but they fail to awaken that thrilling emotion, that désordre sympathique, by which elsewhere he sways the heart. In dramatic efforts most of the peculiar beauties of Lamartine's poetry must of necessity be sacrificed; and for their loss not even the force of passion can compensate us. In the "Death of Socrates," the poet has gifted the philosopher on the threshold of death, with a vision which penetrates through the shades of mythological superstition, into the sublimest mysteries of revelation. He declares the gods of pagan belief to be but the images of the attributes of one powerful Supreme, whose sole divinity animates his creation;

"Que ces astres brillans sur nos têtes semés
Sont des soleils vivans, et des feux animés!
Que l'océan frappant sa rive épouvantée
Avec ses flots grondans roule une ame irritée!
Que notre air embaumé volant dans un ciel pur
Est un esprit flottant sur des ailes d'azur!
Que le jour est un œil qui répand la lumière!
La nuit, une beauté qui voile sa paupière!
Et qu'enfin dans le ciel, sur la terre, en tout lieu,
Tout est intelligent, tout vit, tout est un dieu!"

The tone

Novissima Verba is one of our especial favourites. of melancholy that pervades this poem, aptly expressed in the second title, Mon ame est triste jusqu'à la mort," is congenial, we imagine, with the genius of the writer, and must have flowed from his pen in moments of real feeling. "If there be a moment," he says, "when man should lift his voice, it is when the cold grave is about to engulf with him, his last thought!"

'Tis at that hour, when ready for its flight,
Each spirit bears some secret unrevealed,
Some message to the world, to life, to death,
Before, extinct forever, it hath vanished

Like some pale meteor of the night, that leaves

Nor light, nor sound! What leave we, life! when thou

Art fled? Nought-save the murmur of last words!

Brief echo, transient as the fluttering

Of the light vessel's sail,-the passing tone

Of fugitive wave, that murmuring on its course

Expires in wailing on the sloping shore!

Alas! be ours at least the boon to hear

The voice of fleeting breath! Speak! since a sound,
A vain sound, by eternal silence followed,

Is the sole monument of boasted life,

The stone that tells of an existence past,—

Like the cold sable marbles raised to death,

Within these fields, lone kingdoms of the tomb,
Which mark the date of human dust-and say
To eyes of nought convinced-This clay hath lived!

He thus illustrates the vanity of the pursuit of the trompeusevérité, which has baffled so long the sages of this world:

Hast seen, at evening of a day of storms,

The sun, from cloud to cloud descending fast,

Gild every pile by turns with imaged fires?
We mark them kindle 'neath the passing orb,
And in the burning veil, the shining fleece
By breath of evening poised-the deepened hues
Of living purple, seek the sun himself!

We deem those tints of glowing gold are his-
"Tis he-betrayed by streams of light-whose rays
Have cleft their silvery veil! deem that day bursts
Even from the envious shroud! Like a rich flood
Gushes the purple glory--and while gazing
The eye would greet the sun imbedded there,
Fades and dissolves the cloud-'tis but a vapour
That floats and vanishes! Further we search

In vain-already far beyond our sight

The orb has sunk; and thus from cloud to cloud
'Twas but his fleeting image we pursued!

Truth! No-thou art not-save in human visions!
The phantom of illusion! the fleet image

Of distant glory-which man vainly dreams

Is his-which melts beneath his eager touch!
The mocking echo of a thousand tones,

Which gives the last sound back! Man's latest error
His vain pursuit of thee!-But in my heart

The insensate wish hath ceased! I seek no more
Aught from thy fatal splendour,-but resign
My reckless being to these waves of gloom;
Even as the seaman, when the pole is lost,
When veiled his guiding star, with folded arms
Lets float his bark at the dark waters' will,

Of ruin sure-and death-and all indifferent

What wind shall toss, what strand receive his corse!

From the Souvenir d'Enfance, we take the following lines, describing in his peculiar style of comparison, the vanity and evil of a life spent in the pursuit of glory.

Our life is like the crystal rill

Nameless and lowly issuing from the rock;
While in the clear deep bed by nature scooped,
As in a cradle noiseless, calm, it sleeps,
Flowers crown its bank with perfume, and serene
The blue of heaven descends upon its breast;

But from the hill's close arms escaped, when spread
Its waves o'er neighbouring plains with river slime
How swell its billows, and with bloated bulk
Grow pale and putrid! From its shores recede
The wonted shade, and but the naked rock
Receives its fugitive waves. Cleaving new paths,
The graceful windings of its parent vale
It scorns to follow-but 'neath arches deep
Rolling with haughty port, there gains a name
As sounding as its surge. Still onward rushing
With bounds impetuous, bearing in its path
The ships, the tumult, and the mire of cities!
Each stream that swells its course another change-
'Till swoln with waters various and corrupt,
Troubled, though great, its being vain resigning,
In the sea's breast it pours its pride and slime!

Le Tombeau d'une Mère; Pourquoi mon ame est-elle triste?

Hymne de l'Ange de la Terre après la destruction du globe; and Encore une Hymne, we would notice as of remarkable beauty, though our limits do not permit us to prove our judgment by numerous extracts. The following lines, from the last mentioned piece, are highly poetical:

"Mon ame est un torrent qui descend des montagnes
Et qui roule sans fin ses vagues sans repos
A travers les vallons, les plaines, les campagnes,
Où leur pente entraine ses flots;

Il fuit quand le jour meurt, il fuit quand naît l'aurore;
La nuit revient, il fuit; le jour, il fuit encore;
Rien ne peut ni tarir ni suspendre son cours,
Jusqu'à ce qu'à la mer, où ses ondes sont nées,
Il rende en murmurant ses vagues déchaînées,
Et se repose enfin en elle, et pour toujours!

"Mon ame est un vent de l'aurore

Qui s'éléve avec le matin,

Qui brûle, renverse, dévore

Tout ce qu'il trouve en son chemin,
Rien n'entrave son vol rapide,

Il fait trembler la tour comme la feuille aride,
Et le mât du vaisseau comme un roseau pliant;
Il roule en plis de feu le tonnerre et la nue,
Et, quand il a passé, laisse la terre nue

Comme la main du mendiant;
Jusqu'à ce qu'épuisé de sa fuite éternelle,
Et comme un doux ramier de sa course lassé,
Il vienne fermer son aile

Dans la main qui l'a lancé."

The ideas contained in the first strophe, we find even more beautifully, because more simply expressed in some lines of Metastasio that recur to our memory:

"Onda dal mar divisa
Bagna la valle e il monte,
Va passeggiera in fiume,
Va prigioniera in fonte.
Mormora sempre e geme,
Finche ritorna al mar,
Al mar dond'ella nacque,
D'onde succhiò gli umori,
Ove da lunghi errori
Spera di riposar."

In the Hymn upon the destruction of the earth, the Angel of earth laments in magnificent strains over the ruin of his charge. He calls upon the planets, companions to the earth, the stars sown like myriads of eyes in the canopy of heaven, the suns whose beams robed her fields in light, the clouds that flung their shadow over her mountains,-bidding them "weep, for death is in the heavens !"

When thou didst float, like a ship launched from rest,

In morn's or eve's abyss of foamy light,

When thy seas, heaving like a human breast,

Laved thy green shores, that wooed their kisses bright

Or on thy headlands dashed their crystal tide,
The wave, when o'er it rippling zephyrs glide,
Where mirrored charms gleam, vanish, like the smile
The eye would fix, that cheats its gaze the while.

When on thy summits cloud-built domes reposed,
Where, cleaving at a glance their arched height,
Faint beams, mixed with the tempest's fitful light,
Along the sides of rocks by storms exposed,
From shore to shore swept on,

As lightning's glance from ruins broken, lone!
When those false, changeful gleams,

Borne with the north wind by,

As on archangel's wing the imaged beams,
With varying hues danced o'er thy magic sky;
Now smote the deep-and now thy hoary crest,
Sparkling the snows upon thy mountains' breast!

La Perte de l'Anio, we extract entire, not because it is more beautiful than many others, but because the subject pleases us.

THE LOSS OF THE ANIO.

I dreamed of yore, lulled in its foamy shades,
Pressing the turf which once a Horace trod,

In shadowy, old arcades,

Where 'neath his crumbled temple, sleeps a god!

I saw its waters plunge to yawning caves,

Where danced the floating Iris on their waves,

As with some desert courser's silvery mane
Wantons the wind, what time he scours the plain;
Then farther off on the green moss divide,
In streamlets foaming still, the sheeted tide;
Shrouding the flowery sod with net-work frail,
Spread and contract by turns its waving veil,
And filling all the glade with voice and spray,
Sweep in its tides of tremulous light away!

There with fixed gaze upon the waters lone,
I watched them; following-losing them anon,
As the mind, wandering from thought to thought,
Loses-then lights upon the trace it sought,
I saw them mount, and roll, and downward glide,.
And loved to dream bewildered by their side!
Methought I traced those rays of glorious fame
Wherewith the Eternal city crowned her name,
Back to their source, across an age of night,
Wreathing Tiburnine heights with ancient light.
While drank mine ear the deep complaining sound
Of billows warring in their caves profound,
In the waves' voice, the wailing of the tide,
By thousand rolling echoes multiplied,

I seemed in distance, brought by silence near,

The voice of stirring multitudes to hear,

Which like these waves, more vanishing than they,

Made vocal once these shores, now mute for aye!

River! to whom the ages brought-I cried,
Empire, of old-and swept it from thy side!
Whose name, once sung by poet lips sublime,
Thanks to the bard, defies the lapse of time-
Who the world's tyrants on thy shores didst see
Wander entranced, and crave their rest from thee,~

Tibullus breathing sighs of soft complaining
Scipio the vulgar pomp of power disdaining-
In thy deep shades a Julius, fled from fame-
Mecenas claiming from his bards a name—
A Cato pondering virtue-Brutus' crime-
What say'st thou, river, with thy ceaseless chime?
Bring'st thou the tones of Horace' burning lyre?
Or Cæsar's voice of soothing or of ire?

The forum of a race of heroes brave,

Where striving tribunes lashed the stormy wave
Which, like thy mounting surge in fury hurl'd,
Too mighty for its bed, o'erswept a world?

Alas! those sounds forever now are mute,
The battle-the debate-the amorous lute;
'Tis but a stream that weeps upon the shore--
'Tis but thy voice, still murmuring as of yore!
Still? ah! no more on sounding rocks to moan,
From their drained bed thy waters too are gone!
These beetling crags, these caverns void and wide,
These trees that boast no more their dewy pride,
The wandering hind, the bird with wearied wing
That seeks upon the rock its wonted spring,
Wait vainly that the vanished wave restore,
To the mute vale its voice and life once more;
And seem in desert solitude to say
"Thus pass terrestrial pride and pomp away!

199

Ah! marvel we no more that empires fall,
That man's frail works speed to destruction all,
Since nature's fabric, built to outlast the skies,
Sinks by degrees, and like a mortal dies!

Since this proud stream, which centuries have seen
Foaming and rushing, quits its ancient reign.
A river disappears! these thrones of day,

Gigantic hills, shall sink in turn away;

In yonder heaven, thick sown with gems so bright,
Extinguished stars shall leave the desert night;
Yea, perish space itself, with all that live,

And of whate'er has been, shall nought survive.

Nought shall survive! But Thou, of worlds the source,

Who light'st Heaven's fires, and giv'st the waves their course, Who on the wheel of time bid'st years go round,

Thou shalt be, Lord!-Forever changeless found!

These planets quenched, these river murmurs checked,

These crumbled mountains, worlds in ruin wrecked,

These ages whelmed in time's immensity,

Even time and space, annihilate in Thee,

Nature, who mocks at works her hand did raise,

All-all are fleeting tributes to thy praise;

And each existence here to death betrayed

Thy Being hymns, which knows nor change nor shade!

Oh Italy! thy hills of beauty weep,

Where the world's histories, writ in ruins, sleep!
Where empire, passing on from clime to clime,
Hath left engraved so deep his steps sublime!
Where glory, emblemed once in thy fair name,
Hides with a shining veil, thy present shame!
Lo! the most speaking of the wrecks of years!
Weep! pity's voice shall answer to thy tears!