him during moods of a very different kind, and wins him, somewhat reluctantly, away into scenes filled with images of stillness and peace.

Egeria! sweet creation of some heart
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair

As thine ideal breast; whate'er thou art
Or wert, a young Aurora of the air,

-

The nympholepsy of some fond despair;

Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth,

Who found a more than common votary there

Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth,

Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth.

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face

Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled,
Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place,
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase
Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep,
Prisoned in marble, bubbling from the base
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap

The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep
Fantastically tangled; the green hills

Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass
The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills

Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass;

Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class,
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass;

The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes,

Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its skies.
Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover,
Egeria! thy all heavenly bosom beating
For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover;
The purple Midnight veil'd that mystic meeting
With her most starry canopy, and seating
Thyself by thine adorer, what befel?

This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting
Of an enamour'd Goddess, and the cell
Haunted by holy Love-the earliest oracle!

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying,
Blend a celestial with a human heart;

And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing,
Share with immortal transports? could thine art
Make them indeed immortal, and impart

The purity of heaven to carthly joys,
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart-
The dull satiety which all destroys-

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys?

p. 60-62. But he will not allow himself to be held in the innocent enchantment of such emotions, and bursts again into those bitter communings with misery, without which it would absolutely seem he can have no continued existence, till at last he denounces a curse the curse of forgiveness it is said to be-on all that has perturbed and maddened his spirit. We wish to avoid, as much as possible, all reference to such distressing passions. But here they give a dark and terrible colouring to the poem, and it is impossible to misunderstand them. Our business is only with the poetry—at least we desire not to extend our privilege: And of the poetry we must say, that the season when the wild curse is imprecated, midnight; the scene, the ruined site of the Temple of the Furies; the auditors, the ghosts of departed years; and the imprecator, a being whose soul, though endowed with the noblest gifts of nature, is by himself said to be in ruins like the grandeur around him-and even dark hints thrown out, that for its aberrations there may be found the most mournful of all excuses in the threatening of the most mournful of all human calamities;-all this renders the long passage to which we allude, one of the most awful records of the agonies of man-perhaps the most painful and agitating pic

VOL. XXX. No. 59.

H

ture of the misery of the passions, without their degradation, that is to be found in the whole compass of human language. Let us escape from it, and turn our eyes to the moonlight and indistinct shadow of the ruins of the Coliseum.

A ruin-yet what ruin! from its mass

Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass

And marvel where the spoil could have appeared.
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is neared:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,

Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the grey walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Cæsar's head;
When the light shines serene but doth not glare,
Then in this magic circle raise the dead :

Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on their dust ye tread.

away.

p. 74, 75. We regret that our limits will not allow us to quote any more of his description of the Ancient City;-not even that of St Peter's-in which the loftiest words and most majestic images render back an image of the august conceptions by which the mind of the poet seems to have been expanded in its contemplation. There are still, however, two passages in the poem which we would wish to lay before our readers-that on the death of our Princess-and that on the Ocean. On the first we have not yet heart to venture-and with the last, therefore, we shall conclude; in which the Poet bids us farewell in a more magnificent strain than we can hope to hear again till his own harp, which has assuredly lost none of its music, be once more struck-and may it then be with steadier hands and a more tranquil spirit!

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal.

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.
His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth:-there let him lay.
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, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, 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 brow-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
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.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.
My task is done my song hath ceased-ny theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit

The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguish'd which hath lit
My midnight lamp-and what is writ, is writ,-
Would it were worthier! but I am not now
That which I have been-and my visions flit
Less palpably before me-and the glow
Which in my spirit dwelt, is fluttering, faint, and low.
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been-
A sound which makes us linger;-yet-farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain

He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,

If such there were-with you, the moral of his strain!

p. 92-96.

The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold has now been brought to its close; and of his character there remains nothing more to be laid open to our view. It is impossible to reflect on the years which have elapsed since this mysterious stranger was first introduced to our acquaintance, without feeling that our own spirits have undergone in that time many mighty changessorrowful in some it may be, in others happy changes. Neither can we be surprised, knowing as we well do who Childe Harold is, that he also has been changed. He represented himself, from the beginning, as a ruin; and when we first gazed upon him, we saw indeed in abundance the black traces of recent violence and convulsion. The edifice has not been rebuilt; but its hues have been sobered by the passing wings of time, and the calm slow ivy has had leisure to wreathe the soft green of its melancholy among the fragments of the decay. In so far, the Pilgrim has become wiser. He seems to think more of others, and with a greater spirit of humanity. There was some