The morn is up again, the dewy morn,

With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,

And living as if earth contained no tomb,-
And glowing into day; we may resume
The march of our existence.

There are few passages in poetry more richly coloured than the following.

The Moon is up, and yet it is not night-
Sunset divides the sky with her-a sea
Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colours seems to be
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,

Where the Day joins the past Eternity;

While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest Floats through the azure air—an island of the blest!

A single star is at her side, and reigns

With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains
Roll'd o'er the peak of the far Rhætian hill,
As Day and Night contending were, until
Nature reclaim'd her order ;-gently flows
The deep dyed Brenta, where their hues instil

The odorous purple of a new born-rose,

Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within it glows,

Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar,

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,
From the rich sunset to the rising star,
Their magical variety diffuse;

And now they change; a paler shadow strews
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour, as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray.

Even in this passage, however, the construction is awkward and embarrassing, and the simile of a dying dolphin is disagreeable, both from his triteness, and from its want of moral harmony with the scene described.

But Byron's descriptions of nature, though they are gemmed with brilliant expressions, yet, taken each as a whole, are, for the most part, unsatisfactory and faulty. They have

often the air of being written as a task. There is in his pictures, a want of clearness, of truth, and of a suitable disposition of the parts to each other. The description neither conveys distinct images of what is visible, nor a just impression of the emotions, which the scene is adapted to produce. There is sometimes an exaggeration of false sentiment, which shows a want of true perception and of natural feeling; as for instance in the passage about "Clarens, sweet Clarens," which was intended to be so very sweet: but in writing which the author mistook extravagance, and want of meaning for poetry ;* the key note of the whole being found in the following words

Thy air is the young breath of passionate thought;
Thy trees take root in love.

The same want of real harmony of mind with the works of nature appears in his description of the cataract of Velino.

The roar of waters!-from the headlong height,
Velino cleaves the wave worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light,

The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet, That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set.

In aiming at sublimity, Byron here produces only conceptions of disgust and horror. He applies images of bodily torture, and muscular force and convulsion, to a subject to which they are wholly unsuitable. The waters of a cataract are compared to living beings in an agony of pain. There is little external resemblance between their struggles,

and the overwhelming rush of a torrent; and none between the feelings, which the one spectacle and the other are adapted to produce. The offensiveness of the passage is in some degree aggravated by the confusion of literal and metaphorical language, and by representing the waters as in a cold sweat.

Following those just quoted, there are, however, some lines which may remind one of the rich metaphorical language of Shakspeare. The spray of the torrent,

With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald.

These lines, however, are in no accordance with what precedes or follows. The turmoil of description is continued through several stanzas; but the real tameness of feeling,

H