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It is a duty which I owe

To thine to thee-to man-to God, To crush, to quench this guilty glow,

Ere yet the path of crime be trod

But since my breast is not so pure,
Since still the vulture tears my heart,
Let me this agony endure,

Not thee-oh! dearest as thou art!
In mercy, Clara! let us part,

And I will seek, yet know not how, To shun, in time, the threatening dart Guilt must not aim at such as thou.

But thou must aid me in the task,

And nobly thus exert thy power: Then spurn me hence-'tis all I askEre time mature a guiltier hour; Ere wrath's impending vials shower Remorse redoubled on my head; Ere fires unquenchably devour

A heart, whose hope has long been dead.

Deceive no more thyself and me,

Deceive not better hearts than mine;
Ah! shouldst thou, whither wouldst thou flee,
From wo like ours, from shame like thine?
And, if there be a wrath divine,

A pang beyond this fleeting breath,
E'en now all future hope resign,

Such thoughts are guilt-such guilt is death.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC.

I SPEAK not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name, There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame,

But the tear which now burns on my cheek may impart

The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.

Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace, Were those hours-can their joy or their bitterness cease?

We repent-we abjure-we will break from our chain,

We will part, we will fly to-unite it again!

Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt!
Forgive me, adored one!-forsake, if thou wilt;-
But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,
And man shall not break it-whatever thou may'st.

ADDRESS INTENDED TO BE RECITED AT
THE CALEDONIAN MEETING.

WHO hath not glow'd above the page where fame
Hath fix'd high Caledon's unconquer'd name;
The mountain-land which spurn'd the Roman chain
And balled back the fiery-crested Dane,
Whose bright claymore and hardihood of hand
No foe could tame-no tyrant could command?
That race is gone-but still their children breathe,
And glory crowns them with redoubled wreath.
O'er Gael and Saxon mingling banners shine,
And England! add their stubborn strength to thre
The blood which flow'd with Wallace flows as free.
But now 'tis only shed for fame and thee!
Oh! pass not by the northern veteran's claim,
But give support-the world hath given him fame!
The humbler ranks, the lowly brave, who bled
While cheerly following where the mighty led,
Who sleep beneath the undistinguish'd sod
Where happier comrades in their triumph trod,
To us bequeath -'tis all their fate allows-
The sireless offspring and the lonely spouse:
She on high Albyn's dusky hills may raise
The tearful eye in melancholy gaze,
Or view, while shadowy auguries disclose
The Highland seer's anticipated woes,
The bleeding phantom of each martial form
Dim in the cloud, or darkling in the storm;
While sad, she chants the solitary song,
The soft lament for him who tarries long-
For him, whose distant relics vainly crave
The Coronach's wild requiem to the brave.

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WHEN the vain triumph of the imperial lord,
Whom servile Rome obey'd, and yet abhorr'd,
Gave to the vulgar gaze each glorious bust,
That left a likeness of the brave or just;
What most admired each scrutinizing eye
Of all that deck'd that passing pageantry?
What spread from face to face the wondering air?
The thought of Brutus-for his was not there!
That absence proved his worth-that absence fix'd
His memory on the longing mind, unmix'd;
With thee by my side, than with worlds at our feet. And more decreed his glory to endure,

And stern to the haughty, but humble to thee,
This soul, in its bitterest blackness, shall be;
And our days seem as swift, and our moments more
sweet,

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Than all a gold Colossus could secure.

If thus, fair Jersey, our desiring gaze
Search for thy form, in vain and mute amaze,
Amid those pictured charms, whose loveliness,
Bright though they be, thine own had render d less

If he, that vain old man, whom truth admits
Heir of his father's throne and shatter'd wits,
If his corrupted eye and wither'd heart
Could with thy gentle image bear depart,

That tasteless shame be his, and ours the grief,
To gaze on Beauty's band without its chief:
Yet comfort still one selfish thought imparts,
We lose the portrait, but preserve our hearts.

What can his vaulted gallery now disclose?
A garden with all flowers-except the rose;
A fount that only wants its living stream;
And night with every star, save Dian's beam.
Lost to our eyes the present forms shall be,
That turn from tracing them to dream of thee;
And more on that recall'd resemblance pause,
Than all he shall not force on our applause.

Long may thy yet meridian lustre shine,
With all that Virtue asks of Homage thine :
The symmetry of youth-the grace of mien-
The eye that gladdens-and the brow serene;
The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,
Which shades, yet shows that forehead more than
fair,

Each glance that wins us, and the life that throws
A spell which will not let our looks repose,
But turn to gaze again, and find alew
Some charm that well rewards another view.
These are not lessen'd, these are still as bright,
Albeit too dazzling for a dotard's sight;
And these must wait till every charm is gone
To please the paltry heart that pleases none,
That dull, cold sensualist, whose sickly eye
In envious dimness pass'd thy portrait by;
Who rack'd his little spirit to combine
Its hate of Freedom's loveliness, and thine.

July, 1814.

HEBREW MELODIES.

IN the valley of waters we wept o'er the day
When the host of the stranger made Salem his prey,
And our heads on our bosoms all droopingly lay,
And our hearts were so full of the land far away.

The song they demanded in vain-it lay still
In our souls as the wind that hath died on the hill
They called for the harp, but our blood they shal
spill,

Ere our right hands shall teach them one tone of their skill.

All stringlessly hung on the willow's sad tree,
As dead as her dead leaf those mute harps must be
Our hands may be fettered, our tears still are free,
For our God and our glory, and Sion! for thee.
October, 1814

THEY say that Hope is happiness,

But genuine Love must prize the past; And Memory wakes the thoughts that biessThey rose the first, they set the last.

And all that Memory loves the most

Was once our only hope to be; And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory.

Alas! it is delusion all,

The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are. October, 1814

TO BELSHAZZAR.

BELSHAZZAR! from the banquet turn, Nor in thy sensual fulness fall: Behold! while yet before thee burn The graven words, the glowing wall. Many a despot men miscall

Crown'd and anointed from on high; But thou, the weakest, worst of allIs it not written, thou must die?

Go! dash the roses from thy brow

Gray hairs but poorly wreathe with them: Youth's garlands misbecome thee now, More than thy very diadem,

Where thou hast tarnish'd every gem :Then throw the worthless bauble by, Which, worn by thee, ev'n slaves contemn: And learn like better men to die.

Oh! early in the balance weigh'd,

And ever light of word and worth, Whose soul expired ere youth decay'd, And left thee but a mass of earth. To see thee moves the scorner's mirth: But tears in Hope's averted eye Lament that even thou hadst birthUnfit to gorern, live or die.

LINFS INTENDED FOR THE OPENING OF "THE SIEGE OF CORINTH."

In the year since Jesus died for men,
Eighteen hundred years and ten,
We were a gallant company,
Riding o'er land, and sailing o'er sea.
Oh! but we went merrily!

We forded the river and clomb the high h
Never our steeds for a day stood still;
Whether we lay in the cave or the shed,
Our sleep fell soft on the hardest bed;
Whether we couch'd in our rough capote,
On the rougher plank of our gliding beat
Or stretch'd on the beach, or our saddles spread
As a pillow beneath the resting head,
Fresh we woke upon the morrow:

All our thoughts and our words had scope
We had health, and we had hope,
Toil and travel, but no sorrow.
We were of all tongues and creeds ;-
Some were those who counted beads,
Some of mosque, and some of church,
And some, or I mis-say, of neither;
Yet through the wide world might ye search
Nor find a motlier crew nor blither

But some are dead, and some are gone,
And some are scatter'd and alone,
And some are rebels on the hills*

That look along Epirus' valleys,
Where freedom still at moments rallies,
And pays in blood oppression's ills:
And some are in a far countree,
And some all restlessly at home:
But never more, oh! never we
Shall meet to revel and to roam.

But those hardy days flew cheerily, And when they now fall drearily,

My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main,

And bear my spirit back again

Over the earth and through the air,

A wild bird, and a wanderer.

'Tis this that ever wakes my strain,
And oft, too oft, implores again
The few who may endure my lay,
To follow me so far away.

Stranger-wilt thou follow now,
And sit with me on Acro-Corinth's brow?

December, 1815.

EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED

POEM.

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 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 tranquility, and spread
A dreaay 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;
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?-and wherefore had they birth?

The last things recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnaouts who followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains, at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble.

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My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,-
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
II.

The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;

But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,-
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore

III.

If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow, The careful pilot of my proper wo.

IV.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward. My whole life was a contest, since the day That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd The gift,-a fate, or will, that walk'd astray; And at times have found the struggle hard, And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay But now I fain would for a time survive, If but to see what next can well arrive.

V.

Kingdoms and empires in my little day I have outlived, and yet I am not old; And when I look on this the petty spray Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away: Something-I know not what-does still uphold A spirit of light patience ;-not in vain, Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

• Admiral Byron was remarkable for never making a voyage without e tempest. He was known to the sailors by the faceous name of Poul-weather Jack."

"But though it were tempest-tost, Still his Lark could not be lost."

He returned safely from the wreck of the Wager, (in Anson voyage,) and subsequently circumnavigated the world many years aller, as commander o a similar expedition.

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What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

What do I say-a mirror of my heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;

And such as thou art were my passions long.

Time may have somewhat tamed them,-not for ever,
Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye
Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away,

But left long wrecks behind, and now again
Borne in our old unchanged career, we move;
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I-to loving one I should not love.

The current I behold will sweep beneath

Her native walls, and murmur at her feet; Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe The twilight air, unharm'd by summer's heat.

She will look on thee,-I have look'd on thee,
Full of that thought; and, from that moment, ne'er
Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,
Without the inseparable sigh for her;

• The Countess Guiccioll.

SONNET TO GEORGE THE FOURTH,

ON THE REPEAL OF LORD Edward FITZGERALD' FORFEITURE.

To be the father of the fatherless,

To stretch the hand from the throne's height, an.

raise

His offspring, who expired in other days To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less,This is to be a monarch, and express

Envy into unutterable praise.

Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, For who would lift a hand, except to bless ? Were it not easy, sire? and is't not sweet To make thyself beloved? and to be Omnipotent by mercy's means? for thus

Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete; A despot thou, and yet thy people free, And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us.

August, 1819.

FRANCESCA OF RIMINI.

TRANSLATED FROM THE INFERNO OF DANIE CANTO FIFTH.

"THE land where I was born sits be the seas, Upon that shore to which the Po descends, With all his followers, in search of peace. Love, which the gentle heart soon apprehends, Seized him for the fair person which was a'en From me, and me even yet the mode offends Love, who to none beloved to love again

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