Was studded thick with stars, which glitt'ring stream'd
An intermittent splendor through the heavens.
I turned my glance to earth: the mountain winds
Were sleeping in their caves, and the wild sea
With its innumerous billows, melted down
To one unmoving mass, lay stretch'd beneath
In deep and tranced slumber; giving back
The host above, with all its dazzling shene,
To Fancy's ken, as though the luminous sky
Had rain'd down stars upon its breast. Suddenly
The scene grew dim: those living lights rushed out,
And the fair moon, with all her gorgeous train,
Had vanished like the frost-work of a dream.

Darkness arose, and volumed clouds swept o'er Earth and the ocean. Through the gloom, at times, Sicilian Etna's blood-red flame was seen

Fitfully flickering. The stillness now
Yielded to murmurs hurtling on the air,

From out her deep-voiced crater; and the winds
Burst through their bonds of adamant, and lash'd
The weltering ocean, that so lately lay
Calm as the slumbers of a cradled child,
To a demoniac's madness. The broad wave
Swell'd into boiling surges, which appear'd,
Whene'er the mountain's lurid light reveal'd
Their progress to the eye, presumptuously
To dash against the ebon roof of heaven.
Then came a sound,—a fearful deaf'ning sound,—
Sudden and loud, as if an earthquake rent
The globe to its foundations; with a rush,
Startling deep midnight on her throne, rose up,

From the red mouth of Etna's burning mount,
A giant tree of fire, whence sprouted out
Thousands of boundless branches, which put forth
Their fiery foliage in the sky, and shower'd
Their fruit, the red-hot levin, to the earth,
In terrible profusion. Some fell back

Into the hell from whence they sprang, and some,
Gaining an impulse from the winds that raged
Unceasingly around, sped o'er the main,
And, hissing, dived to an eternal home,

Beneath its yawning billows. The black smoke,
Blotting the snows that shroud chill Cuma's height,
Roll'd down the mountain's sides, girding its base
With artificial darkness, for the sea,

Catania's palaces and towers, and even

The far off shores of Syracuse, revealed

In the deep glare that deluged heaven and earth,
Flash'd forth in fearful light upon the eye.
And there was seen a lake of liquid fire
Streaming and streaming slowly on its course,
And widening as it flow'd, like the dread jaws
Of some huge monster ere its prey be fang'd.
At its approach the loftiest pines bent down,
And strew'd its surface with their trunks ;-the earth
Shook at its coming; towns and villages,

Deserted of their habitants, were whelm'd
Amid the flood, and lent it ampler force.
The noble's palace, and the peasant's cot,
Alike but served to swell its fiery tide.
Shrieks of wild anguish rush'd upon the gale;
And universal Nature seem'd to wrestle

With the giant forms of Darkness and Despair.

STONEHENGE,

A Newdigate Prize Poem, recited at the Theatre, Oxford, June, 1823, by T. S. Salmon.

We give this poem as a specimen of that classic elegance, refined taste, and correct imagination, which our modern schools of poetry affect to despise; but nothing is more natural than to affect indifference for every thing that is placed beyond our reach. The author of the Fox and the Grapes" was not ignorant of this truth.---ED.

Wrapt in the veil of time's unbroken gloom,
Obscure as death, and silent as the tomb,
Where cold oblivion holds her dusky reign,.
Frowns the dark pile on Sarum's lonely plain.
Yet think not here with classic eye to trace
Corinthian beauty, or Ionic grace;

No pillar'd lines, with sculptured foliage crown'd,
No fluted remnants deck the hallowed ground;
Firm, as implanted by some Titan's might,
Each rugged stone uprears its giant height,
Whence the pois'd fragment, tottering, seems to throw
A trembling shadow on the plain below.
Here oft, when evening sheds her twilight ray,

And gilds with fainter beam departing day,

With breathless gaze, and cheek with terror pale,
The lingering shepherd startles at the tale,
How at deep midnight, by the moon's chill glance,
Unearthly forms prolong the viewless dance;

While on each whispering breeze that murmurs by,
His busied fancy hears the hollow sigh.

Rise from thy haunt, dread genius of the clime,
Rise magic spirit of forgotten time!

"Tis thine to burst the mantling clouds of age,
And fling new radiance on tradition's page:
See! at thy call from fable's varied store,
In shadowy train the mingled visions pour:
Here the wild Briton, 'mid his wilder reign,
Spurns the proud yoke, and scorns the oppressor's chain:
Here wizard Merlin, where the mighty fell,
Waves the dark wand, and chants the thrilling spell.
Hark! 'tis the bardic lyre, whose harrowing strain
Wakes the rude echoes of the slumbering plain;
Lo! 'tis the Druid pomp, whose lengthening line
In lowliest homage bend before the shrine.
He comes, the priest:-amid the sullen blaze
His snow-white robe in spectral lustre plays;
Dim gleam the torches through the circling night,
Dark curl the vapours round the altar's light;
O'er the black scene of death each conscious star,
In lurid glory rolls its silent car.
'Tis gone! e'en now the mystic horrors fade
From Sarum's loneliness, and Mona's glade;
Hushed is each note of Taliesin's lyre,

Sheath'd the fell blade, and quench'd the fatal fire.
On wings of light Hope's angel form appears,
Smiles on the past, and points to happier years;
Points with uplifted hand, and raptured eye,
To yon pure dawn that floods the opening sky,
And views, at length, the sun of Judah pour
Oue cloudless noon o'er Albion's rescued shore.

DESCRIPTION OF A MISSIONARY.

From the AUSTRALASIA, a Poem which obtained the Chancellor's Medal, at the Cambridge Commencement, 1823, by Winthrop Mackworth Praed, of Trinity College.

66

THIS description appears to us to be the best passage in the "Australasia." It wants, however, that weighty bullion" which alone gives life and energy to English verse, though it has none of the tinsel of the romantic school. Stonehenge is evidently before it in strength and dignity. The second line, however, is exquisitely beautiful and picturesque. Many have beheld "the calm wind wandering o'er" the "silver hair" of age to whom the circumstance never suggested a poetic image or association of any description; yet, the moment it is thus described, we are sensible of an impression which the real circumstance itself would have never excited. Whence is this effect? Evidently from the power of association to which the mere observer pays no attention. The wind is here endowed with life. It wanders through the hair of the old man, as if to cool him gently, or as if in love with his venerable and silver locks. This is attributing knowledge and life to the wind. Besides, the quality of calmness attributed to it is admirably contrasted with the piety and age of the old man, over whose hair it delights to wander. All inanimate

objects become poetic the moment we endow them with those attributes which are the peculiar and distinctive inheritance of man. There are, indeed, few qualities in nature which may not be attributed to man, whence he has been properly called the little world; but some of these qualities are peculiar to himself, while he possesses the rest in common with being in general. Whenever those qualities which are peculiarly his own, are transferred to inani