NIGHT AT SEA. 'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel We once have loved, though love is at an end. The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal, Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend. Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When youth itself survives young Love and Joy. Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend,

Death hath but little left him to destroy! [boy? Oh ! happy years ! once more who would not be a

Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,
To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere,
The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride,
And flies unconscious o'er each backward year.
None are so desolate but something dear,
Dearer than self, possesses, or possessed
A thought, and claims the homage of a tear ;

A flashing pang! of which the weary breast Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest.

A NIGHT SCENE AT THE SIEGE OF CORINTH. 'Tis midnight : on the mountains brown The cold round moon shines deeply down; Blue roll the waters, blue the sky Spreads like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So wildly, spiritually bright; Who ever gazed upon them shining, And turned to earth without repining, Nor wished for wings to flee away, And mix with their eternal ray ? The waves on either shore lay there Calm, clear, and azure as the air ;

And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,
But murmur'd meekly as the brook.
The winds were pillowed on the waves,
The banners drooped along their staves.
And, as they fell around them furling,
Above them shone the crescent curling ;
And that deep silence was unbroke,
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill,
And echo answer'd from the hill,
And the wide hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer ;
It rose, that chanted mournful strain,
Like some lone spirit's o'er the plain :
'Twas musical, but sadly sweet,
Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown.
It seem'd to those within the wall
A cry prophetic of their fall :
It struck even the besiegers' ear
With something ominous and drear;
An undefined and sudden thrill,
Which makes the heart a moment still,
Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed
Of that strange sense its silence framed;
Such as a sudden passing-bell
Wakes, though but for a stranger's knell.

NORMAN ABBEY. To Norman Abbey whirl'd the noble pair,

An old, old monastery once, and now

Still older mansion, of a rich and rare

Mixed Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare

Withal: it lies perhaps a little low,
Because the monks preferred a hill behind,
To shelter their devotion from the wind.
It stood embosomed in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood, like Caractacus, in act to rally

His host with broad arms 'gainst the thunder-stroke; And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally

The dappled foresters as day awoke The branching stag swept down with all his herd, To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird. Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep and freshly fed By a river, which its soften'd way did take

In currents through the calmer water spread Around : the wild fowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed : The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood With their green faces fixed upon the flood. Its outlet dashed into a deep cascade

Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding . Its shriller echoes—like an infant made

Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding Into a rivulet, and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, 'According as the skies their shadows threw. A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile, [apart

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle.

These last had disappeared--a loss to Art: The first yet frown’d superbly o'er the soil,

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart, Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's In gazing on that venerable arch.

[march, Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone; And these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne, When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone, The gallant Cavaliers, who fought in vain For those who knew not to resign or reign. But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

The Virgin Mother of the God-born child, With her son in her blessed arms, look'd round,

Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd; She made the earth below seem holy ground.

This may be superstition, weak or wild,
But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine.
A mighty window, hollow in the centre;

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,
Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter,

Streaming from off the sun like seraphs' wings, Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter,

The gale sweeps through its fretwork; and oft sings The owl his anthem where the silenced quire Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire. But in the noontide of the moon, and when

The wind is winged from one point of heaven,

There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then

Is musical-a dying accent driven Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again.

Some deem it but the distant echo given Back to the night wind by the waterfall, And harmonized by the old choral wall; Others, that some original shape, or form

Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power (Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm

In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fixed hour) To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm.

Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower : The cause I know not, nor can solve ; but such The fact :-I've heard it,—once perhaps too much. Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,

Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaintStrange faces, like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gush'd through grim mouths, of granite

And sparkled into basins, where it spent [made, Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles. The mansion's self was vast and venerable,

With more of the monastic than has been Elsewhere preserved : the cloisters still were stable,

The cells too and refectory, I ween :
An exquisite small chapel had been able,

Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;
The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.
Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, join'd

By no quite lawful marriage of the Arts,