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when life is in its bloom and promise, were subjects suited to his temper and powers. The latter, accordingly, are displayed in all their force throughout that passage, which no one who has read it can forget, beginning,"

There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry.

In his description of the sorrow of those who mourn for the dead, gloomy and striking images are accumulated, with a profusion unusual in his poetry; for in general he has more of passion and strong conception, than of that power of mind, which apprehends resemblances and illustrations, imparting a moral type to material things.

They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn; The tree will wither long before it fall;

The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn ;
The roof tree sinks, but moulders on the hall,
In massy hoariness; the ruin'd wall

Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;
The bars survive the captive they enthral;

The day drags through though storms keep out the sun; And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on';

Even as a broken mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies; and makes
A thousand images of one that was,

The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,

Living in shatter'd guise, and still, and cold,
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,

Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.

It was in the same spirit, and with equal power, that he had already described the death of Lara, and the agony of Kaled.

A breathing but devoted warrior lay;
'Twas Lara bleeding fast from life away.

His follower once, and now his only guideh Indon
Kneels Kaled watchful o'er his welling side,
And with his scarf would staunch the tides that rush,
With each convulsion, in a blacker güsh iw sunn*
And then, as his faint breathing waxes low, s
In feebler, not less fatal trickling How to mak
He scarce can speak, but motions him 'tis vain,
And merely adds another throb to pain.
He clasps the hand that pang which would assuage,
And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark age
Who nothing fears, nor feels, nor heeds nor

page,

nor sees,

Save that damp brow which rests upon his knees;Save that pale aspect, , where the eye, though dim, all the light t'that short

Held

shone on earth for him.

That deep sense of the quietness, beauty, and still sublimity of nature, which is professed so strongly in the last two cantos of Childe Harold, seems rather assumed than real. It does not appear to be, has their author professes, a true "love," if such may exist, "of earth only for its earthly sake;" but rather a factitious sentiment, intended to strengthen, by contrast, the impression which

he wished to give of his indisposition for

human converse.

He would have it thought,

that he was so separated in character from his fellowmen, that though he had filed" (that is, defiled) "his mind," and brought it nearer to their level, still his soul could not bear to hold communion with them, and fled from their intercourse to the solitudes of nature. "To me," he tells us,

High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture;"

though, in fact, they were his chosen places of residence. Regarded in any other light, the sentiment of which we are speaking was inconsistent with his character. We accordingly find that much of the language, in which it is expressed, is misty and unmeaning, artificial and extravagant.

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Ye stars! that are the poetry of heaven !
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,

Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves

a star.

No one, whose mind was really elevated and purified by the solemn grandeur of a midnight sky, would think of expressing his feelings by an allusion to the forgotten folly of astrology, or to the metaphorical uses of the word star. To the latter, the last line may be conjectured to refer; but one can hardly feel certain, that he has divined its meaning.

But in his descriptions of the loveliness of nature, there is sometimes great beauty.—

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