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And chequered as

To and fro with the heavy branches sway
the wind, I stay to listen,

And fancy to myself that a sad voice,

Praying, comes moaning thro' the leaves, as 'twere
For some misdeed."

We may select the following, too, from a little fragment called "Portraits."

"Behind her followed an Athenian dame,

(The pale and elegant Aspasia)

Like some fair marble carved by Phidias' hand,
And meant to imitate the nymph or muse.

Then came a dark-brow'd spirit, on whose head
Laurel and withering roses loosely hung;
She held a harp, amongst whose chords her hand
Wandered for music--and it came: She sang
A song despairing, and the whispering winds
Seem'd envious of her melody, and streamed
Amidst the wires to rival her, in vain.

Short was the strain, but sweet: Methought it spoke
Of broken hearts, and still and moonlight seas,
Of love, and loneliness, and fancy gone,
And hopes decayed for ever: and my ear

Caught well remember'd names, 'Leucadia's rock'
At times, and 'faithless Phaon: Then the form
Pass'd not, but seem'd to melt in air away:
This was the Lesbian Sappho.

At last, came one whom none could e'er mistake
Amidst a million: Egypt's dark-ey'd Queen:
The love, the spell, the bane of Antony.

O, Cleopatra ! who shall speak of thee?
Gaily, but like the Empress of a land

She moved, and light as a wood nymph in her prime,
And crowned with costly gems, whose single price
Might buy a kingdom, yet how dim they shone
Beneath the magic of her eye, whose beam

Flash'd love and languishment: Of varying humours
She seem'd, yet subtle in her wildest mood,

As guile were to her passions ministrant.

At last she sank as dead. A noxious worm

Fed on those blue and wandering veins that lac'd
Her rising bosom : ay, did sleep upon

The pillow of Antony, and left behind,

In dark requital for its banquet-death."

The last poem, called "Diego de Montilla," is, like Gyges, an imitation of Don Juan, and is liable to the same remarks. It is the longest piece, we think, in the collection; extending to some eighty or ninety stanzas; and though it makes no great figure in the way of sarcasm, or lofty and energetic sentiment, it comes nearer, perhaps, than its immediate prototype, to the weaker and more innocent pleasantry of the Italian ottava rima-and may fairly match with either, as to the better qualities of elegance, delicacy, and tenderness. There is, as usual, not much of a story. Don Diego falls in love with a scornful lady, and pines on her re

jection of him; on which her younger sister falls secretly in love with him-and when he sets out on his travels to forget his passion, droops and fades in his absence, and at last dies of a soft and melancholy decline. Diego returns to mourn over her: and, touched to the heart by her pure and devoted love, sequesters himself in his paternal castle, and lives a few calm and pensive years in retirement, when he dies before middle age, for the sake of his faithful victim. There is no profligacy and no horror in all this; no mockery of virtue and honour, and no strong mixtures of buffoonery and grandeur. Most certainly there is not any thing like the power, used or misused, that we have felt in other poems in the same measure; but there is nevertheless a great deal of beauty, and a great deal of poetry and pathos.

["O, melancholy Love! amidst thy fears,

Thy darkness, thy despair, there runs a vein
Of pleasure, like a smile 'midst many tears-
The pride of sorrow that will not complain-
The exultation that in after years

The lov'd one will discover-and in vain,
How much the heart silently in its cell
Did suffer till it broke, yet nothing tell.
Else-wherefore else doth lovely woman keep
Lock'd in her heart of hearts, from every gaze
Hidden, her struggling passion-wherefore weep
In grief that never while it flows allays
Those tumults in the bosom buried deep,

And robs her bright eyes of their natural rays.
Creation's sweetest riddle!—yet, remain
Just as thou art; man's only worthy gain.
And thou, poor Spanish maid, ah! what hadst thou
Done to the archer blind that he should dart
His cruel shafts 'till thou wast forced to bow
In bitter anguish, ay, endure the smart
The more because thou wor'st a smiling brow

While the dark arrow canker'd at thy heart?

Yet jeer her not: if 'twere a folly, she
Hath paid (how firmly paid) Love's penalty.]
Oft would she sit and look upon the sky,

1

When rich clouds in the golden sunset lay
Basking, and loved to hear the soft winds sigh
That come like music at the close of day
Trembling amongst the orange blooms, and die
As 'twere from very sweetness.
She was gay,
Meekly and calmly gay, and then her gaze
Was brighter than belongs to dying days.
And on her young thin cheek a vivid flush,
A clear transparent colour sate awhile:

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C. Twas like, a bard would say, the morning's blush
And round her mouth there played a gentle smile,
Which tho' at first it might your terrors hush,
It could not, tho' it strove, at last beguile;
And her hand shook, and then 'rose the blue vein
Branching about in all its windings plain.

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The girl was dying. Youth and beauty—all
Men love or women boast of was decaying,
And one by one lite's finest powers did fall
Before the touch of death, who seem'd delaying,
As tho' he'd not the heart at once to call

The maiden to his home. At last, arraying
Himself in softest guise, he came : she sigh'd
And, smiling as though her lover whispered, died."
Diego comes just after her death.

"He saw her where she lay in silent state,

Cold and as white as marble; and her eye,
Whereon such bright and beaming beauty sate,
Was-after the fashion of mortality,

Closed up for ever; e'en the smiles which late
None could withstand, were gone; and there did lie-
(For he had drawn aside the shrouding veil,)
By her a helpless hand, waxen and pale.
[Diego stood beside the coffin lid

And gazed awhile upon her: then he bent
And kissed her, and did-'twas grief's folly, bid
Her wait awhile for him, for that he meant
To follow quickly: then his face he hid,

And 'gainst the margin of the coffin leant,
In mute and idle anguish : not a breath

Or sound was heard. He was alone with Death.
At last, they drew him like a child away;

And spoke in soothing sorrow of the dead,
Placing her sweet acts out in kind array,

And mourn'd that one so gracious should have fled
As 'twere before her time; though she would say,
Poor girl, (and often to that talk she led,)
That to die early was a happy lot,

And, cheering, said she should be 'soon forgot.'
She left one letter for her love; they gave

The feeble scrawl into his hand, and told

How when she found that medicine could not save
And love had come too late, she grew more bold,
And bade, when she was quiet in her grave,

(I think the phrase was when her hand was cold,') That they should give that letter to the Lord

Diego, her first love; or some such word.
None heard the sad contents; he read it through
And through, and wept and pondered on each page.

At last, a gentle melancholy grew,

And touch'd like sorrow at its second stage,
His eye with languor, and contriv'd to strew
His hair with silver ere his middle age:

But for the fiery passion which alone

Had stamp'd his youth with folly,-it was gone.]
Some years he lived he liv'd in solitude,

:

And scarcely quitted his ancestral home,
Tho' many a friend and many a lady woo'd
Of birth and beauty."

"He grew familiar with the bird; the brute
Knew well its benefactor, and he'd feed
And make acquaintance with the fishes mute,

And, like the Thracian Shepherd, as we read,
Drew, with the music of his stringed lute,
Behind him winged things, and many a tread
And tramp of animal: and in his hall
He was a Lord indeed, belov'd by all.
In a high solitary turret where

None were admitted would he muse, when first
The young day broke, perhaps because he there
Had in his early infancy been nurs'd,
Or that he felt more pure the morning air,
Or lov'd to see the great Apollo burst
From out his cloudy bondage, and the night
Hurry away before the conquering light.
But oftener to a gentle lake that lay

Cradled within a forest's bosom, he

Would, shunning kind reproaches, steal away,
And, when the inland breeze was fresh and free,
There would he loiter all the livelong day,
Tossing upon the waters listlessly.

The swallow dash'd beside him, and the deer
Drank by his boat and eyed him without fear.
It was a soothing place: the summer hours
Pass'd there in quiet beauty, and at night

The moon ran searching through the woodbine bowers,
And shook o'er all the leaves her kisses bright,
O'er lemon blossoms and faint myrtle flowers,
And there the west wind often took his flight
When heaven's clear eye was closing, while above
Pale Hesper 'rose, the evening light of love."
"He comes more lovely than the Hours: his look
Sheds calm refreshing light, and eyes that burn
With glancing at the sun's so radiant book,
Unto his softer page with pleasure turn:
"Tis like the murmur of some shaded brook,
Or the soft welling of a Naiad's urn.
After the sounding of the vast sea-waves."
[-"But it hath passed away, and there remains
Scarcely the shadow of his name: the sun,
The soft breeze, and the fierce autumnal rains
Fall now alike upon him : he hath done
With Life, and cast away its heavy chains,
And in his place another spirit may run
Its course, (thus live, love, languish, and thus die,)
Through every maze of dim mortality."}

We have quoted more of this than we intended, and must how turn us to our sterner work again. We hope, however, that this is not to be our last meeting with Mr. Cornwall. We are glad to see a new edition of his Dramatic Scenes advertised. We ought to have noticed that pleasing little volume before, and should have made a few extracts from it here, if we had not mislaid our copy. As it is, we can safely recommend it to all who are pleased with what has now been extracted,

[Mr. Cornwall, in a dedicatory sonnet to a lady, young and beautiful, almost insinuates that these lays may be his last. He has done nothing-and he

has done much,-nothing that he may not easily excel, much that not many will easily equal. We must not, therefore, hear him speaking seriously of giving over before he has fairly begun-every body seems to think kindly and hopefully of him-he has smoothed the raven face of periodical criticism till it has smiledhe has done more than that, he has acquired the friendship of all true lovers of poetry. We must not be unreasonable-let him write when, what, and how he chooses-but he must remember, that as the gift of inspiration has been won, so can it be retained and strengthened only by constant, devout, and severe worship.] Blackwood's Ed. Mag. March.

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