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His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence :
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

Diodati, July, 1816.

A FRAGMENT.

"COULD I REMOUNT," &c.

COULD I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
But bid it flow as now - - until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides.

What is this Death? - a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For life is but a vision — what I see
Of all which lives alone is life to me,
And being so- the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.
The absent are the dead. for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;

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And they are changed, and cheerless, - or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,

Since thus divided equal must it be

If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;

It may be both but one day end it must

In the dark union of insensate dust.

The under-earth inhabitants - are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?

Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being? darken'd and intense
As midnight in her solitude? . Oh Earth!
Where are the past?
The dead are thy inheritors

and wherefore had they birth?
and we

But bubbles on thy surface; and the key
Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more.

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SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN.

ROUSSEAU-Voltaire. -our Gibbon-and De Stael
Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall :
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,

But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core

Of human hearts the ruin of a wall.

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

Diodati, July, 1816.

Geneva, Ferney, Copet, Lausanne. [See Childe Harold, c. iii. st. 68. I have," says Lord Byron, traversed all Rousseau's ground with the Héloïse before me, and am struck to a degree that I cannot express, with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. I enclose you a sprig of Gibbon's acacia and some rose-leaves from his garden, which, with part of his house, I have just seen. You will find honourable mention, in his Life, made of this acacia, when he walked out on the night of concluding his history. Madame de Staël has made Copet as agreeable as society can make any place on earth." Byron Letters, 1816.]

ROMANCE MUY DOLOROSO

DEL

SITIO Y TOMA DE ALHAMA. 1

El qual dexia en Aravigo assi.

I.

PASSEAVASE el Rey Moro
Por la ciudad de Granada,
Desde las puertas de Elvira
Hasta las de Bivarambla.

Ay de mi, Alhama!

II.

Cartas le fueron venidas
Que Alhama era ganada.
Las cartas echò en el fuego,

Y al mensagero matava.

Ay de mi, Alhama!

III.

Descavalga de una mula,

Y en un cavallo cavalga.
Por el Zacatin arriba

Subido se avia al Alhambra.

Ay de mi, Alhama!

IV.

Como en el Alhambra estuvo,
Al mismo punto mandava

effect of the original ballad-which existed both in Spanish

A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD

ON THE

SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA.

Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following purport.

I.

THE Moorish King rides up and down,
Through Granada's royal town;
From Elvira's Gates to those

Of Bivarambla on he goes.

Woe is me, Alhama !

II.

Letters to the monarch tell
How Alhama's city fell:
In the fire the scroll he threw,

And the messenger he slew.

Woe is me, Alhama!

III.

He quits his mule, and mounts his horse,
And through the street directs his course;
Through the street of Zacatin

To the Alhambra spurring in.

Woe is me, Alhama!

IV.

When the Alambra walls he gain'd,

On the moment he ordain'd

and Arabic

was such, that it was forbidden to be sung by the

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