'Till snorting, like an under-sea volcano, off he rolls;
Meanwhile to swing, a-buffetting the far astonished shoals
Of his back-browsing ocean-calves; or, haply in a cove,
Shell-strown, and consecrate of old to some Undine's love,
To find the long-haired mermaidens; or, hard by icy lands,
To wrestle with the Sea-serpent, upon cerulean sands.

O broad-armed Fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine?
The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable line;
And night by night, 'tis thy delight, thy glory day by day,
Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant-game to play-
But, shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave—
A Fisher's joy is to destroy-thine office is to save.

O Lodger in the sea-kings' halls, couldst thou but understand Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping band

Slow swaying in the heaving wave, that round about thee bend, With sounds like breakers in a dream blessing their ancient friend

Oh, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round thee,

Thine iron side would swell with pride; thou'dst leap within the sea!

Give honour to their memories who left the pleasant strand, To shed their blood so freely for the love of Father-landWho left their chance of quiet age and grassy church-yard grave So freely, for a restless bed amid the tossing wave

Oh, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung, Honour him for their memory, whose bones he goes among!

LXXI. TO THE NIGHTINGALE.-Keats.

O, FOR a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt Mirth!
O, for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim
And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away, into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known—
The weariness, the fever, and the fret,

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where Palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs;
Where Youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think, is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,— But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! Tender is the night,

And haply the queen Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown,
Through verdurous blooms, and winding mossy ways.

Darkling, I listen; and, for many a time,

I have been half in love with easeful Death; Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath:

Now, more than ever, seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod!

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night, was heard
In ancient days, by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song, that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn,

"

"Forlorn!"-The very sound is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self:
Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades—
Past the near meadows,-over the still stream,—
Up the hill-side; and now, 'tis buried deep
In the next valley's glades:-

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music!-Do I wake or sleep?

LXXII.—MY GRAVE.-Thomas Davis.

SHALL they bury me in the deep,
Where wind-forgetting waters sleep?
Shall they dig a grave for me,
Under the greenwood tree?

Or on the wild heath,

Where the wilder breath

Of the storm doth blow?
Oh, no! oh, no!

Shall they bury me in the Palace Tombs,
Or under the shade of Cathedral domes -
Sweet 'twere to lie on Italy's shore;

Yet not there-nor in Greece, though I love it more.
In the wolf or the vulture my grave shall I find?
Shall my ashes career on the world-seeing wind?
Shall they fling my corpse in the battle mound,
Where coffinless thousands lie under the ground?
Just as they fall they are buried so—
Oh, no! oh, no!

No! on an Irish green hill-side,
On an opening lawn-but not too wide;
For I love the drip of the wetted trees :-
On me blow no gales, but a gentle breeze
To freshen the turf: put no tombstone there,
But green sods decked with daisies fair.
Nor sods too deep: but so that the dew
The matted grass-roots may trickle through.
Be my epitaph writ on my country's mind,
"He served his country, and loved his kind."-
Oh! 'twere merry unto the grave to go,
If one were sure to be buried so.

MISCELLANEOUS READINGS

IN

PROSE.

1. THE OPERATIONS OF NATURE.-Sir H. Davy.

NATURE never deceives us the rocks, the mountains, the streams, always speak the same language: a shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a thunder-storm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these effects are rare and transient ;-in a few hours, or at least days, all the sources of beauty are renovated. And Nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full of life, beauty, and promise, taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet: she affords none of those blighted ones so common in the life of man, and so like the fabled apples of the Dead-Sea fresh and beautiful to the sight, but, when tasted, full of bitterness and ashes.

The operations of Nature, though slow, are sure: however man may for a time usurp dominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire. He converts her rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, and ships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth as instruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute its surface, as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water, and tortures water by fire, to change, to modify, or destroy the natural forms of things. But, in some lustrums, his works begin to change, and, in a few centuries, they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples, framed, as it were, for immortal and divine purposes; and his bridges, formed of granite, and ribbed with iron; and his walls for defence, and the splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity even to his perishable remains, are gradually destroyed: and these structures, which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempests of the sky, and the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews of heaven, of frost, rain, vapour, and perceptible atmospheric

influences: and as the worm devours the lineaments of man's mortal beauty, so the lichens, and the moss, and the most insignificant plants, shall feed upon his columns and his pyramids; and the most humble and insignificant insects shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces, and the falling seats of his earthly glory.

Time is almost a human word, and Change entirely a human idea; in the system of nature we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures: even when they are destroyed so as to produce only dust, Nature asserts her empire over them; and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man-providing food, vitality, and beauty, upon the wrecks of monuments which were raised for purposes glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility.

of

II. THE PLANETARY AND TERRESTRIAL WORLDS.-Addison.

To us, who dwell on its surface, the earth is by far the most extensive orb that our eyes can anywhere behold: it is also clothed with verdure, distinguished by trees, and adorned with a variety of beautiful decorations; whereas, to a spectator placed on one of the planets, it wears a uniform aspect, looks all luminous, and no larger than a spot. To beings who dwell at still greater distances, it entirely disappears. That which we call alternately the morning and the evening star-as, in one part of the orbit, she rides foremost in the procession of night; in the other, ushers in and anticipates the dawn-is a planetary world; which, with those others that so wonderfully vary their mystic dance, are in themselves dark bodies, and shine only by reflection; have fields, and seas, and skies of their own; are furnished with all accommodations for animal subsistence, and are supposed to be the abodes of intellectual life: all which, together with our earthly habitation, are dependent on that grand dispenser of divine munificence, the sun; receive their light from the distribution of his rays, and derive their comfort from his benign agency.

The sun, which seems to perform its daily stages through the sky, is, in this respect, fixed and immovable: it is the great axle of heaven, about which the globe we inhabit, and other more spacious orbs, wheel their stated courses.

The