the Hall, as will at least make the catastrophe intelligible. We select this tale, among other reasons, for its containing one of those pre-eminently beautiful lyric bursts which seem to contrast so strangely with the general spirit and manner of Crabbe's poetry. After many years, the narrator, pursuing another inquiry, accidentally discovers the lost object of his heart's passionate but pure idolatry living in infamy :
Will you not ask, how I beheld that face,
Or read that mind, and read it in that place?
I have tried, Richard, ofttimes, and in vain,
To trace my thoughts, and to review their train-
If train there were- that meadow, grove, and stile,
The fright, the escape, her sweetness, and her smile;
Years since elapsed, and hope, from year to year,
To find her free-and then to find her here!
But is it she?-O! yes; the rose is dead,
All beauty, fragrance, freshness, glory, fled;
But yet 'tis she-the same and not the same-
Who to my bower a heavenly being came;
Who waked my soul's first thought of real bliss,
Whom long I sought, and now I find her-this.
I cannot paint her-something I had seen
So pale and slim, and tawdry and unclean;
With haggard looks, of vice and woe the prey,
Laughing in languor, miserably gay:
Her face, where face appeared, was amply spread,
By art's warm pencil, with ill-chosen red,
The flower's fictitious bloom, the blushing of the dead:
But still the features were the same, and strange
My view of both-the sameness and the change,
That fixed me gazing, and my eye enchained,
Although so little of herself remained;
It is the creature whom I loved, and yet
Is far unlike her-would I could forget
The angel or her fall; the once adored
Or now despised! the worshipped or deplored!
"O! Rosabella!" I prepared to say,
"Whom I have loved;" but Prudence whispered, Nay,
And Folly grew ashamed-Discretion had her day.
She gave her hand; which, as I lightly pressed,
The cold but ardent grasp my soul oppressed;
The ruined girl disturbed me, and my eyes
Looked, I conceive, both sorrow and surprise.
If words had failed, a look explained their style; She could not blush assent, but she could smile: Good heaven! I thought, have I rejected fame, Credit, and wealth, for one who smiles at shame? She saw me thoughtful-saw it, as I guessed,
With some concern, though nothing she expressed. Come, my dear friend, discard that look of care," &c.
Thus spoke the siren in voluptuous style, While I stood gazing and perplexed the while, Chained by that voice, confounded by that smile. And then she sang, and changed from grave to gay, Till all reproach and anger died away.
"My Damon was the first to wake
The gentle flame that cannot die;
My Damon is the last to take
The faithful bosom's softest sigh:
The life between is nothing worth,
O! cast it from thy thought away;
Think of the day that gave it birth,
And this its sweet returning day.
"Buried be all that has been done,
Or say that nought is done amiss;
For who the dangerous path can shun
In such bewildering world as this?
But love can every fault forgive,
Or with a tender look reprove;
And now let nought in memory live,
But that we meet, and that we love."
And then she moved my pity; for she wept,
And told her miseries, till resentment slept;
For, when she saw she could not reason blind,
She poured her heart's whole sorrows on my mind,
With features graven on my soul, with sighs
Seen, but not heard, with soft imploring eyes,
And voice that needed not, but had, the aid
Of powerful words to soften and persuade.
"O! I repent me of the past;" &c.
Softened, I said, "Be mine the hand and heart,
If with your world you will consent to part."
She would-she tried.-Alas! she did not know
How deeply-rooted evil habits grow:
She felt the truth upon her spirits press,
But wanted ease, indulgence, show, excess,
Voluptuous banquets, pleasures—not refined,
But such as soothe to sleep the opposing mind-
She looked for idle vice, the time to kill,
And subtle, strong apologies for ill.
And thus her yielding, unresisting soul
Sank, and let sin confuse her and control :
Pleasures that brought disgust yet brought relief,
And minds she hated helped to war with grief.
I had long lost her; but I sought in vain
To banish pity;-still she gave me pain.
There came at length request
That I would see a wretch with grief oppressed,
By guilt affrighted-and I went to trace
Once more the vice-worn features of that face,
That sin-wrecked being! and I saw her laid
Where never worldly joy a visit paid:
That world receding fast! the world to come
Concealed in terror, ignorance, and gloom;
Sin, sorrow, and neglect; with not a spark
Of vital hope,-all horrible and dark.—
It frightened me!—I thought, and shall not I
Thus feel?-thus fear?-this danger can I fly?
Do I so wisely live that I can calmly die?
Still as I went came other change—the frame
And features wasted, and yet slowly came
The end; and so inaudible the breath,
And still the breathing, we exclaimed-"Tis death!
But death it was not: when indeed she died
I sat and his last gentle stroke espied :
-as it came-or did my fancy trace
That lively, lovely flushing o'er the face?
Bringing back all that my young heart impressed!
It came--and went!-She sighed, and was at rest!
From Moore, whose works are more, probably, than those of any of his contemporaries in the hands of all readers of poetry, we will make only one short extract- a specimen of his brilliant Orientalism, which may be compared with the specimen of Southey's in a preceding page. Here is the exquisitely beautiful description in
the Fire Worshippers, the finest of the four tales composing Lalla Rookh, of the calm after a storm, in which the heroine, the gentle Hinda, awakens in the war-bark of her lover Hafed, the noble Gheber chief, into which she had been transferred from her own galley while she had swooned with terror from the tempest and the fight:
How calm, how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour when storms are gone!
When warring winds have died away,
And clouds, beneath the dancing ray,
Melt off, and leave the land and sea
Sleeping in bright tranquillity-
Fresh as if day again were born,
Again upon the lap of morn!
When the light blossoms, rudely torn
And scattered at the whirlwind's will,
Hang floating in the pure air still,
Filling it all with precious balm,
In gratitude for this sweet calm :—
And every drop the thunder-showers
Have left upon the grass and flowers
Sparkles, as 'twere that lightning gem
Whose liquid flame is born of them!
When, 'stead of one unchanging breeze,
There blow a thousand gentle airs,
And each a different perfume bears,—
As if the loveliest plants and trees
Had vassal breezes of their own,
To watch and wait on them alone,
And waft no other breath than theirs!
When the blue waters rise and fall,
In sleepy sunshine mantling all;
And even that swell the tempest leaves
Is like the full and silent heaves
Of lovers' hearts when newly blest
Too newly to be quite at rest!
Such was the golden hour that broke
Upon the world, when Hinda woke
From her long trance, and heard around
No motion but the water's sound
Rippling against the vessel's side,
As slow it mounted o'er the tide.—
But where is she?-her eyes are dark,
Are wildered still-is this the bark,
The same that from Harmozia's bay
Bore her at morn-whose bloody way
The sea-dog tracks?-No! strange and new
Is all that meets her wondering view.
Upon a galliot's deck she lies,
Beneath no rich pavilion's shade,
No plumes to fan her sleeping eyes,
Nor jasmin on her pillow laid.
But the rude litter, roughly spread
With war-cloaks, is her homely bed,
And shawl and sash, on javelins hung,
For awning o'er her head are flung.
Shuddering she looked around-there lay
A group of warriors in the sun
Resting their limbs, as for that day
Their ministry of death were done;
Some gazing on the drowsy sea,
Lost in unconscious reverie;
And some, who seemed but ill to brook
That sluggish calm, with many a look
To the slack sail impatient cast,
As loose it flagged before the mast.
Crabbe, born in 1754, lived till 1832; Campbell, born in 1777, died in 1844; Moore, born in 1780, died in 1851.
Byron was the writer whose blaze of popularity it mainly was that threw Scott's name into the shade, and induced him to abandon verse. Yet the productions which had this effect-the Giaour, the Bride of Abydos, the Corsair, &c., published in 1813 and 1814 (for the new idolatry was scarcely kindled by the two respectable, but somewhat tame, cantos of Childe Harold, in quite another style, which appeared shortly before these effusions), were, in reality, only poems written in what may be called a variation of Scott's own manner-Oriental lays and romances, Turkish Marmions and Ladies of the Lake. The novelty of scene and subject, the exaggerated tone of passion in the outlandish tales, and a certain trickery in the writing (for it will hardly now be called anything else), materially aided by the mysterious interest attaching to the personal history of the noble bard, who, whether he sung of Giaours, or Corsairs, or Laras, was always popularly believed to be "himself the great sublime
|