Soon taught to feel, as gleamed the view

All fitful on the sight,
The painted beauties of the soul,
Mere visions of the night.

Yet now, each busy sense awake
Grasps scenes of magic name;
My ear, the midland ocean's roar,
My eye, Vesuvius' flame!

I see her fling athwart the wave
Her lines of living light,
Like fiery serpents, flashing far
Their ridgy furrows bright:

I see her fold around her brow,
A dark sulphureous shroud,
Rising, and deepening in its rise,
Commingling with the cloud:

Still burns, as in the ages gone,
Yon mine of quenchless rage;

The same as when her lurid blaze
Lit up th' historic page.

And what shall check the lust of man,

His folly or his pride!

Lo! 'mid the glare he rears his tent,

The molten track beside.

Gaily he plants the jocund vine,

Gaily he marks it grow ;

Nor heeds, while forms the grape's rich juice, How ruin works below!

Till sudden from yon furnace-mouth,

The broad red streams descend,

And fruits of earth, and works of men,

In one destruction blend.

Yet as I gaze on scenes no more

In fancy's colours drest,

Earth's restlessness but soothes and stills

The fever of the breast.

No fire of rapture in the eye,

No burst upon the lip

Strange! that the draught should be so mild,

When burning was the sip!

Yet, if I am not what I was,
And years, that hurry by,
Have dimmed the lustre of the soul,
The sparkle of the eye;

My feelings claim a higher source,

A more enlightened tone;

Less care I for a selfish joy,

My soul is GOD's alone!

I mark Him in his works of might,
The air, the wave, the shore;
I see Him in the mirrored flame-
I hear him in the roar !

The burning mountain is to me
An unexhausted mine :

I wonder less-yet more admire
Marks of a hand Divine.

While those, who will not read His name,

In stupid marvel gaze;

I know His might, who earth shall fire, In one stupendous blaze.

I see my Father's touch of flame,
My Father's voice I own;

I step from off the mountain's brow,
Up to His mercy's throne!

There plead His grace, who died for me,

And lives for me above;

And smile to see Almighty power

Curb'd by Almighty love.

THE CAMPO SANTO.

BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHICH DIE IN THE LORD.-REV. XIV, 13.

The CAMPO SANTO of Naples is a large public cemetery, at some distance from the city, enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on the fourth, where are the gates, by a piazza. It consists of vaults, as numerous, by report, as there are days in the year. Each morning, at an early hour, a fresh one is opened, and all the bodies brought, after being stripped, are thrown headlong in, and sprinkled with a little quick-lime, which, with the progress of time, and the assistance of rats and other vermin, serves, in the course of the year, to reduce them to their native dust, and leave the place free for new comers. A square stone covers the aperture, which, after the day's use, is closed and fastened in its case with mortar.

OFT do I deem, when doubts arise
To throng the aching head;
What boots it where the body lies,
When once the spirit's fled !

If hid within the Saviour's hand,
Sweet-sweet will be its rest;

Or buried in the ocean's sand,
Or tossing on its breast.

Tho' winds its fragments bear on high,
And billowy waves deform;

They cannot waft it from His eye,
Who rides upon the storm.

Tho' bound in sheets of thick-ribb'd ice, Or cast on burning sands;

When forth the word hath sped: Arise! In form complete it stands.

What boots it then to choose a grave,
Or weave a winding-sheet?

His own He claims from earth or wave,
From cold or torrid heat.

Yet, when I gazed the pit within,

Where fresh, as newly slain; Sad trophies of the reign of sin!

Full many a form was lain,

An undistinguishable mass

Of pallid, human clay;

Hurled helpless down like mowen grass,I gazed-and turned away.

I thought me on the gentle mould,
Where Christ's disciples lie;

Like sheep within their Shepherd's fold,
Beneath their Shepherd's eye e!