As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally,
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan;
That a tempest-cleaving swan
Of the songs of Albion,

Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in theé; and ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion,
That its joy grew his, and sprung
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror: what though yet
Poësy's unfailing river,

Which thro' Albion winds for ever,

Lashing with melodious wave

Many a sacred poet's grave,
Mourn its latest nursling fled!

What though thou with all thy dead,
Scarce can for this fame repay
Aught thine own,---oh, rather say,
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sunless soul!
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander's wasting springs;
As divinest Shakspeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light;
Like omniscient power, which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;

As the love from Petrarch's urn,
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

A quenchless lamp, by which the heart
Sees things unearthly; so thou art,
Mighty spirit: so shall be

The city that did refuge thee!"

INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.
"The awful shadow of some unseen power
Floats, though unseen, among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing,

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moon beams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,

Like clouds in starlight widely spread,

Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be,
Dear, and yet dearer, for its mystery."

MOURNFUL REMINISCENCE.

"Alas! why must I think how oft we two
Have sate together near the river springs,
Under the green pavilion which the willow
Spreads on the flower of the unbroken fountain,

Strewn by the nurslings that linger there,

Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,

While the musk rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,

Sad prophetess of sorrows not our own!"

THE NEW MOON.

"The young moon,

When on the sunlit limits of the night,
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear

The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim frown
Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair."

A PORTRAIT.

"He was, as is the sun, in his fierce youth As terrible and lovely as a tempest.

He was so awful, yet

So beautiful in mystery and terror,
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven
Soothes the unquiet sea: and yet not so,
For he seemed stormy, and would often seem
A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds,
For such his thoughts and e'en his actions were."

WINTER.

"For Winter came; the wind was his whip:
One choppy finger was on his lip:
He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clanked at his girdle-like manacles;
His breath was a chain which, without a sound,
The earth, and the air, and the water bound;
He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot throne,
By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone."

SPRING.

"It was at the season when the earth up springs
From slumber, as a sphered angel's child,
Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,
Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems---
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled
To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
The fresh and radiant earth."

TIME.

"Unfathomable sea! whose waves are years:
Ocean of time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears."

GINEVRA.

"Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever

Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, 'till the familiar train

Of objects and of persons passed like things,
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went."

WRITING was the invention of Absence, when she slumbered on the breast of Hope-it is the link which unites bygone days with futurity; the talismanic wampum of memory: it was the offspring of ingenuity, and is the step-mother of imagination; it is the glory of the sage, and the spell of the historian; by it the hero lives again, and the grave yields up its mighty dead: it is at once the source of emulation, and the unmasker of ignorance, and is as necessary to the wellbeing of society as voice or vision. Man, inheriting from his Great Cause the faculty of thought, eases his laboring mind of half its weight, by its talismanic characters; we are taught that our forefathers practised the art, by tracing out their sentiments on sandwould that many in later days had written on as perishable a tablet!

The child of fancy may pour out the "voiceless song" in all the luxury of imaginative sadness, and then turn with a smile from the lay of his own creation, to revel in all the little elegancies of society, with a soul unbowed by care. Poets have, if I may be allowed the expression, two distinct beings-the one is that earthly and tangible existence by which they participate in the feelings and avocations of their fellow-men: the other is "a charmed life;" a life of fancy and sensation the one in which the disembodied visions of imagination "live, and breathe, and have their being"--and this is as distinct an existence from the mere worldly capabilities of sight and motion, as though the same frame contained not the two separate impulses ; and the life of thought cannot in such case be identified with the grosser existence, without infinite injustice to both.

I was induced to these reflections by the circumstance of encountering, in society, one who is now the vaunted of her country -the child of genius and imagination. I had hung on her lays until I almost fancied that I could hear the low, deep, intonation of the lyre to which they had been breathed. I pictured her to my mind, young, spirit-bowed, and despairing: the victim of an early, hopeless love-the heiress of soul-born desolation, and mental solitude! I met her, young, indeed, but glowing in all the splendour of hope; revelling in all the luxury of happiness-no lurking sorrow dimmed her bright blue eye, no heart-born passion paled her rose-kissed cheek -she was gay, buoyant, and mirthful-her fair hair fell gracefully upon her shoulders, and clustered round her finely-formed and imaginative brow-a smile of pleasure danced upon her lip, her elastic spirits bounded to the touch of gaiety, and her whole form dilated with happiness. As I looked on her, I murmured to myself some stanzas of which she was the acknowledged authoress: they were the very wailings of despairing passion-the deathsong of the swan breathing along the lowly-echoing waters! And she who had poured forth that lay of sorrow, was young and

glorious, in the first burst of life-redolent with joy, and basking in the sunrise of far-spreading fame-Genius had encirled her brow with roses, and the laughing hours had plucked away the thornsFame was to her as a bright mirror, unsullied by a single breath, and she saw a smile even on the lip of the cynic Criticism as he held it towards her! Long, long may she revel in her happiness; life is with her in its holiday, and the world gay in the garb of flowers, in which she has herself arrayed it. The portrait may not be recognized-I am an unskilful limner, but the features are engraven on my own heart, and I returned from feeling that for once, genius and happiness had touched palms!

There is something holy in the glowing aspirations of one so young; the spirit-breathings of untutored thought: when enthusiasm is the guide of fancy, and memory but a roseate tablet redolent with sweet; when futurity is wreathed in smiles, and present existence something almost above mortality-pity that a nature, thus blending "the flowers of earth, the light of heaven," should be subject, even like others, to all the troubles and trammels of a heart-chilling world! But away with gloom-who, that looked on the broad sunshine of summer, would chill its beauties, to his own spirit, by thinking of the snows of winter? Should the world, indeed, bring its cares, its sorrows, and its pangs, who but will lament it? for where is he who does not hope, when the bright rosebud opens, leaf by leaf, its beauties to the sun, that it may bloom untouched by the foul canker-worm which breeds destruction?

THE WISH.

1.

On! give me the maiden, whose bright eyes are beaming,
With joys fondly cherish'd, and destin'd for me,
Whose rosy-red lips with fond kisses are teeming ;
Whose heart is as light as the breeze o'er the sea.

2.

Oh! grant me the maiden who playfully pouting
Will chide, but to welcome the lips that relent;
Whose innocent bosom's a stranger to doubting,
Who blushes her vow, when she whispers consent,

3.

I seek the fond heart that is faithful for ever,

Believing---believed---where suspicion ne'er dwelt,
Which beats with regret when 'tis destin'd to sever,
And feeling confesses each sorrow it felt.

4.

Oh! why should deceit set the fond lips denying
The joys and the pleasures they long to possess ;
The moments of youth, and enjoyment, are flying,-
When past---they return not to brighten and bless.

VOL. I.

Y

C.

A VISIT TO POTSDAM IN THE YEAR 1825.

POTSDAM is only twenty English miles distant from Berlin, and after a short residence in the latter city, we became impatient to pay it a visit. Relying, therefore, on the promise of a cool day, which a clouded morning during the burning heats of July seemed to give us, we determined to gratify our curiosity, and having engaged one of the droshkis* which ply about the streets of Berlin, we passed under the magnificent Brandenburgh Gate, through the Thiergarten or park, then over a sandy plain, and in about two hours arrived on the banks of one of the many lakes formed by the Havel in its course round Potsdam. The hills, trees, and verdure surrounding these lakes, give inexpressible pleasure to the eyes that have been long wandering over the arid plains of Northern Germany. In itself, the scenery possesses beauties of no ordinary description; and even in the mind of a traveller from the picturesque land of Saxony, would not fail to excite feelings of pleasure and enjoyment: how much more, then, must it please him who has been long toiling through the interminable fields of rye which stretch over the upper part of Germany, with nothing to relieve his weary sight, but mounds of sand or stunted pine forests! The country around Potsdam is one of those few Oases in the sandy desert, extending from the Hartz mountains, and those of Saxony and Siberia, to the Northern and Baltic seas. We here left the carriage, and embarked on board a boat, which carried us for some way along the shores of the lake, and landed us on the "Fauen insel," or Isle of Pheasants, one of the largest islands in these waters, and a favorite retreat of the late Queen Louisa.Her habitation, which is something in the style of our citizen castles in the suburbs of London, is wretchedly small and inconvenient; so ill built is it, that the towers are formed of wood, painted in imitation of stone; but the grounds are tastefully and beautifully laid out, and its situation in a lake, surrounded with wooded and picturesque hills, is extremely ornamented. The island contains a menagerie and extensive gardens; the rose garden alone contains ten thousand plants; a thick bower here, formed altogether of roses, growing from pots without, placed on stands raised one above the other, and introduced through trellis work within, recalls the description in Eastern tales; for so beautiful a rose bower is not, I am persuaded, to be found elsewhere, except in the imaginations of the poets of the East. The rose flowers alone are introduced through the trellis work, while the plants are concealed behind; and as fast as they decay, are removed, and replaced by others. A pheasantry, built in the Gothic style, is very pretty: this style is well adapted for aviaries, conservatories, &c. where much light is required; the pillars, from their

Russian carriages, driven by native Russians in their national dress, namely, the sash girt robe, long beard, and broad leaved hat: their horses are light, and travel at a very quick pace.