Its foaming surface like a whirlpool-gulf, Winding their darksome way profound, where man For the army of God's vengeance! Fellow-slaves Ye come, and spread your banners, and display The work of wrath. Upon my shadowy wings [The Fair Recluse.] [From Samor, Lord of the Bright City."] Junk was the sun, and up the eastern heaven, Dove of the wilderness, thy snowy wing That like a crystal-throned queen in heaven, But she, the while, from human tenderness To mourn their fading forms with childish tears. Rare sound to her was human voice, scarce heard, The Day of Judgment. Even thus amid thy pride and luxury, Till earth, a drunkard, reeling to and fro, And heaven his presence own, all red with furnace heat. The hundred-gated cities then, The towers and temples, named of men The gilded summer palaces, The courtly bowers of love and ease, Go, gaze on fallen Jerusalem! Yea, mightier names are in the fatal roll, 'Gainst earth and heaven God's standard is unfurled, The skies are shrivelled like a burning scroll, And one vast common doom ensepulchres the world. Oh! who shall then survive? Oh! who shall stand and live? When all that hath been is no more; When for the round earth hung in air, With all its constellations fair In the sky's azure canopy; When for the breathing earth, and sparkling sea, Heaving along the abyss profound and dark- Lord of all power, when thou art there alone Needs not the perished sun nor inoon: When thou art there in thy presiding state, Wide-sceptred monarch o'er the realm of doom: When from the sea-depths, from earth's darkest womb, The dead of all the ages round thee wait: And when the tribes of wickedness are strewn REV. GEORGE CROLY. The REV. GEORGE CROLY, rector of St Stephen's, Walbrook, London, is, like Mr Milman, a correct and eloquent poet, but deficient in interest, and consequently little read. His poetical works are, Paris in 1815; The Angel of the World; Gems from the Antique, &c. Mr Croly has published several works in prose: Salathiel, a romance founded on the old legend of the Wandering Jew; a Life of Burke, in two volumes; and a work on the Apocalypse of St John. This gentleman is a native of Ireland, and was educated at Trinity college, Dublin. Pericles and Aspasia. This was the ruler of the land, When Athens was the land of fame; This was the light that led the band, When each was like a living flame; The centre of earth's noblest ring, Of more than men, the more than king. Yet not by fetter, nor by spear, His sovereignty was held or won: Feared-but alone as freemen fear; Loved-but as freemen love alone; He waved the sceptre o'er his kind By nature's first great title-mind! Resistless words were on his tongue, Then Eloquence first flashed below; Full armed to life the portent sprung, Minerva from the Thunderer's brow! And his the sole, the sacred hand, That shook her Egis o'er the land. And throned immortal by his side, A woman sits with eye sublime, Aspasia, all his spirit's bride; But, if their solemn love were crime, Pity the beauty and the sage, Their crime was in their darkened age. He perished, but his wreath was won; He perished in his height of fame: Then sunk the cloud on Athens' sun, Yet still she conquered in his name. Filled with his soul, she could not die; Her conquest was Posterity! [The French Army in Russia.] [From Paris in 1815."] Magnificence of ruin! what has time In all it ever gazed upon of war, Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime, Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare? How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar! Like pampered lions from the spoil they came; The land before them silence and despair, The land behind them massacre and flame; Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they now! A name. Homeward by hundred thousands, column-deep, Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood When mighty torrents from their channels leap, Rushed through the land the haughty multitude, Billow on endless billow; on through wood, O'er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale, The 'death-devoted moved, to clangour rude Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail, Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam pale. Again they reached thee, Borodino! still Upon the loaded soil the carnage lay, The human harvest, now stark, stiff, and chill, Friend, foe, stretched thick together, clay to clay; In vain the startled legions burst away; The land was all one naked sepulchre ; The shrinking eye still glanced on grim decay, Still did the hoof and wheel their passage tear, Through cloven helms and arms, and corpses mouldering drear, The field was as they left it; fosse and fort Steaming with slaughter still, but desolate; The cannon flung dismantled by its port; Each knew the mound, the black ravine whose strait Was won and lost, and thronged with dead, till fate Had fixed upon the victor-half undone. There was the hill, from which their eyes elate Had seen the burst of Moscow's golden zone; But death was at their heels; they shuddered and rushed on. The hour of vengeance strikes. Hark to the gale! As it bursts hollow through the rolling clouds. That from the north in sullen grandeur sail Like floating Alps. Advancing darkness broods Upon the wild horizon, and the woods, Now sinking into brambles, echo shrill, As the gust sweeps them, and those upper floods Shoot on their leafless boughs the sleet-drops chill, That on the hurrying crowds in freezing showers distil They reach the wilderness! The majesty Of solitude is spread before their gaze, Stern nakedness-dark earth and wrathful skv. If ruins were there, they long had ceased to blaze; If blood was shed, the ground no more betrays, Even by a skeleton, the crime of man; Behind them rolls the deep and drenching haze, Wrapping their rear in night; before their van The struggling daylight shows the unmeasured desert wan. Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march Could bear them from the rushing of His wheel Whose chariot is the whirlwind. Heaven's clear arch At once is covered with a livid veil; In mixed and fighting heaps the deep clouds reel; Upon the dense horizon hangs the sun, In sanguine light, an orb of burning steel; The snows wheel down through twilight, thick and dun; Now tremble, men of blood, the judgment has begun! The trumpet of the northern winds has blown, Of armies on that boundless field o'erthrown: Was a whole empire; that devoted train Must war from day to day with storm and gloom (Man following, like the wolves, to rend the slain), Must lie from night to night as in a tomb, Must fly, toil, bleed for home; yet never see that home. To the Memory of a Lady. Thou thy worldly task hast done.'-Shakspeare. High peace to the soul of the dead, From the dream of the world she has gone! On the stars in her glory to tread, To be bright in the blaze of the throne. In youth she was lovely; and Time, When her rose with the cypress he twined, Our weakness may weep o'er her bier, To triumph for agony here, To rejoice in the joy of its King. LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON. This lady, generally known as 'L. E. L.,' in consequence of having first published with her initials only, has attained an eminent place among the female poets of our age. Her earliest compositions L. 8, Landon were Poetical Sketches, which appeared in the Literary Gazette: afterwards (1824) she published the Improvisatrice, which was followed by two more volumes of poetry. She also contributed largely to magazines and annuals, and was the authoress of a novel entitled Romance and Reality. From a publication of her Life and Literary Remains, edited by Mr L. Blanchard, it appears that her history was in the main a painful one; and yet it is also asserted that the melancholy of her verses was a complete contrast to the vivacity and playfulness of her manners in private life. She was born at Hans Place, Chelsea, in 1802, the daughter of Mr Landon, a partner in the house of Adairs, army agents. Lively, Birthplace of Miss Landon. world of letters, but it also gave rise to some reports injurious to her character, which caused her the most exquisite pain. Her father died, and she not only maintained herself, but assisted her relations by her literary labours, which she never relaxed for a moment. In 1838 she was married to Mr George Maclean, governor of Cape-Coast castle, and shortly afterwards sailed for Cape-Coast with her husband. She landed there in August, and was resuming her literary engagements in her solitary African home, when one morning, after writing the previous night some cheerful and affectionate letters to her friends in England, she was (October 16) found dead in her room, lying close to the door, having in her hand a bottle which had contained prussic acid, a portion of which she had taken. From the investigation which took place into the circumstances of this melancholy event, it was conjectured that she had undesigningly taken an over-dose of the fatal medicine, as a relief from spasms in the stomach. Having surmounted her early difficulties, and achieved an easy competence and a daily-extending reputation, much might have been expected from the genius of L. E. L., had not her life been prematurely terminated. Her latter works are more free, natural, and forcible than those by which she first attracted notice. Change. I would not care, at least so much, sweet Spring, When those eyes have forgotten the smile they wear now, 71 Then wilt thou remember what now seems to pass So the heart sheds its colour on life's early hour; Or, like meteors at midnight, make darkness more dark: For aye cometh sorrow, when youth hath passed by- Crescentius. I looked upon his brow-no sign He stood as proud by that death-shrine He had a power; in his eye A spirit that could dare The deadliest form that death could take, He stood, the fetters on his hand, The rack, the chain, the axe, the wheel, Upon a coal-black steed, And tens of thousands thronged the road, The sun shone on his sparkling mail, Came from that lip of pride; A wild shout from the numbers broke The Grasp of the Dead. 'Twas in the battle-field, and the cold pale moon With his father's sword in his red right hand, Lay a youthful chief: but his bed was the ground, A reckless rover, 'mid death and doom, He wrenched the hand with a giant's strength, Took part with the dead before him; Before I would take that sword from thine hand, Thou shalt not be left for the carrion crow, [From The Improvisatrice."] I loved him as young Genius loves, I loved him, too, as woman loves- That, with him, I could not have borne! I had been nursed in palaces; Yet earth had not a spot so drear, That I should not have thought a home In Paradise, had he been near! But not alone in dreams like this, I had sprung from my solitude, To meet the arrow; so I met My poisoned shaft of suffering. And as that bird, with drooping crest And broken wing, will seek his nest, But seek in vain: so vain I sought My pleasant home of song and thought. There was one spell upon my brain, Upon my pencil, on my strain; But one face to my colours came; My chords replied to but one nameLorenzo -all seemed vowed to thee, To passion, and to misery! [Last Verses of L. E. L.] [Alluding to the Pole Star, which, in her voyage to Africa, she had nightly watched till it sunk below the horizon.] A star has left the kindling sky- I miss its bright familiar face, It rose upon our English sky, It seemed to answer to my thought, And with its welcome presence brought The voyage it lights no longer, ends Soon on a foreign shore; How can I but recall the friends That I may see no more? Fresh from the pain it was to part- Meet with a deeper, dearer love; That none looked up with me. Thy shining orbit should have scope Oh, fancy vain, as it is fond, My friends! I need not look beyond These expressions, it is almost unnecessary to say, are not true to natural facts, as the Pole Star has not a quotidian rising anywhere, and it shines on the whole northern hemisphere in common with England.-Ed. Wanton droll, whose harmless play And maid, whose cheek outblooms the rose, Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe, The housewife's spindle whirling round, Or thread, or straw, that on the ground |