CONSOLATIONS OF EXILE. [OR AN EXILE'S ADDRESS TO HIS DISTANT CHILDREN.] I. O'ER the vast realm of tempest-troubled Ocean O'er the parched lands that vainly thirst for showersThrough the long night-or when nor sound nor motion Stirs in the noon of day the sultry bowers— Not all un'companied by pleasant dreams My weary spirit panteth on the way; That mock the fleshly vision brightly play. Oh! the heart's links nor time nor change may sever, O'er hill, and vale, and plain, and sea, and river, II. Fair children! still, like phantoms of delight, Ye haunt my soul on this strange distant shore, As the same stars shine through the tropic night That charmed me at my own sweet cottage door. Though I have left ye long, I love not less; Though ye are far away, I watch ye still; Though I can ne'er embrace ye, I may bless, A silent converse o'er the waters wide, And Fancy's spell can speed the lingering hours, III, And not alone the written symbols show With all your grace and loveliness and youth; Oft filled my fond heart with a parent's pride, Are gathered near me on this foreign strand, And smilingly, in these strange halls, reside; And almost I forget an exile's doom, For while your filial eyes around me gleam, Each scene and object breathes an air of home, And time and distance vanish like a dream! IV. Oh! when sweet Memory's radiant calm comes o'er O'er the hushed ocean, forms beloved of yore As light of heart as in that golden time Nor knew the shadow of a care or crime. V. From many a fruit and flower the hand of Time Hath brushed the bloom and beauty; yet mine eye, Though Life's sweet summer waneth, and my prime Of health and hope is past, can oft espy Amid the fading wilderness around Such lingering hues as Eden's holy bowers In earth's first radiance wore, and only found VI. Though this frail form hath felt the shafts of pain, Their early freshness, and soon check the sigh And here your pictured lineaments to greet! LINES WRITTEN ON THE RUINS OF RAJHMAHAL. HAIL, stranger, hail! whose eye shall here survey How human hopes, like human works, depart, And leave behind the ruins of the heart! SONNET. EVENING, ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES. I WANDERED thoughtfully by Gunga's shore, A calm so deep-'twas silent as the grave. Or shook the dew-drops from the leaves, unheard. Like pictured shadows 'gainst the western beam SONNET-GRIEF. IMPASSIONED grief is dumb-no sign or sound The quivering lip, the quick convulsive start, But feebly tell the strife. The crowd around When sinks the strong man 'neath the sullen stream Thus see but bubbles rise,-these ill reveal The struggler's pangs! When mourners pant and teem To mock the smothered soul's unheard appeal! ON CARE AND CONDENSATION IN WRITING. When Apelles was reproached with the paucity of his productions, and the incessant attention with which he re-touched his pieces, he condescended to make no other answer than that he painted for perpetuity. The Rambler. Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only in three days composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred: Thou tell'st truth (quoth he); but here is the difference; thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages. Webster's Dedication to the Reader of the White Devil, or Vittoria THERE are some writers who seem to regard mere quickness and facility of production as of more importance than the quality of the thing produced. They insult the public with a flippant boast of the little time which they have thought it necessary to bestow upon a work intended for its acceptance, and make that a subject of triumph which calls for an apology. If the public were in a state of intellectual deprivation, and were too voracious to be nice, these rapid writers might be looked upon as benefactors :but the case is precisely the reverse; the world abounds in books, both good and bad. There is at all events no demand for a greater number of the latter kind. We can afford to wait for the result of an author's best exertions, and are not obliged to accept with gratitude the first crude and hurried productions that he is disposed to offer*. It is not the task of a day for a man to enter into competition with such writers as Shakespeare and Milton, or Byron and Wordsworth, or to produce a work of whatever kind, which the world would not willingly let die. A reader is as little curious about the number of hours which * I hate all those nonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his writing a play in a morning before breakfast. He had time enough to do it after.Hazlitt. G |