IX. WRITTEN WHILE SAILING ON THE GULF OF LEPANTO. ALL round they lie, deep breath to breath replying, — Whilst Evening's Powers in silence seaward creep, EDMUND OLLIER. I. ON WILSON'S PICTURE OF SOLITUDE. A FITTING nook for meditative men! A region of neglect and glimmering gloom, 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! Blind, cold, mechanic sphere, wherein I seek 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, 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 The broken sunlight mottled all the land; Like snowy clouds which that strange architect, IV. THE SUBJECT OF BABYLON CONTINUED. A WILDERNESS of beauty! a domain 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. |