"ALAS, HOW SOON THE HOURS ARE OVER COUNTED AS OUT TO PLAY THE LOVER!"-LANDOR.

"IMAGE THE Memory, as the eye itself,—(walter s. LANDOR)

The heart is hardest in the softest climes:
The passions flourish, the affections die.
O thou vast tablet of these awful truths,
That fillest all the space between the seas,
Spreading from Venice's deserted courts
To the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole,

What lifts thee up? What shakes thee? 'Tis the

breath

Of God. Awake, ye nations! spring to life!
Let the last work of His right hand appear
Fresh with His image-Man. Thou recreant slave
That sittest afar off, and helpest not;

O thou degenerate Albion! with what shame
Do I survey thee, pushing forth the sponge
At thy spear's length, in mockery at the thirst
Of holy Freedom in his agony,

And prompt and keen to pierce the wounded side!
Must Italy then wholly rot away
Amid her slime, before she germinate
Into fresh vigour, into form again?

What thunder burst upon mine ear? some isle
Hath surely risen from the gulfs profound,
Eager to suck the sunshine from the breast
Of beauteous Nature, and to catch the gale
From golden Hermus and Malena's brow.
A greater thing than isle, than continent,
Than earth itself, than ocean-circling earth,
Hath risen there; regenerate Man hath risen.
Generous old bard of Chios! not that Jove
Deprived thee, in thy latter days, of sight,
Would I complain, but that no higher theme
Than a disdainful youth, a lawless king,

A pestilence, a pyre, awoke thy song,

When, on the Chian coast, one javelin's throw

SEES NEAR THINGS INDISTINCTLY, FAR THINGS WELL."-LANDOR.

"AND HOW MUCH NARROWER IS THE STAGE ALLOTTED US TO PLAY THE SAGE!"-LANDOR.

"THE FLAME OF ANGER, BRIGHT AND BRIEF, SHARPENS THE BARB OF LOVE."-WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

258

"THE BRIGHTEST MIND, WHEN SORROW SWEEPS ACROSS,

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

From where thy tombstone, where thy cradle stood,
Twice twenty self-devoted Greeks assailed
The naval host of Asia,-at one blow,

Scattered it into air......and Greece was free..............
And, ere these glories beamed, thy day had closed.
Let all that Elis ever saw give way,

All that Olympian Jove e'er smiled upon:
The Marathonian columns never told
A tale more glorious, never Salamis,-
Nor, faithful in the centre of the false,
Platea,-nor Anthela, from whose mount
Benignant Ceres wards the blessed laws,
And sees the Amphictyon dip his weary foot
In the warm streamlet of the strait below.
Goddess! although thy brow was never reared
Among the powers that guarded or assailed
Perfidious Ilion, parricidal Thebes,

Or other walls whose war-belt e'er inclosed
Man's congregated crimes and vengeful pain,
Yet hast thou touched the extreme of grief and joy;
Grief upon Enna's mead and Hell's ascent,
A solitary mother; joy beyond—

Far beyond-that thy woe, in this thy fane :
The tears were human, but the bliss divine.
I, in the land of strangers, and depressed
With sad and certain presage for my own,
Exult at Hope's fresh day-spring, though afar,
There where my youth was not unexercised
By chiefs in willing war and faithful song:
Shades as they were, they were not empty shades,
Whose bodies haunt our world and blear our sun;
Obstruction worse than swamp and shapeless sands.
Peace, praise, eternal gladness to the souls
That, rising from the seas into the heavens,

BECOMES THE GLOOMIEST."-WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

"YOUTH IS THE VIRGIN NURSE OF TENDER HOPE, AND LIFTS HER UP AND SHOWS A FAR-OFF SCENE."-LANDOR.

"TEARS DRIVEN BACK UPON THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD, AND SORROW'S VOICE SUPPREST."-W. S. LANDOR.

NEITHER THE SUNS NOR FROSTS OF ROLLING YEARS-(W. S. LANDOR)

"WEAVE, WHILE IN QUIET SLEEP REPOSE THE DEAD; OH, WHEN WILL THEY TOO REST !"-LANDOR.

CORINTH.

Have ransomed first their country with their blood!
O thou immortal Spartan! at whose name
The marble table sounds beneath my palms,-
Leonidas! even thou wilt not disdain

To mingle names, august as these, with thine;
Nor thou, twin star of glory,* thou whose rays
Streamed over Corinth on the double sea,
Achaian and Saronic; whom the sons
Of Syracuse, when Death removed thy light,

* Timoleon, the patriot ruler of Corinth.

DRY UP THE SPRINGS OR CHANGE THE COURSE OF TEARS.

-LANDOR.

"MORE MUTABLE THAN WIND-TORN LEAVES ARE WE; YEA, LOWER THAN THE DUST'S ESTATE."-W. S. LANDOR.

260

"BOASTFULLY WE CALL THE WORLD OUR OWN :-(LANDOR)

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Wept more than slavery ever made them weep,
But shed (if gratitude is sweet) sweet tears......

The hand that then poured ashes o'er their heads
Was loosened from its desperate chain by thee.

[From "The Hellenics," xv.]

SIXTEEN.

IN Clementina's artless mien
Lucilla asks me what I see?

And, are the roses of sixteen
Enough for me?

Lucilla asks, if that be all,

Have I not culled as sweet before?

Oh yes, Lucilla! and their fall

I still deplore.

I now behold another scene,

Where pleasure beams with heaven's own

light;

More pure, more constant, more serene,
And not less bright.

Faith, on whose breast the loves repose,
Whose chain of flowers no force can sever;
And Modesty, who, when she goes,
Is gone for ever.

[From Landor's "Collected Works."]

WHAT ARE WE WHO SHOULD CALL IT SO?"-w. s. LANDOR.

"DISSEVERED FROM OURSELVES, ALIENS AND OUTCASTS, WE ONLY LIVE TO FEEL OUR FALL AND DIE."-LANDOR.

"EXTREME IN ALL THINGS! HADST THOU BEEN BETWIXT,-BYRON)

NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA.

261

John Gibson Lockhart.

[JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, the son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott,-born in 1794, died in 1854,-was for many years the editor of the Quarterly Review. As a critic he was distinguished by his acuteness of analysis, and by the trenchant vigour of his satire. As a novelist, and the author of "Valerius," "Adam Blair," "Reginald Dalton," and "Matthew Wald," he showed a remarkable power in depicting the deeper passions of human nature, and in tracing the declension of a lofty mind from sin to sin. His style was clear and forcible; his command of pathos and humour extraordinary. He painted with all the power, and, let us add, all the gloom of a Rembrandt. His poetical translations from the Spanish are indisputably the finest of their kind; and many of his original poems show that he could have handled "the lyre," had he so willed, with a surprising mastery of touch. He was clear and original in conception; masculine and skilful in execution. "His pictures," says a critic, "have all the distinctness of an autumn landscape, outlined on the horizon by an unclouded morning sun."]

"THERE SUNK THE GREATEST, NOR THE WORST OF MEN, WHOSE SPIRIT, ANTITHETICALLY MIXT,-(BYRON)

ONE MOMENT OF THE MIGHTIEST, AND AGAIN ON LITTLE OBJECTS WITH LIKE FIRMNESS FIXT."-BYRON.

NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA.*
HE mighty sun had just gone down

Into the chambers of the deep;
The ocean birds had upward flown,

Each in his cave to sleep;

And silent was the island shore,
And breathless all the broad red sea,
And motionless beside the door
One solitary tree.

One only tree, one ancient palm,
Whose shadow sleeps the door beside,
Partook the universal calm,

When Buonaparte died.

An ancient man, a stately man,

Came forth beneath the spreading tree,

* This poem originally appeared in Blackwood's Magazine for July, 1821.

THY THRONE HAD STILL BEEN THINE, OR NEVER BEEN.

" BYRON.