And hath denied, to every other sky,

Spirits which soar from ruin; thy decay
Is still impregnate with divinity,

Which gilds it with revivifying ray;

Such as the great of yore. Canova is to-day.

(Ibid, Stanzas liv., lv.).

BRYAN WILLIAM PROCTER.

[Born, 1789.

Educated at Harrow. 66 Dramatic Sketches," published, 1819; " Marcian Colonna," 1820. Mirandola, produced, 1820. "The Flood in Thessaly," published, 1823; "English Songs," 1832; "Life of Edmund Kean," 1832; "Memoirs of Charles Lamb," 1866. Died, 1874.]

MY BOOKS.

All round the room my silent servants wait,—
My friends in every season, bright and dim.
Angels and Seraphim

Come down, and murmur to me, sweet and low,
And spirits of the skies all come and go

Early and late;

From the old world's divine and distant date,
From the sublimer few

Down to the poet who but yester eve
Sang sweet, and made us grieve,—
All come, assembling here in order due.
And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate,
With Erato and all her vernal sighs,
Great Clio with her victories elate,

Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes.

Oh, friends, whom chance and change can never

harm,

Whom death, the tyrant, cannot doom to die,
Within whose folding soft eternal charm
I love to lie.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

[Born, 1792. Educated at Eton and Oxford. Expelled from Oxford, 1811. Wrote " Queen Mab," 1813. "Revolt of Islam," published, 1818. Left England, 1818. Prometheus Unbound," and "The Cenci," published, 1820; "Epipsychidion," and " Adonais," &c., 1821. Died, 1822.]

66

CONVERSE WITH THE DEAD.

That hoary man had spent his livelong age
In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp
Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,
When they are gone into the senseless damp
Of graves; his spirit thus became a lamp
Of splendour, like to those on which it fed.
Through peopled haunts, the city and the camp,
Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,
And all the ways of men among mankind he read.
(The Revolt of Islam, Canto IV., Stanza viii.)

BOOKS THE FOUNTS OF INSPIRATION.

Yes, from the records of my youthful state,
And from the lore of bards and sages old,
From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create
Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,
Have I collected language to unfold
Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore
Doctrines of human power my words have told;
They have been heard, and men aspire to more
Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.
(Ibid, Stanza xii.)

THE POWER OF SONG.

Perish! let there only be
Floating o'er thy hearthless sea,
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally,

One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of Time,
Which scarce hides the visage wan:
That a tempest-cleaving swan
Of the songs of Albion,

Driven from his ancestral streams

By the might of evil dreams,

Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,

Chastening terror: what though yet

Poesy's unfailing river,

Which through Albion winds for ever,

Lashing with melodious wave

Many a sacred poet's grave,

Mourn its latest nursling fled!

What though thou with all thy dead

Aught thine own,-oh, rather say,
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sun-like soul!

As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander's wasting springs,
As divinest Shakespeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power, which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;

As the love from Petrarch's urn
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

A quenchless lamp, by which the heart
Sees things unearthly; so thou art,
Mighty spirit: so shall be

The city that did refuge thee.

(Lines written among the Euganean Hills.)

THE POET'S TRANSMITTED EFFLUENCE CANNOT DIE.

He is made one with Nature; there is heard

His voice in all her music, from the moan

Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known

J