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النشر الإلكتروني

The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! I gaz'd upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranc'd in prayer
I worshipp'd the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfus'd,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,

As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstacy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale !
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink :
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, oh wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual springs?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!?
Who call'd you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns call'd you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shatter'd and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-

The glaciers assume in the sunshine all manner of colours.

2 Besides the rivers Arvé and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides."

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers
Of lovliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ?—
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God !2

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost !
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,

Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow trav'ling with dim eyes suffus'd with tears,
Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud

To rise before me-Rise, oh, ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit thron'd among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.3

"Within a few paces of the glaciers the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers, with its flowers of loveliest blue.'"

2 This striking use of the great name possibly suggested the similar phraseology in the commencement of Mr Bailey's recent poem, "Festus:" Coleridge himself was perhaps thinking of Milton's repetition of " Death" in Par. Lost, ii. 787-789; while Milton evidently echoed Virgil's

"Insonuere cavae, gemitumque dedere cavernae,”-Æn. ii. 53; and possibly also Virgil's "Eurydice," Georg. iv. 525, and "Hytas," Ecl. vi. 44.See Newton's note on Milton. It is interesting to observe the bee-like manner, to take Mr Gilman's simile in defending Coleridge, in which poets elaborate honey from the flowers of their predecessors. Compare the spirit of the Hymn with that of Shelley.

3 The structure of this Hymn is extremely noble; it commences and concludes with the idea of the mount in its one-ness, while the mind is allowed in the intervening strains to mingle with the individualities of its scenery; it constitutes a picture as unique in its grandeur as any that poetry presents. In relation to Coleridge's mind, the Hymn may be compared with "Love" (Genevieve), and the "Address to Wordsworth" in the Sybilline Leaves. The three poems seem to exhibit a modus of the development of his poetical faculty towards three classes of objects, those of Nature, of Passion, and of Intellect.

ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL. D.

(1774-1843.)

INTIMATELY associated with the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge is that of the late laureate, Robert Southey, the brother-in-law of the latter poet. He was the son of a linen-draper in Bristol: though intended for the Church, he disqualified himself for the honours of Oxford by the adoption, like Coleridge, of Socinian opinions. With Coleridge he became acquainted in 1794, and, warmly sympathizing with his political and religious opinions, Southey entered into the pantisocratic scheme to which we have alluded in Coleridge's life. The drama, " Wat Tyler," and his epic," Joan of Arc," prove the fervour of the young poet's enthusiasm in the Jacobinical notions, which he lived with equal fervency to execrate. The marriages of himself and Coleridge to sisters put an end, as has been mentioned, to the dream of pantisocracy; and, after a residence for some time at Lisbon, a short studentship of law in London, and a brief period of secretaryship to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, he settled ultimately on the banks of the Greta near Keswick. From this period his life was one round of incessant study and voluminous authorship; his library was the world in which he lived and moved. Like Sir Walter Scott, he seems to have worn out, by over-demand on their activity, the material organs which are the mind's instruments of thought: the last years of his life were spent in utter extinction of intellect, and death, in 1843, mercifully relieved his friends from the painful spectacle. Southey shipwrecked his poetry on his scholarship: he used too much the "spectacles of books;" the gilding and regilding of his eloquence fatigues with its splendour: his greater poems have no relief; the mouth of his reader's mind is perpetually crammed to choking his words frequently serve rather as a splendid case for a little thought, than as a crystal lantern to transmit the intellectual light in the tempered harmony of its outline. His eloquence lies too often in the rhetoric of the words merely any reader will be sensible of this who compares Campbell's "Dirge of Wallace" with Southey's verses on a similar subject. His characters have not sufficiently distinctive features. In "Madoc," except by names, the hearer could not distinguish Welshmen from Americans; or, in "Roderic," Moors from Spaniards. Notwithstanding these defects, the intellectual wealth of Southey's mind, his graceful skill in gorgeous ornament, the purity of his English style, and his sympathy with all that is noble and virtuous in history and humanity, render him a poet of great practical use to the student. His aims were too wide, and his grasp of subject too universal: his idea, for instance, of a series of poems illustrative of the superstitions of all nations, of which Thalaba and Kehama are examples, was evidently, for perfection of poetic result, beyond the faculty of any one mind. His smaller pieces-as, "Mary the Maid of the Inn," "The Holly Tree," &c.-display all the graces of simple and genuine poetry. Their popularity should have taught the author a lesson in his art: it is only among those whose attainments enable them to appreciate him, that Southey, so far as regards the mass of his poetry, will probably be a favourite.

:

1 After the loss of his first wife (Edith), Southey married, in 1839, Miss Caroline Bowles, a kindred spirit in poetry. He left four children, and a fortune of L.12,000. The poet's eminence, industry, and loyalty were rewarded in 1813 with the laureateship. His Jacobinism and Socinianism were, like the similar principles of Coleridge, thrown aside with his youth. He received his doctor's degree from Oxford University in 1821. He judiciously refused the offer of a baronetcy.

Dr Southey's more important works are, "Thalaba," a tale of Arabian demonology; "Madoc," an epic founded on a tradition of the discovery of America by a Welsh prince; "The Curse of Kehama," a tale of Indian superstition, adorned with incalculable gorgeousness of imagery and learning; a multitude of ballads, sonnets, odes, &c. His prose works are esteemed for beauty of style and picturesqueness of narrative. They consist of histories, biographies, translations, &c. The copiousness of his mind seemed inexhaustible; he is said to have destroyed more than he ever published.

THE HOLLY TREE.

Oh Reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly Tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves,

Order'd by an Intelligence so wise,

As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen;

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But, as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize;

And in this wisdom of the Holly Tree

Can emblems see,

Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme,
One which may profit in the after-time.

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear
Harsh and austere ;

To those, who on my leisure would intrude,
Reserved and rude ;-

Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be,

Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know,

Some harshness show,

All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And as when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,

The Holly leaves a sober hue display

Less bright than they;

But, when the bare and wint'ry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?

So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng;

So would I seem amid the young and gay
More grave than they;

That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree.

FROM THE ECLOGUE, THE ALDERMAN'S FUNERAL."

This man of half a million

Had all these public virtues which you praise:
But the poor man rung never at his door;
And the old beggar, at the public gate,
Who, all the summer long, stands hat in hand,
He knew how vain it was to lift an eye

To that hard face. Yet he was always found
Among your ten and twenty pound subscribers,
Your benefactors in the newspapers.

His alms were money put to interest
In the other world,-donations to keep open
A running charity account with Heaven,-
Retaining fees against the Last Assizes,
When, for the trusted talents, strict account

Shall be required from all, and the old Arch-Lawyer
Plead his own cause as plaintiff.

Who should lament for him, Sir, in whose heart
Love had no place, nor natural charity?
The parlour spaniel, when she heard his step,
Rose slowly from the hearth, and stole aside
With creeping pace; she never raised her eyes
To woo kind words from him, nor laid her head
Upraised upon his knee, with fondling whine.
How could it be but thus? Arithmetic
Was the sole science he was ever taught;
The multiplication-table was his Creed,

His Pater-noster, and his Decalogue.

When yet he was a boy, and should have breathed The open air and sunshine of the fields,

To give his blood its natural spring and play,

He, in a close and dusky counting-house,

Smoke-dried, and sear'd, and shrivell'd up his heart.

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