Think of your mariners, three hundred men,
After long absence in the Indian seas
Upon their peaceful homeward voyage bound,
And now, all dangers conquer'd, as they thought,
Warping the vessels up their native stream,
Their wives and children waiting them at home
In joy, with festal preparation made,-
Think of these mariners, their eyes torn out,
Their hands chopped off, turn'd staggering into Ghent, To meet the blasted eye-sight of their friends!
And was not this the Earl? 'Twas none but he! No Hauterive of them all had dared to do it,
Save at the express instance of the Earl!
And now what asks he?!
Three hundred citizens to be surrendered
Up to that
mercy which I tell you of-
That mercy which your mariners prov'd-which steep'd
Courtray and Yprés, Grammont, Bruges, in blood!
Three-hundred citizens,-a secret list,
No man knows who-not one can say he's safe-
Not one of you so humble, but that still
The malice of some secret enemy
May whisper him to death-and hark-look to it!
Have some of you seem'd braver than your fellows,
Their courage is their surest condemnation;
They are mark'd men—and not a man stands here
But
may be so!
LESSON CXXVII.
Consumption.-Percival.
There is a sweetness in woman's decay,
When the light of beauty is fading away,
When the bright enchantment of youth is gone
And the tint that glowed, and the eye that shone,
And darted around its glance of power,
And the lip that vied with the sweetest flower,
That ever in fabled garden blew
Or ever was steeped in fragrant dew,
When all that was bright and fair is fled
But the loveliness lingering round the dead.
O! there is a sweetness in beauty's close
Like the perfume scenting the withered rose,
For a nameless charm around her plays
And her eyes are kindled with hallowed rays,
And a veil of spotless purity
Has mantled her cheek with its heavenly dye
Like a cloud whereon the queen of night
Has poured her softest tint of light;
And there is a blending of white and blue
Where the purple blood is melting through
The snow of her pale and tender cheek;
And there are tones that sweetly speak
Of a spirit who longs for a purer day
And is ready to wing her flight away.
In the flush of youth, and the spring of feeling,
When life like a sunny spring is stealing
Its silent steps through a flowery path,
And all the endearments that pleasure hath
Are poured from her full, o'erflowing horn,
When the rose of enjoyment conceals no thorn;
In her lightness of heart to the cheery song
The maiden may trip in the dance along,
And think of the passing moment that lies
Like a fairy dream in her dazzled eyes,
And yield to the present, that charms around
With all that is lovely in sight and sound,
Where a thousand pleasing phantoms flit,
With the voice of mirth and the burst of wit,
And the music that steals to the bosom's core,
And the heart, in its fulness, flowing o'er
With a few big drops that are soon repressed
For short is the stay of grief in her breast ;—
In this enlivened and gladsome hour
The spirit may burn with a brighter power;
But dearer the calm and quiet day
When the heaven-sick soul is stealing away.
And when her sun is low declining,
And life wears out with no repining,
And the whisper that tells of early death
Is soft as the west wind's balmy breath,
When it comes at the hour of still repose
To sleep in the breast of the wooing rose;
And the lip that swelled with a living glow
Is pale as a curl of new fallen snow,
And her cheek like the Parian stone is fair
But the hectic spot that flushes there,
When the tide of life from its secret dwelling
In a sudden gush is deeply swelling,
And giving a tinge to her icy lips
Like the crimson rose's brightest tips-
As richly red, and as transient too,
As the clouds in Autumn's sky of blue,
That seem like a host of glory met
To honour the sun at his golden set ;—
O! then, when the spirit is taking wing
How fondly her thoughts to her dear one cling,
As if she would blend her soul with his
In a deep and long-imprinted kiss ;
So fondly the panting camel flies
Where the glassy vapor cheats his eyes,
And the dove from the falcon seeks her nest,
And the infant shrinks to its mothers breast,
And though her dying voice be mute
Or faint as the tones of an unstrung lute,
And though the glow from her cheek be fled
And her pale lips cold as the marble dead,
Her eye still beams unwonted fires
With a woman's love and a saint's desires;
And her last fond lingering look is given
To the love she leaves, and then to heaven,
As if she would bear that love away
To a purer world and a brighter day.
Heaven in Prospect.-HENRY VAUGHAN A. D. 1650.
They are all gone into a world of light
And I alone sit lingering here:
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast
Like stars upon some gloomy grove;
Or those faint beams in which the hill is dressed
After the sun's remove.
1 see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days;
My days which are, at best, but dull and hoary
Mere glimmerings and decays.
O, holy hope and high humility,
High as the heavens above!
These are your walks, and you have showed them me
To kindle my cold love.
Dear, beauteous death! the jewel of the just
Shining nowhere but in the dark,
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!
He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may
At first sight if the bird be flown;
But what fair field or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.
And yet as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul, when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes And into glory peep.
O, Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under thee,
Resume thy Spirit from this world of thrall
Into true liberty.
Address to the Ocean.-BYRON.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffin'd, and unknow.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee—
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts; not so thou,
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play—
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow,
Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
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