Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and
smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild
birds shriek'd,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again :-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom : no love was left;
All earth was but one thought-and that was
death

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their
flesh;

The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no
food,

But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up, [hands
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and
died-

Ev'n of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they
dropp'd,

They slept on the abyss without a surge-

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them-She was the Universe!

[hour

When summer's day declines along the hills,
When all of Genius which can perish dies.
So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes,
A mighty spirit is eclipsed-a power
Hath pass'd from day to darkness-to whose
Of light no likeness is bequeath'd--no name,
Focus at once of all the rays of Fame!
The flash of Wit, the bright intelligence,
The beam of Song, the blaze of Eloquence,
Set with their Sun, but still have left behind
The enduring produce of immortal Mind;
Fruits of a genial morn, and glorious noon,
A deathless part of him who died too soon.
But small that portion of the wondrous whole,
These sparkling segments of that circling soul,
Which all embraced, and lighten'd over all,
To cheer, to pierce, to please, or to appal.
From the charm'd council to the festive board,
Of human feelings the unbounded lord;
In whose acclaim the loftiest voices vied,
The praised, the proud, who made his praise
their pride.

When the loud cry of trampled Hindostan
Arose to Heaven in her appeal from man,
His was the thunder, his the avenging rod,
The wrath-the delegated voice of God!
Which shook the nations through his lips, and
blazed,

Till vanquish'd senates trembled as they praised.
And here, oh! here, where yet all
The gay creations of his spirit charm,

young and

[warm,

l'he matchless dialogue, the deathless wit, Which knew not what it was to intermit; The glowing portraits, fresh from life, that bring Home to our hearts the truth from which they spring;

These wondrous beings of his fancy, wrought
To fulness by the fiat of his thought,

Here in their first abode you still may meet,
Bright with the hues of his Promethean heat;
A halo of the light of other days,
Which still the splendour of its orb betrays.

But should there be to whom the fatal blight
Of failing Wisdom yields a base delight,
Men who exult when minds of heavenly tone
Jar in the music which was born their own,
Still let them pause-ah! little do they know
That what to them seemed Vice might be but
Woe.

Ye Bards! to whom the Drama's Muse is dear,
He was your master-emulate him here!
Ye men of wit and social eloquence,
He was your brother-bear his ashes hence!
While powers of mind almost of boundless

range,

Complete in kind, as various in their change;
While Eloquence, Wit, Poesy, and Mirth,
That humbler Harmonist of care on Earth,
Survive within our souls-while lives our sense
Of pride in Merit's proud pre-eminence,
Long shall we seek his likeness, long in vain,
And turn to all of him which may remain,
Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man,
And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan !

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE.

Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze
Is fix'd for ever to detract or praise;
Repose denies her requiem to his name,
And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.
The secret enemy whose sleepless eye
Stands sentinel, accuser, judge, and spy;
The foe, the fool, the jealous, and the vain,
The envious, who but breathe in others'
Pehold the host! delighting to deprave,
Who track the steps of glory to the grave,
Watch every fault that daring Genius owes
Half to the ardour which its birth bestows,
Distort the truth, accumulate the lie,
And pile the pyramid of Calumny!
These are his portion-but if join'd to these
Gaunt Poverty should league with deep Disease;
If the high Spirit must forget to soar,
And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,
To soothe Indignity-and face to face
Meet sordid rage, and wrestle with Disgrace;
To find in Hope but the renew'd caress,
The serpent-fold of further Faithlessness:-
If such may be the ills which men assail,
What marvel if at last the mightiest fail?
Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling's
given
[heaven,
Bear hearts electric-charged with fire from
Black with the rude collision, inly torn,
By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds borne,
Driven o'er the lowering atmosphere that nurst
Thoughts which have turn'd to thunder-scorch,
and burst.

But far from us and from our mimic scene Such things should be-if such have ever been; Ours be the gentler wish, the kinder task, To give the tribute Glory need not ask, To mourn the vanish'd beam, and add our mite Of praise in payment of a long delight. Ye Orators! whom yet our councils yield, Mourn for the veteran Hero of your field! The worthy rival of the wondrous Three," Whose words were sparks of Immortality!

Fox, Pit, Burke.

The Gardener of that ground, why it might be That for this plant strangers his memory task 'd, Through the thick deaths of half a century? And thus he answer'd: Well, I do not know Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so; He died before my day of Sextonship,

And I had not the digging of this grave.'
And is this all? I thought- and do we rip
The veil of Immortality, and crave

I know not what of honour and of light,
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight,
So soon, and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's
thought,

Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers;-as he caught
As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun,
Thus spoke he: 'I believe the man of whom
You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,
Was a most famous writer in his day,
And therefore travellers step from out their way
To pay him honour,-and myself whate'er
Your honour pleases.' Then most pleased I
From out my pocket's avaricious nook [shook
Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently :-Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell
You are the fools, not I; for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that old Sexton's natural homily,
In which there was Obscurity and Fame-
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.

PROMETHEUS.

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise,
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until his voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill ;
And in the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die :
The wretched gift Eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell ;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit :

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence :
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself-and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense
Which even in torture can descry

Its own concentred recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory!

A FRAGMENT.

COULD I remount the river of my years,
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowe's,
But bid it flow as now-until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this Death?-a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For life is but a vision-what I see
Of all that lives alone is life to me;
And being so-the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrances our hours of rest.

The absent are the dead-for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,—or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided-equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both-but one day end it must,
In the dark union of insensate dust.

The under-earth inhabitants-are they But mingled millions decomposed to clay? The ashes of a thousand ages spread Wherever man has trodden or shall tread? Or do they in their silent cities dwell Each in his incommunicative cell? Or have they their own language? and a sense Of breathless being?-darken'd and intense As midnight in her solitude?-O Earth! Where are the past?-and wherefore had they The dead are thy inheritors-and we [birth? But bubbles on thy surface; and the key Of thy profundity is in the grave, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, Where I would walk in spirit, and behold Our elements resolved to things untold, And fathom-hidden wonders, and explore The essence of great bosoms now no more.

'And for this, O King! is sent

Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD
ON THE SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA,
Which, in the Arabic language, is to the fol-
lowing purport.

THE Moorish King rides up and down
Through Granada's royal town;
From Elvira's gates to those

Of Bivarambla on he goes.

Woe is me, Alhama !

Letters to the monarch tell
How Alhama's city fell;
In the fire the scroll he threw,
And the messenger he slew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

He quits his mule, and mounts his horse,
And through the street directs his course;
Through the street of Zacatin

To the Alhambra spurring in.

Woe is me, Alhama!

When the Alhambra walls he gain'd,
On the moment he ordain'd

That the trumpet straight should sound
With the silver clarion round.

Woe is me, Alhama!

And when the hollow drums of war,
Beat the loud alarm afar,
That the Moors of town and plain
Might answer to the martial strain.
Woe is me, Alhama!

Then the Moors, by this aware
That bloody Mars recall'd them there,
One by one, and two by two,
To a mighty squadron grew.

Woe is me, Alhama !

Out then spake an aged Moor
In these words the king before,
'Wherefore call on us, O King?
What may mean this gathering?'
Woe is me, Alhama!

Friends! ye have, alas! to know
Of a most disastrous blow;

That the Christians, stern and bold,
Have obtain'd Alhama's hold.'
Woe is me, Alhama !

Out then spake old Alfaqui,
With his beard so white to see;
'Good King! thou art justly served,
Good King! this thou hast deserved.
Woe is me, Alhama!

By thee were slain, in evil hour,
The Abencerrage, Granada's flower;
And strangers were received by thee
Of Cordova the Chivalry.

Woe is me, Alhama!

On thee a double chastisement :
Thee and thine, thy crown and realm,
One last wreck shall overwhelm.
Woe is me, Alhama!

He who holds no laws in awe,
He must perish by the law;
And Granada must be won,
And thyself with her undone.

Woe is me, Alhama!
Fire flash'd from out the old Moor's eyes,
The Monarch's wrath began to rise,
Because he answer'd, and because
He spake exceeding well of laws.
Woe is me, Alhama!

'There is no law to say such things
As may disgust the ear of kings:
Thus, snorting with his choler, said
The Moorish King, and doom'd him dead.
Woe is me, Alhama !

Moor Alfaqui! Moor Alfaqui!
Though thy beard so hoary be,
The King has sent to have thee seized,
For Alhama's loss displeased.

Wce is me, Alhania!

And to fix thy head upon

High Alhambra's loftiest stone;
That this for thee should be the law,
And others tremble when they saw.
Woe is me, Alhama!

'Cavalier, and man of worth!
Let these words of mine go forth
Let the Moorish Monarch know,
That to him I nothing owe.

Woe is me, Alhama !
But on my soul Alhama weighs,
And on my inmost spirit preys;
And if the King his land hath lost,
Yet others may have lost the most.
Woe is me, Alhama !

'Sires have lost their children, wives
Their lords, and valiant men their lives;
One what best his love might claim
Hath lost, another wealth, or fame.
Woe is me, Alhama !

'I lost a damsel in that hour,
Of all the land the loveliest flower;
Doubloons a hundred I would pay,
And think her ransom cheap that day.'
Woe is me, Alhama I

And as these things the old Moor said,
They sever'd from the trunk his head;
And to the Alhambra's wall with speed
'Twas carried, as the King decreed.
Woe is me, Alhama

And men and infants therein weep
Their loss, so heavy and so deep;
Granada's ladies, all she rears
Within her walls, burst into tears.

Woe is me, Alhama!

And from the windows o'er the walls The sable web of mourning falls; The King weeps as a woman o'er His loss, for it is much and sore. Woe is me, Alhama !

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

THEY say that Hope is happiness;

But genuine Love must prize the past, And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose the first-they set the last; And all that Memory loves the most Was once our only Hope to be, And all that Hope adored and lost Hath melted into Memory.

Alas! it is delusion all;

The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall,

Nor dare we think on what we are.

TO THOMAS MOORE.

My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,

Here's a double health to thee!
Here's a sigh to those who love me.
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.
Were't the last drop in the well,
As I gasp'd upon the brink,

Ere my fainting spirit fell,

"Tis to thee that I would drink.

With that water, as this wine,

The libation I would pour

Should be-Peace with thine and mine, And a health to thee, Tom Moore.

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ.⚫ ABSENT or present, still to thee,

My friend, what magic spells belong! As all can tell, who share, like me,

In turn thy converse and thy song. But when the dreaded hour shall come, By Friendship ever deem'd too nigh, And MEMORY' o'er her Druid's tomb Shall weep that aught of thee can die, How fondly will she then repay

Thy homage offer'd at her shrine, And blend, while ages roll away, Her name immortally with thine!

• Written in a blank leaf of the 'Pleasures of Memory.'

SONG FOR THE LUDDITES.

As the Liberty lads o'er the sea Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood, So we, boys, we

Will die fighting, or live free,

And down with all kings but King Ludd!
When the web that we weave is complete,
And the shuttle exchanged for the sword,
We will fling the winding-sheet
O'er the despot at our feet,

And dye it deep in the gore he has pour'd.
Though black as his heart its hue,
Since his veins are corrupted to mud,
Yet this is the dew

Which the tree shall renew
Of Liberty, planted by Ludd!