Page images
PDF
EPUB

I'll steal to Glendower, and Lord Mortimer;
Where you and Douglas, and our powers at once,
(As I will fashion it,) shall happily meet,

To bear our fortunes in our own strong arms,
Which now we hold at much uncertainty.

North. Farewell, good brother: we shall thrive, I trust.
Hot. Uncle, adieu :-0, let the hours be short,

Till fields, and blows, and groans applaud our sport!

SHAKSPERE,

POETRY.

SATAN, SIN, AND DEATH, AT THE GATES OF HELL.

MEANWHILE, the adversary of God and man,

Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

He scours the right-hand coast, sometimes the left
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.

At last appear

Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass.
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm'd

With mortal sting: about her middle round

A
cry
of hell-hounds never-ceasing bark'd,
With wide Cerberean mouths, full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,

If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd,
Within unseen.

T

The other shape,

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward, came as fast
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.
The undaunted fiend what this might be admired,
Admired, not fear'd; God and his son except,
Created thing nought valued he, nor shunn'd;
And with disdainful look, thus first began:

“Whence and what art thou, execrable shape,
That darest though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated front athwart my way
To yonder gates? through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave ask'd of thee:
Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heaven."
To whom the goblin full of wrath replied:
'Art thou that traitor-angel, art thou he
Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith, till then
Unbroken and in proud rebellious arms,
Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons
Conjured against the Highest; for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of heaven,
Hell-doom'd, and breath'st defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart,

Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.”

So spake the grisly terror; and in shape,
So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform. On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified; and like a comet burn'd,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levell❜d his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds
With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian; then stand front to front,
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid-air :
So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown; so match'd they stood:

For never but once more was either like

To meet so great a foe: and now great deeds
Had been achieved, whereof all hell had rung,

Had not the snaky sorceress, that sat

Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal key,

Risen, and with hidecus outcry rush'd between.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

MILTON.

Blue were her eyes, as the fairy flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day;

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The smoke, now west, now south.

[blocks in formation]

Down came the storm and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,

And do not tremble so;

« PreviousContinue »