Men's groans inaugurated it, men's tears
Sprinkle its floor, fires lighted up with men
Are censers for it; Agony and Anger
Surround it night and day with sleepless eyes;
Dissimulation, Terror, Treachery,
Denunciations of the child, the parent,
The sister, brother, lover (mark me, Ines!)
Are the peace-offerings God receives from it.

INES.

I tremble-but betrayers tremble more.

Now cease, cease, Pedro! Cling I must to somewhatLeave me one guide, one rest! Let me love God! Alone-if it must be so!

PEDRO.

Him alone

Mind; in him only place thy trust henceforth.

SHELLS.

But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:
Shake one and it awakens, then apply

Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

FROM COUNT JULIAN.

JULIAN,

O cruelty-to them indeed the least!
My children, ye are happy-ye have lived
Of heart unconquered, honour unimpaired,
And died, true Spaniards, loyal to the last.

Away with him.

MUZA.

From Gebir.

JULIAN.

Slaves! not before I lift

My voice to heaven and man: though enemies
Surround me, and none else, yet other men
And other times shall hear: the agony
Of an opprest and of a bursting heart
No violence can silence; at its voice

The trumpet is o'erpowered, and glory mute,
And peace and war hide all their charms alike.
Surely the guests and ministers of heaven
Scatter it forth thro' all the elements;
So suddenly, so widely, it extends,
So fearfully men breathe it, shuddering
To ask or fancy how it first arose.

REPENTANCE OF KING RODERIGO.

There is, I hear, a poor half-ruined cell
In Xeres, whither few indeed resort;
Green are the walls within, green is the floor
And slippery from disuse; for Christian feet
Avoid it, as half-holy, half-accurst.

Still in its dark recess fanatic sin
Abases to the ground his tangled hair,
And servile scourges and reluctant groans
Roll o'er the vault uninterruptedly,

Till, such the natural stilness of the place,
The very tear upon the damps below
Drops audible, and the heart's throb replies.
There is the idol maid of Christian creed,
And taller images, whose history

I know not, nor inquired-a scene of blood,
Of resignation amid mortal pangs,
And other things, exceeding all belief.
Hither the aged Opas of Seville

Walked slowly, and behind him was a man
Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfortless,
In sackcloth; the white ashes on his head
Dropt as he smote his breast; he gathered up,
Replaced them all, groan'd deeply, looked to heave
And held them, like a treasure, with claspt hands.

From Count Ju

MORNING.

Now to Aurora borne by dappled steeds,
The sacred gate of orient pearl and gold,
Smitten with Lucifer's light silver wand,
Expanded slow to strains of harmony;

The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves
Glancing with wanton coyness tow'rd their queen,
Heaved softly; thus the damsel's bosom heaves
When from her sleeping lover's downy cheek,
To which so warily her own she brings
Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth
Of coming kisses fann'd by playful dreams.
Ocean and earth and heaven was jubilee.
For 'twas the morning pointed out by Fate
When an immortal maid and mortal man
Should share each other's nature knit in bliss.

From Gebir.

He saw his error.

FROM IPPOLITO DI ESTE.

IPPOLITO.

FERRANTE.

All men do when age

Bends down their heads, or gold shines in their way.

IPPOLITO.

Although I would have helpt you in distress,
And just removed you from the court awhile,
You called me tyrant.

FERRANTE.

Called thee tyrant? I?

By heaven! in tyrant there is something great
That never was in thee. I would be killed

Rather by any monster of the wild

Than choaked by weeds and quicksands, rather crusht

By maddest rage than clay-cold apathy.

Those who act well the tyrant, neither seek

Nor shun the name: and yet I wonder not
That thou repeatest it, and wishest me;
It sounds like power, like policy, like courage,
And none that calls thee tyrant can despise thee.
Go, issue orders for imprisonment,

Warrants for death: the gibbet and the wheel,
Lo! the grand boundaries of thy dominion!
O what a mighty office for a minister!
(And such Alfonso's brother calls himself),
To be the scribe of hawkers! Man of genius!
The lanes and allies echo with thy works.

FROM IPPOLITO DI ESTE.

Now all the people follow the procession:
Here may I walk alone, and let my spirits
Enjoy the coolness of these quiet ailes.
Surely no air is stirring; every step

Tires me; the columns shake, the cieling fleets,
The floor beneath me slopes, the altar rises.
Stay!-here she stept-what grace! what harmony!
It seemed that every accent, every note,

Of all the choral music, breathed from her:
From her celestial airiness of form

I could have fancied purer light descended.
Between the pillars, close and wearying,
I watcht her as she went: I had rusht on-
It was too late; yet, when I stopt, I thought
I stopt full soon: I cried, Is she not there?
She had been: I had seen her shadow burst
The sunbeam as she parted: a strange sound,
A sound that stupefied and not aroused me,
Filled all my senses; such was never felt
Save when the sword-girt angel struck the gate,
And Paradise wail'd loud, and closed for ever.

STANZAS.

In Clementina's artless mien
Lucilla asks me what I see,
And are the roses of sixteen
Enough for me?

Lucilla asks, If that be all,

Ah

Have I not cull'd as sweet before

yes, Lucilla! and their fall

I still deplore.

I now behold another scene,

Where Pleasure beams with heaven's own light,

More pure, more constant, more serene,
And not less bright—

Faith, on whose breast the Loves repose,

Whose chain of flowers no force can sever,

And Modesty who, when she goes,

Is gone for ever.

THIS very voluminous and highly talented writer was born at Bristol, on the 12th of August, 1774. During his boyhood he was educated in several private schools, and in consequence of the early talent he displayed, he was sent, în 1787, to Westminster School. Even during these early years he had shown his natural bent, not only by a predilection for the works of our poets, but by attempts to write in verse, which the partiality of his friends, as usual, flattered into a habit. After having studied for some years at Westminster School, Southey was entered at Baliol College, Oxford, in 1792, where he became acquainted with Coleridge, in consequence of the escapade of the latter from Cambridge. Southey was so completely overwhelmed by the irresistible elo. quence of his friend, that he became a convert to the wild theory of Pantisocracy, and resolved to become one of its apostles in the wilds of America. But a different destiny, as well as a complete change in his political creed, awaited him-he became an affectionate husband, and a most thorough-going Tory. This alteration in his political sentiments formed a theme of declamation and abuse with all who envied and hated him; and changes were rung, for the best part of two generations, upon the titles of "turn-coat" and "renegade," which were unsparingly heaped upon him. And perhaps these reproaches of his enemies were embittered by the circumstance, that no other charge could be fastened upon him, whether of a moral or literary character. An accusation of immoral conduct, or the charge of dulness, would have been equally hopeless he had written down the one, and lived down the other, so that nothing but the semblance of political apostacy remained upon which malice could fix her talons, But are the rash opinions of youth to be immutable? Is the scholar to retain the prejudices of the cloister after he has entered the world, and acquired the experience which active life alone can bestow?

The first distinguished exhibition of Southey's poetical talents was given in 1796, by the publication of his Joan of Arc. In this work all his early ideas of liberty, which were still unchanged, appear in full freshness and vigour, and the noble creature whom he selected as his heroine was well qualified to embody them. His next production was the "wild and wondrous song" of Thalaba, the Destroyer, which appeared at the close of 1800. This work astounded the critics, as it was so much out of the usual path; but in spite of their learned declamations upon the established laws of epic poetry, the public persisted in believing that it was a work full of interest and poetical beauty. His next poetical publications were two volumes of miscellaneous poetry, which appeared at intervals, and were read with that interest which his previous works had already excited. Madoc appeared in 1805, The Curse of Kehama in 1810, and Roderick, the Last of the Goths, in 1814. These are his principal poetical works; but to enumerate the publications, both in prose and verse, which have proceeded from his fertile pen since his commencement of authorship, till that melancholy recent period, when the intellectual world became to him a universal blank, would be to give a catalogue composing in itself a whole library. No man, perhaps, was ever more systematically a student and an author than Robert Southey. He sat down to his desk at stated hours of each day, like a clerk in his counting-house: he had his hours for poetry and prose, and his hours for reading; he shifted from the one labour to the other, with the same facility which others display in removing one book to give place to another; and he found in this change the same recreation which students experience in passing from intellectual toil to mere amusement. In mastering the contents of a book, also, he had that facility of perusal which Napoleon, who possessed it more than other men, called "reading with his thumb;" and thus he obtained, by the skimming of a few minutes, the information which others could only obtain by spelling the whole volume. In this manner he has been enabled to write, and write so well upon such a vast variety of subjects, pouring into each a mass of information, as if it alone had constituted the sole subject of his investigation for years. Beautiful, however, as is Southey's poetry, in which he is inferior to no writer of the age, his prose will probably outlive it. In this he displays the full force of his genius, and his complete mastery of our language.