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V.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high :-the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights

And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,

Or the star-beams dart through them :-winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things

Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what wert thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy ?1

STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES.

The sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent light.
The breath of the moist earth is light
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The city's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's.

I see the deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple sea-weeds strown:

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:

I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion.

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within, nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,

1 Compare the dead philosophy of Shelley's contemplations of this scene with the religious life of those of Coleridge, p. 413.

And walked with inward glory crowned—
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround-

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ;—
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan:

They might lament-for I am one

Whom men love not-and yet regret,1

Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

TO A SKY-LARK.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher,

From the earth thou springest,

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The world has been true to this expectation of the poet, though not probably in the sense in which he meant it. These stanzas present a too true reflection of Shelley's state of mind over a great portion of his short life.

The pale purple even
Meets around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,

In the broad day-light

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud;
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

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THE PLAIN OF LOMBARDY.

Beneath is spread, like a green sea,
The waveless plain of Lombardy,

Bounded by the vaporous air,

Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath day's azure eyes,
Ocean's nursling, Venice, lies,—
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;

And before that chasm of light,

As within a furnace bright,

Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

Shine like obelisks of fire,

Pointing with inconstant motion

From the altar of dark ocean

To the sapphire-tinted skies:
As the flames of sacrifice

From the marble shrines did rise,
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt City! thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen.

Noon descends around me now;
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,
When a soft and purple mist,
Like a vaporous amethyst,

Or an air-dissolvéd star,

Mingling light and fragrance, far
From the curved horizon's bound
To the point of heaven's profound,
Fills the overflowing sky;
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath; the leaves unsodden,
Where the infant frost has trodden
With his morning-winged feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellised lines
The rough dark skirted wilderness;
The dim and bladed grass, no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine,
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one;
And my spirit, which so long

Darkened this swift stream of song,
Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky;

Be it love, light, harmony,

Odour, or the soul of all,

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.2

FELICIA HEMANS.

(1793-1835.)

FEMALE authorship in England is of comparatively modern date. After the period when the maiden queen condescended to figure as a little occidental luminary in poetry,3 a single star or two glitters in the sky of the 17th century; they begin to assemble in greater numbers in the 18th, and in the conclusion of that century and the commencement of the present, the literature of England presents the names of many females in all departments of knowledge, of pre-eminent or of respectable merit. We regret that we are 1 The zenith.

2 These lines exemplify the felt relation of Shelley's mind towards external nature, when "his spirit did not darken the stream of his verse:" they contain all things that are beautiful, but the God of nature is not there.

3 See Dyce's Specimens; Rowton's Female Poets of Great Britain; and Leigh Hunt's "Men, Women, and Books."

Not even excluding pure science, witness the works of Mrs Sommerville. The tone of

forced to confine our selection to the name that has been universally acknowledged to stand at the head of our English poetesses.'

Mrs Hemans, originally Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne, was the daughter of a merchant, a native of Ireland, and born in Liverpool in September 1793. The failure of her father in trade caused the retirement of the family into Wales, and the childhood of the poetess was spent among the inspiring scenery of Denbighshire. From a child she was a versifier, and produced her first publication at the age of fifteen. At that of eighteen, she was married to Captain Hemans. The union was unhappy; her husband six years afterwards, for his health, went to Italy, and, without any formal deed of separation, "they never met again." Mrs Hemans continued in her Welsh seclusion, the exertions of her pen, the education of her children, and the duties of religion and benevolence, furnishing her with ample employment. She died in Dublin, during a visit to her brother, Major Browne, in 1835. Her deathbed was an affecting scene of Christian fortitude, resignation, and hope

Mrs Hemans, like several modern writers, is most popular in her minor poems. Delicacy of feeling, warmth of affection and devotion, depth of sympathy with nature, and harmony and brilliancy of language, are the features of these charming little pieces. Her larger works have the same characteristics, but become languid and fatiguing from their very uniformity of sweetness. Her translations from modern languages, and her chivalric poems, exhibit great spirit and splendour of association and imagery. Over her whole poetry, in the phrase of Sir W. Scott, there is too much flower for the fruit. Her style has been peculiarly popular in America, and much of the later American poetry is moulded on it. The larger works of Mrs Hemans are "The Sceptic ;""The Vespers of Palermo" (a tragedy) ; “ The Forest Sanctuary ;""Records of Woman."

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The voices of my home!-I hear them still !
They have been with me through the dreamy night-
The blessed household voices, wont to fill

My heart's clear depths with unalloy'd delight!

I hear them still, unchanged:-though some from earth
Are music parted, and the tones of mirth-

Wild, silvery tones, that rang through days more bright!
Have died in others,-yet to me they come,

Singing of boyhood back—the voices of my home!

They call me through this hush of woods reposing,
In the grey stillness of the summer morn;

the literature of the females of Britain is invariab'y wholesome, and contrasts with much of that of France. It is pleasing to reflect that a great portion of the literary industry of our authoresses have been devoted to education, the most important of a mother's duties. Besides direct works on this subject, and books compiled for school purposes, the most charming tictions have been made subsidiary to the same object by Mrs Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth. &c.

We mean in present popularity, for in some others of var female writers there is nerve more intellectually powerful than in Mrs Hemans.

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