The stars, in their nocturnal vigils, rest

Where is the vessel? Shining through the light, Like signal-fires on its illumined crest ;

Like the white sea-fowl's horizontal Right, The gliding moon around the ramparts wheels,

Yonder she wings, and skims, and cleaves her way And all its magic lights and shades reveals ;

Through refluent foam and iridescent spray.
Beneath, the tide with equal fury raves,
To undermine it through a thousand caves;
Rent from its roof, though thundering fragments oft

Night.
Plunge to the gulf, immovable aloft,
From age to age, in air, o'er sea, on land,

Night is the time for rest;
Its turrets heighten and its piers expand. .

How sweet, when labours close, Hark! through the calm and silence of the scene,

To gather round an aching breast

The curtain of repose,
Slow, solemn, sweet, with many a pause between,
Celestial music swells along the air !

Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head No ! 'tis the evening-hymn of praise and prayer

Upon our own delightful bed!
From yonder deck, where, on the stern retired,
Three humble voyagers, 1 with looks inspired,

Night is the time for dreams ;
And hearts enkindled with a holier flame

The gay romance of life,

When truth that is, and truth that seems, Than ever lit to empire or to fame,

Blend in fantastic strife;
Devoutly stand : their choral accents rise

Ah ! visions less beguiling far
On wings of harmony beyond the skies ;
And, 'midst the songs that seraph-minstrels sing,

Than waking dreams by daylight are !
Day without night, to their immortal king,

Night is the time for toil ;
These simple strains, which erst Bohemian hills
Echoed to pathless woods and desert rills,

To plough the classic field,

Intent to find the buried spoil
Now heard from Shetland's azure bound-are known
In heaven ; and He who sits upon the throne

Its wealthy furrows yield ;
In human form, with mediatorial power,

Till all is ours that sages taught, Remembers Calvary, and hails the hour

That poets sang or heroes wrought. When, by the Almighty Father's high decree,

Night is the time to weep;
The utmost north to him shall bow the knee,

To wet with unseen tears
And, won by love, an untamed rebel-race
Kiss the victorious sceptre of his grace.

Those graves of memory where sleep

The joys of other years; Then to his eye, whose instant glance pervades

Hopes that were angels in their birth, Heaven's heights, earth’s circle, hell's profoundest

But perished young like things on earth! shades, Is there a group more lovely than those three

Night is the time to watch ; Night-watching pilgrims on the lonely sea ?

On ocean's dark expanse Or to his ear, that gathers, in one sound,

To hail the Pleiades, or catch The voices of adoring worlds around,

The full moon's earliest glance, Comes there a breath of more delightful praise

That brings into the home-sick mind
Than the faint notes his poor disciples raise,

All we have loved and left behind.
Ere on the treacherous main they sink to rest,
Secure as leaning on their Master's breast ?

Night is the time for care
They sleep; but memory wakes; and dreams array

Brooding on hours misspent, Night in a lively masquerade of day;

To see the spectre of despair The land they seek, the land they leave behind,

Come to our lonely tent; Meet on mid-ocean in the plastic mind;

Like Brutus, 'midst his slumbering host, One brings forsaken home and friends so nigh,

Summoned to die by Cæsar's ghost.
That tears in slumber swell the unconscious eye :
The other opens, with prophetic view,

Night is the time to think ;
Perils which e'en their fathers never knew

Then from the eye the soul (Though schooled by suffering, long inured to toil,

Takes flight, and on the utmost brink
Outcasts and exiles from their natal soil);

Of yonder starry pole,
Strange scenes, strange men ; untold, untried distress; Discerns beyond the abyss of night
Pain, hardships, famine, cold, and nakedness,

The dawn of uncreated light.
Diseases; death in every hideous form,
On shore, at sea, by fire, by flood, by storm ;

Night is the time to pray;
Wild beasts, and wilder men--unmoved with fear,

Our Saviour oft withdrew Health, comfort, safety, life, they count not dear,

To desert mountains far away ; May they but hope a Saviour's love to shew,

So will his followers do ; And warn one spirit from eternal woe:

Steal from the throng to haunts untrod, Nor will they faint, nor can they strive in vain,

And commune there alone with God. Since thus to live is Christ, to die is gain.

'Tis morn: the bathing moon her lustre shrouds ; Night is the time for death; Wide o'er the east impends an arch of clouds

When all around is peace, That spans the ocean ; while the infant dawn

Calmly to yield the

weary breath, Peeps through the portal o'er the liquid lawn,

From sin and suffering cease : That ruffled by an April gale appears,

Think of heaven's bliss, and give the sign Between the gloom and splendour of the spheres,

To parting friends—such death be mine !
Dark-purple as the moorland heath, when rain
Hangs in low vapours over the autumnal plain :
Till the full sun, resurgent from the flood,

The Pelican Island.
Looks on the waves, and turns them into blood;
But quickly kindling, as his beams aspire,

Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
The lambent billows play in forms of fire.

Keel-upward from the deep emerged a shell,

Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled ; 1 The first Christian missionaries to Greenland.

Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose, 148

And moved at will along the yielding water.

From din, and pageantry, and strife, The native pilot of this little bark

'Midst

woods and mountains, vales and plains, Put out a tier of oars on either side,

She treads the paths of lowly life, Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail,

Yet in a bosom-circle reigns, And mounted up and glided down the billow

No fountain scattering diamond-showers,
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,

But the sweet streamlet watering flowers.
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appeared this lonely Nautilus,

Aspirations of Youth.
My fellow-being, like myself alive.

Higher, higher, will we climb, Entranced in contemplation, vague yet sweet,

Úp the mount of glory, I watched its vagrant course and rippling wake,

That our names may live through time Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens.

In our country's story;
It closed, sunk, dwindled to a point, then nothing ; Happy, when her welfare calls,
While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy,

He who conquers, he who falls!
Through which mine eye still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air-

Deeper, deeper, let us toil
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,

In the mines of knowledge ; On long, light wings, that flung a diamond-shower

Nature's wealth and learning's spoil, Of dew-drops round its evanescent form,

Win from school and college ; Sprang into light, and instantly descended.

Delve we there for richer gems
Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend,

Than the stars of diadems.
Or mourn his quick departure, on the surge
A shoal of dolphins, tumbling in wild glee,

Onward, onward, will we press
Glowed with such orient tints, they might have been

Through the path of duty ; The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean

Virtue is true happiness,

Excellence true beauty.
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstasy I hung o'er these,

Minds are of supernal birth,
With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,

Let us make a heaven of earth. As though the conscious colours came and went

Closer, closer, then we knit At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes

Hearts and hands together, Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan

Where our fireside comforts sit, Looked forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent

In the wildest weather ; Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain

Oh, they wander wide who roam,
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.

For the joys of life, from home.
The Recluse.

Nearer, dearer bands of love

Draw our souls in union, A fountain issuing into light

To our Father's house above, Before a marble palace, threw

To the saints' communion; To heaven its column, pure and bright,

Thither every hope ascend,
Returning thence in showers of dew;

There may all our labours end.
But soon a humbler course it took,
And glid away a nameless brook.

The Common Lot.
Flowers on its grassy margin sprang,
Flies o'er its eddying surface played,

Once, in the flight of ages past,
Birds 'midst the alder-branches sang,

There lived a man : and who was he?

Mortal! howe'er thy lot be cast,
Flocks through the verdant meadows strayed ;

That man resembled thee.
The weary there lay down to rest,
And there the halcyon built her nest.

Unknown the region of his birth, 'Twas beautiful to stand and watch

The land in which he died unknown : The fountain's crystal turn to gems,

His name has perished from the earth, And from the sky such colours catch

This truth survives alone : As if 'twere raining diadems;

That joy, and grief, and hope, and fear, Yet all was cold and curious art,

Alternate triumphed in his breast; That charmed the eye, but missed the heart.

His bliss and woe--a smile, a tear ! Dearer to me the little stream

Oblivion hides the rest. Whose unimprisoned waters run,

The bounding pulse, the languid limb, Wild as the changes of a dream,

The changing spirits' rise and fall ; By rock and glen, through shade and sun;

We know that these were felt by him, Its lovely links had power to bind

For these are felt by all. In welcome chains my wandering mind.

He suffered—but his pangs are o'er ; So thought I when I saw the face

Enjoyed - but his delights are fled; By happy portraiture revealed,

Had friends-his friends are now no more ; Or one adorned with every grace,

And foes-his foes are dead.
Her name and date from me concealed,
But not her story ; she had been

He loved--but whom he loved the grave The pride of many a splendid scene.

Hath lost in its unconscious womb:

Oh, she was fair! but nought could save She cast her glory round a court, And frolicked in the gayest ring,

Her beauty from the tomb. Where fashion's high-born minions sport

He saw whatever thou hast seen ; Like sparkling fireflies on the wing;

Encountered all that troubles thee : But thence, when love had touched her soul,

He was-whatever thou hast been ; To nature and to truth she stole.

He is--what thou shalt be.

149

The rolling seasons, day and night,

Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife, Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main, Strew with fresh flowers the narrow way of life ! Erewhile his portion, life, and light,

In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
To bim exist in vain.

An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;

Around her knees domestic duties meet,
The clouds and sunbeams, o'er his eye

And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet.
That once their shades and glory threw,

Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found? Have left in yonder silent sky

Art thou a man ?-a patriot?-look around ;
No vestige where they flew.

Oh, thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,

That land thy country, and that spot thy home! The annals of the human race,

Their ruins, since the world began, Of him afford no other trace

THE HON. WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER. Than this—there lived a man !

The Hon. WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER (1770

1834) published occasional poems of that descripPrayer.

tion named vers de société, whose highest object is Prayer is the soul's sincere desire

to gild the social hour. They were exaggerated in Uttered or unexpressed ;

compliment and adulation, and wittily parodied The motion of a hidden fire

in the Rejected Addresses. As a companion, Mr That trembles in the breast.

Spencer was much prized by the brilliant circles Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

of the metropolis; but, if we may credit an anecThe falling of a tear ;

dote told by Rogers, he must have been heartless The upward glancing of an eye,

and artificial. Moore wished that Spencer should When none but God is near.

bail him when he was in custody after the affair of

the duel with Jeffrey. 'Spencer did not seem much Prayer is the simplest form of speech

inclined to do so, remarking that he could not well That infant lips can try ;

go out, for it was already twelve o'clock, and he Prayer the sublimest strains that reach

had to be dressed by four. Spencer, falling into The Majesty on high.

pecuniary difficulties, removed to Paris, where he Prayer is the Christian's vital breath,

died. His poems were collected and published in The Christian's native air;

1835. MrSpencer translated the Leonora of Bürger His watchword at the gates of death :

with great success, and in a vein of similar excelHe enters heaven by prayer.

| lence composed some original ballads, one of Prayer is the contrite sinner's voice

which, marked by simplicity and pathos, we Returning from his ways;

subjoin : While angels in their songs rejoice, And say, 'Behold, he prays!'

Beth Gelert, or the Grave of the Greyhound.
The saints in prayer appear as one

The spearmen heard the bugle sound,
In word, and deed, and mind,

And cheerily smiled the morn ;
When with the Father and his Son

And many a brach, and many a hound,
Their fellowship they find.

Obeyed Llewelyn's horn.
Nor prayer is made on earth alone :

And still he blew a louder blast,
The Holy Spirit pleads;

And gave a lustier cheer :
And Jesus, on the eternal throne,

Come, Gelert, come, wert never last
For sinners intercedes.

Llewelyn's horn to hear.
O Thou, by whom we come to God,

"Oh, where doth faithful Gêlert roam, The Life, the Truth, the Way,

The flower of all his race;
The path of prayer thyself hast trod :

So true, so brave-a lamb at home,
Lord, teach us how to pray!

A lion in the chase?'
'Twas only at Llewelyn's board

The faithful Gêlert fed ;
There is a land, of every land the pride,

He watched, he served, he cheered his lord, Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside ;

And sentinelled his bed. Where brighter suns dispense serener light,

In sooth he was a peerless hound, And milder moons emparadise the night ;

The gift of royal John; A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth,

But now no Gelert could be found, Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth.

And all the chase rode on. The wandering

mariner, whose eye explores The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,

And now, as o'er the rocks and dells Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,

The gallant chidings rise, Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;

All Snowdon's craggy chaos yells
In every clime the magnet of his soul,

The many-mingled cries !
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole ;
For in this land of heaven's peculiar grace,

That day Llewelyn little loved
The heritage of nature's noblest race,

The chase of hart and hare ;

And scant and small the booty proved,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,

For Gelert was not there.
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside

Unpleased, Llewelyn homeward hied,
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,

When, near the portal seat, While in his softened looks benignly blend

His truant Gelert he espied, The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend.

Bounding his lord to greet. 150

Home.

TO

But, when he gained his castle-door,

Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound all o'er was smeared with gore;

Too late I stayed-forgive the crime;
His lips, his fangs, ran blood.

Unheeded few the hours; Llewelyn gazed with fierce surprise ;

How noiseless falls the foot of Time, Unused such looks to meet,

That only treads on flowers ! His favourite checked his joyful guise,

What eye with clear account remarks And crouched, and licked his feet.

The ebbing of the glass, Onward, in haste, Llewelyn passed,

When all its sands are diamond sparks, And on went Gêlert too;

That dazzle as they pass ! And still, where'er his eyes he cast,

Oh, who to sober measurement Fresh blood-gouts shocked his view.

Time's happy swiftness brings, O'erturned his infant's bed he found,

When birds of Paradise have lent
With blood-stained covert rent;

Their plumage for his wings !
And all around, the walls and ground
With recent blood besprent.

Stanzas.
He called his child—no voice replied-

When midnight o'er the moonless skies He searched with terror wild ;

Her pall of transient death has spread, Blood, blood he found on every side,

When mortals sleep, when spectres rise, But nowhere found his child.

And nought is wakeful but the dead : 'Hell-hound ! my child's by thee devoured,"

No bloodless shape my way pursues, The frantic father cried ;

No sheeted ghost my couch annoys; And to the hilt his vengeful sword

Visions more sad my fancy views, He plunged in Gelert's side.

Visions of long-departed joys! His suppliant looks, as prone he fell,

The shade of youthful hope is there, No pity could impart;

That lingered long, and latest died ; But still his Gêlert's dying yell

Ambition all dissolved to air, Passed heavy o'er his heart.

With phantom honours by his side. Aroused by Gêlert's dying yell,

What empty shadows glimmer nigh? Some slumberer wakened nigh:

They once were Friendship, Truth, and Love! What words the parent's joy could tell

Oh, die to thought, to memory die, To hear his infant's cry!

Since lifeless to my heart ye prove ! Concealed beneath a tumbled heap

These last two verses, Sir Walter Scott, who His hurried search had missed,

knew and esteemed Spencer, quotes in his diary, All glowing from his rosy sleep,

terming them 'fine lines, and expressive of his The cherub boy he kissed.

own feelings amidst the wreck and desolation of

his fortunes at Abbotsford. Nor scathe had he, nor harm, nor dread,

But, the same couch beneath, Lay a gaunt wolf , all torn and dead,

HENRY LUTTRELL. Tremendous still in death.

Another man of wit and fashion, and a pleasing Ah, what was then Llewelyn's pain !

versifier, was HENRY LUTTRELL (1770-1851), For now the truth was clear;

author of Advice to Julia : a Letter in Rhyme, His gallant hound the wolf had slain

1820, and Crockford House, 1827. Mr Luttreli To save Llewelyn's heir.

was a favourite in the circle of Holland House :

none of the talkers whom I meet in London Vain, vain was all Llewelyn's woe; * Best of thy kind, adieu !

society,' said Rogers, 'can slide in a brilliant The frantic blow which laid thee low

thing with such readiness as he does.' The This heart shall ever rue.'

writings of these witty and celebrated conversa

tionists seldom do justice to their talents, but And now a gallant tomb they raise,

there are happy descriptive passages and touches With costly sculpture decked ;

of light satire in Luttrell's verses. Rogers used And marbles storied with his praise

to quote an epigram made by his friend on the Poor Gêlert's bones protect.

celebrated vocalist, Miss Tree: There, never could the spearman pass,

On this tree when a nightingale settles and sings, Or forester unmoved;

The tree will return her as good as she brings. There, oft the tear-besprinkled grass Llewelyn's sorrow proved.

Luttrell sat in the Irish parliament before the

Union. He is said to have been a natural son of And there he hung his horn and spear,

Lord Carhampton. The following are extracts And there, as evening fell,

from the Advice to Julia : In fancy's ear he oft would hear Poor Gelert's dying yell.

London in Autumn. And, till great Snowdon's rocks grow old,

'Tis August. Rays of fiercer heat And cease the storm to brave,

Full on the scorching pavement beat. The consecrated spot shall hold

As o'er it the faint breeze, by fits The name of Gelert's Grave.'

Alternate, blows and intermits.

151

For short-lived green, a russet brown

author turned to the study of our mediæval archiStains every withering shrub in town, tecture. His Architectural Tour in Normandy, and Darkening the air, in clouds arise

Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy from the Time Th’ Egyptian plagues of dust and flies; of Constantine to the Fifteenth Century—the latter At rest, in motion-forced to roam

a splendidly illustrated work—are valuable addiAbroad, or to remain at home,

tions to this branch of our historical literature.
Nature proclaims one common lot
For all conditions—Be ye hot!'
Day is intolerable-Night

SAYERS—HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.
As close and suffocating quite ;
And still the mercury mounts higher,

Several other minor poets of considerable merit
Till London seems again on fire.

at the beginning of this period, were read and

admired by poetical students and critics, who have The November Fog of London.

affectionately preserved their names, though the

works they praised are now forgotten.' DR FRANK First, at the dawn of lingering day,

SAYERS of Norwich (1763-1817) has been speIt rises of an ashy gray;

cially commemorated by Southey, though even Then deepening with a sordid stain

in 1826 the laureate admitted that Sayers was Of yellow, like a lion's mane.

'out of date.' The works of this amiable physiVapour importunate and dense,

cian consisted of Dramatic Sketches of the Ancient It wars at once with every sense. The ears escape not. All around

Northern Mythology, 1790 ; Disquisitions, MetaReturns a dull unwonted sound.

physical and Literary, 1793; Nuge Poetice, 1803; Loath to stand still, afraid to stir,

Miscellanies, 1805; &c. The works of Sayers were The chilled and puzzled passenger,

collected and republished, with an account of his Oft blundering from the pavement, fails life, by William Taylor of Norwich, in 1823. To feel his way along the rails ;

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS (1762-1827) was very Or at the crossings, in the roll

early in life introduced to public notice by Dr Of every carriage dreads the pole.

Kippis, who recommended her first work, Edwin Scarce an eclipse, with pall so dun,

and Elfrida (1782). She went to reside in France, Blots from the face of heaven the sun. But soon a thicker, darker cloak

imbibed republican opinions, and was near sufferWraps all the town, behold, in smoke,

ing with the Girondists during the tyranny of Which steam-compelling trade disgorges

Robespierre. She was a voluminous writer both From all her furnaces and forges

in prose and verse, author of Letters from France, In pitchy clouds, too dense to rise,

Travels in Switzerland, Narrative of Events in Descends rejected from the skies ;

France, Correspondence of Louis XVI., with Till struggling day, extinguished quite, Observations, &c. In 1823 she collected and reAt noon gives place to candle-light.

published her poems. To one of the pieces in O Chemistry, attractive maid,

this edition she subjoins the following note: 'I Descend, in pity, to our aid :

commence the sonnets with that to Hope, from a Come with thy all-pervading gases,

predilection in its favour, for which I have a proud Thy crucibles, retorts, and glasses,

reason : it is that of Mr Wordsworth, who lately Thy fearful energies and wonders,

honoured me with his visits while at Paris, having Thy dazzling lights and mimic thunders; Let Carbon in thy train be seen,

repeated it to me from memory, after a lapse of Dark Azote and fair Oxygen,

many years.'
And Wollaston and Davy guide
The car that bears thee, at thy side.

Sonnet to Hope.
If any power can, any how,

Oh, ever skilled to wear the form we love !
Abate these nuisances, 'tis thou ;

To bid the shapes of fear and grief depart;
And see, to aid thee, in the blow,
The bill of Michael Angelo ;

Come, gentle Hope! with one gay smile remove

The lasting sadness of an aching heart.
Oh join-success a thing of course is-

Thy voice, benign enchantress ! let me hear;
Thy heavenly to his mortal forces ;

Say that for me some pleasures yet shall bloom,
Make all chimneys chew the cud

That Fancy's radiance, Friendship's precious tear, Like hungry cows, as chimneys should !

Shall soften, or shall chase, misfortune's gloom.
And since 'tis only smoke we draw

But come not glowing in the dazzling ray,
Within our lungs at common law,

Which once with dear illusions charmed my eye,
Into their thirsty tubes be sent

Oh, strew no more, sweet flatterer ! on my way Fresh air, by act of parliament.

The flowers I fondly thought too bright to die ;
Visions less fair will soothe my pensive breast,

That asks not happiness, but longs for rest !
HENRY GALLY KNIGHT.
Some Eastern tales in the manner and measure
of Byron were written by an accomplished man of

LEIGH HUNT. fortune, MR HENRY GALLY KNIGHT (1786-1846). JAMES HENRY LEIGH Hunt, a poet and essay

The first of these, Ilderim, a Syrian Tale, was ist of the lively and descriptive, not the intense published in 1816. This was followed by Phrosyne, school, was born at Southgate, in Middlesex, a Grecian Tale, and Alashtar, an Arabian Tale, October 19, 1784. His father was a West Indian; 1817. Mr Knight also wrote a dramatic poem, but being in Pennsylvania at the time of the Hannibal in Bithynia. Though evincing poeti- American war, he espoused the British interest cal taste and correctness in the delineation of with so much warmth, that he had to leave the Eastern manners—for Mr Knight had travelled- new world and seek a subsistence in the old. He these poems failed in exciting attention ; and their took orders in the Church of England, and was