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IX.

WRITTEN WHILE SAILING ON THE GULF OF LEPANTO.

ALL round they lie, deep breath to breath replying, —
Those outworn seamen in their well-earned sleep :
From the blue concave to the dim blue deep
No sound beside. Fluttering all night, or sighing,
Since morn the breeze delicious hath been dying,
And now is dead. On yonder snowy steep
The majesty of Day diffused is lying;

Whilst Evening's Powers in silence seaward creep,
From glens that violet-shade the lilac vest
Of Delphi's hills. Ye mariners, sleep well!
Run slowly, golden sands, and noiselessly.
There stands the great Corinthian citadel;
Parnassus there. Rest, wearied pinnace, rest!
Sleep, sacred air ! sleep on, marmorean sea!

EDMUND OLLIER.

I.

ON WILSON'S PICTURE OF SOLITUDE.

A FITTING nook for meditative men!

A region of neglect and glimmering gloom,
Yet secretly unfolding many a bloom
Worthy of gardens, to be denizen.

A pillared grotto once was in this glen,

And sculptured shapes; but see how hungry doom Has gnawn them half away, while o'er them loom Black branches, arching like a dusky den; Between whose trunks you see, quite overbrowed With intertwisted foliage, dark and drear, White convent walls gleam like a parting ray Under the forehead of a thunder-cloud; And silently and sad, from year to year, The cowled monk stagnates, withering away.

From Ainsworth's Magazine.

II.

A DREAM.

A MAN stood on a barren mountain-peak

In the night, and cried, "O world of heavy gloom!
O sunless world! O universal tomb!

Blind, cold, mechanic sphere, wherein I seek
In vain for Life and Love, till Hope grows weak,
And falters towards Chaos! Vast, blank doom!
Huge darkness in a narrow prison-room!

Thou art dead, - dead!" Yet, ere he ceased to speak, Across the level ocean, in the East,

The moon-dawn grew; and all that mountain's side Rose, newly-born from empty dusk. Fields, trees, And deep glen-hollows, as the light increased,

Seemed vital; and from heaven, bare and wide,

The moon's white soul looked over lands and seas.

III.

A VISION OF OLD BABYLON.

OUTLEAPING from the Present's narrow cage,

I floated on the backward waves of Time,
Until I landed in that antique age

When the now hoary world was in its prime.

How young, and fresh, and green, all things did look!

I stood upon a broad and grassy plain,

Shrouded with leaves, between which, like a brook
Dashed on the turf in showers of golden rain,

The broken sunlight mottled all the land;
And soon, between the trees, I was aware
Of a vast city, girt with stony band,
That hung upon the burning blue-bright air,

Like snowy clouds which that strange architect,
The Wind, has with his wayward fancies decked.

IV.

THE SUBJECT OF BABYLON CONTINUED.

A WILDERNESS of beauty! a domain
Of visions and stupendous thoughts in stone,-
The sculptured dream of some enchanter's brain, -
There did I see, all sunning in their own
Splendor and warmth; a thousand palaces,
Where tower looked out on tower; all overgrown
With pictured deeds, and coiling traceries,
And monstrous shapes in strange conjunction met,
The idol phantoms of an age long past,

In midst of which the wingéd Bull was set;

And I saw temples of enormous size,

Silent yet thronged; and pyramids that cast

Shadows upon each golden-peaked pavilion,

And on the column flushed with azure and vermilion.

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