If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr
The gift, a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay;
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

Kingdoms and empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the petty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
Something I know not what-does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience;-not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir`
Within me, or perhaps a cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur,-
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air
(For even to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armour we may learn to bear),
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not

The chief companion of a calmer lot.

I feel almost at times as I have felt

In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books, Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; And even at moments I could think I see Some living thing to love-but none like thee.

Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation ;-to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;

But something worthier do such scenes inspire:

Here to be lonely is not desolate,

For much I view which I could most desire,
And, above all, a lake I can behold
Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

grow

Oh that thou wert but with me !-but I
The fool of my own wishes, and forget
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
There may be others which I less may show;
I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy,

And the tide rising in my

alter'd eye.

I did remind thee of our own dear lake,*
By the old hall which may be mine no more.
Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore;
Sad havoc Time must with my mem'ry make
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;

Though, like all things which I have loved, they are Resign'd for ever, or divided far.

The world is all before me; I but ask
Of nature that with which she will comply-
It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy.
She was my early friend, and now shall be
My sister-till I look again on thee.

I can reduce all feelings but this one;
And that I would not ;-for at length I see
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun,
The earliest-even the only paths for me-
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be:
The passions which have torn me would have slept;
I had not suffer'd, and thou hadst not wept.

With false ambition what had I to do?
Little with love, and least of all with fame;

And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make—a name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue :
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.

* The lake of Newstead Abbey.

But all is over—
-I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.

And for the future, this world's future may
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself by many a day;
Having survived so many things that were;
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
Of life which might have filled a century,
Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by.

And for the remnant which may be to come,
I am content; and for the past I feel
Not thankless,-for within the crowded sum
Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,
And for the present, I would not benumb
My feelings farther.-Nor shall I conceal
That with all this I still can look around,
And worship Nature with a thought profound.

For thee, my own sweet sister! in thy heart
I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
We were and are- -I am, even as thou art-
Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
It is the same, together or apart,
From life's commencement to its slow decline
We are entwined-let death come slow or fast,
The tie which bound the first endures the last! *

A FRAGMENT.

COULD I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,

* These stanzas "Than which," says the Quarterly Review, for January 1831, "there is, perhaps, nothing more mournfully and desolately beautiful in the whole range of Lord Byron's poetry,"-were also written at Diodati, and sent home at the time for publication, fn case Mrs. Leigh should sanction it. "There is," he says, amongst the manuscripts an Epistle to my Sister, on which I should wish her opinion to be consulted before publication; if she objects, of course omit it." On the 5th of October he writes,-"My sister has decided on the omission of the lines. Upon this point, her option will be followed. As I have no copy of them, I request that you will preserve one for me in MS.; for I never can remember a line of that nor any other composition of mine. The Epistle was first given to the world in 1830.-E.

I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
But bid it flow as now-until it glides

Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this Death ?-a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For life is but a vision-what I see

Of all which lives alone is life to me,
And being so-the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.
The absent are the dead-for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,—for if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,

Since thus divided-equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both-but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.

The under-earth inhabitants—are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread ?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being ?-darken'd and intense

As midnight in her solitude?—Oh Earth!

Where are the past?—and wherefore had they birth?
The dead are thy inheritors-and we

But bubbles on thy surface; and the key
Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more.

MONODY

ON THE

DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. B. SHERIDAN.

SPOKEN AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE.*

WHEN the last sun-shine of expiring day
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,

Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart, as dew along the flower?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes,
While Nature makes that melancholy pause,
Her breathing moment on the bridge where Time
Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime,
Who hath not shared that calin so still and deep,
The voiceless thought which would not speak but weep,
A holy concord and a bright regret,

A glorious sympathy with suns that set?
"T is not harsh sorrow-but a tenderer woe,
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below,
Felt without bitterness, but full and clear,
A sweet dejection—a transparent tear,
Unmix'd with worldly grief or selfish stain,
Shed without shame, and secret without pain.
Even as the tenderness that hour instils
When summer's day declines along the hills,
So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes
When all of genius which can perish dies.
A mighty spirit is eclipsed-a power

Hath pass'd from day to darkness-to whose hour
Of light no likeness is bequeath'd-r
-no name,
Focus at once of all the rays of fame!
The flash of wit-the bright intelligence,
The beam of song-the blaze of eloquence,
Set with their sun-
-but still have left behind
The enduring produce of immortal mind:

Mr. Sheridan died the 7th of July, 1816, and this monody was written at Diodati on the 17th, at the request of Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. "I did as well as I could," says Lord Byron, "but where I have not my choice, I pretend to answer for nothing." A proof-sheet of the poem, with the words "by request of a friend" in the titlepage, having reached him,-"I request you," he says, "to expunge that same, unless you please to add, " by a person of quality,' or ' of wit and humour.' It is sad trash, and must have been done to make it ridiculous."-E.