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stream of love-sick harmony will I now quaff my fill, and what I cannot realize, still learn to substantiate in mental rapture.

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FRAGMENT IX.

DAY has succeeded day, and every rising sun has bless'd me with the sight of Mary.-A thousand times I've tun'd the lute to strains of love, or read the passionate effusions of the wrapt poet's soul, to the celestial queen of bliss!-She has listened, she has wept, she has applauded me.In vain at midnight have I taken up my pen, to trace the raptures that entranced me; the thread was broken, and to give to language what my soul concealed was not in Chatelar, nor in the brain of human nature to impart.

Week has crept on, and still another ushered in fresh extacy; and now hath time just measured out three moons, since D'Anville left his Chatelar in full possession of a world of joy.Three secret letters have by me been given unto my queen, the sad effusions of my lord.-I have watched the features of my love, when o'er the lines her beamy eyes have roved ;-dejection sat

upon her brow, and frequently the pitying tear would course adown her cheek, from whence the rose was plucked by tenderness and grief.

A day of trial must ensue; the morrow's sun lights Gordon to my queen: he hath entreated, and she allows him her consent to speak awhile in private to her. It is the first dark cloud that hath arose to throw the gloom of sadness on the bright hemisphere of pleasure that has environed me. Why should not Chatelar presume ere it be yet too late? why should not Mary know that I among the rest have yielded up my soul to her all-subduing charms?-What is thy family, Oh Gordon! that Chatelar should not, like thee, make this claim known unto the queen? Hast thou more honour in thy nature, more courage in misfortune, more valour in the hour of peril, and half the sum of love which now consumes me? If in all these thou art not more exalted than myself, then Chatelar ranks in Nature's book of immutable truth as great as thou thyself art.

Nature knows no claim of sublunary greatness; imperial dignity cannot enshield the wearer from the pang of grief, the agonizing torture of consuming pain, or the fell shaft of annihilating death man is but man, and greatness, like the gaudy beam of day, must yield unto the scarfing robe of ebon night.I defy thee-yes, Gor

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don, Chatelar dare defy thee; and did thine arm possess the iron sinews of a second Hercules, still would I throw defiance in thy teeth, and rest my hope of victory in love-my hope-my assurance I would say; for what could controul the fury of a heart burning with such affection as now blazes forth in me? I would meet the hungry lion in his den, or the fell tyger prowling for his prey; I would face the winged dragon of the rocks, or teach fell Cerberus to lick my very feet, and sue for mercy.-Passion when shackled becomes the frenzy of the soul, nor spares the being who would dare oppose it.-I own no power but love -I reverence no creature but my queen: to lose her would be death; and he that should attempt to rob me of her love, encounters a twofold enemy I strive for love, and life without it, I'd thank the created man who should at once annihilate; but thus possessing the smiles of Mary, not all the world shall tear the jewel of existence from me!Come Dante,* let thy glowing page

* Dante, the Italian poet, was one of those transcendent geniuses that very rarely spring up to dazzle the world with a sublimity of composition. This poet, who lived in a dark and superstitious age, was not shackled by any of the trammels which had marked the compositions of his successors; on the contrary, he seemed formed to prove to the world the astonishing powers of the human intellect. The mind has in general advanced by progressive steps

instruct me how to act; teach me, with the fire of thy transcendent lines, to tyrannize with love; teach me to give my heart the adamantine armour of hatred, to all who dare oppose my soulentranced passion.

Thy numbers, most sublime of men, break upon the fancy like awful thunder riding from afar upon the gloomy clouds, or as the dashing torrent roaring from on high, and foaming in its rapid fall; even so thy pen, in terrifying numbers, hath astounded every sense, and taught my soul sublimity.-Yes, Dante shall be my theme to night; he shall awaken every dormant faculty: I will rivet mine eyes unto his god-like verse, and learn to verify the poet's heaven-fraught fiction.

-Come mind, with rapture fraught, and couple with a kindred spirit; Dante shall be to Chatelar as fuel to the blazing fire ;-yes, I will dare every thing that honour shall approve, and love and Mary sanction.

and it is very rare, indeed, that we find a genius soaring above the usual standard; but it is in this instance that Dante ranks so eminently conspicuous. In the delineation of every passion he was alike transcendent; whether tyranny or cruelty, virtue or vice, craft or imposture, were the subjects of his muse, the same fire and truth marked his verse. In short, no age has produced a genius more sublime, and so perfectly calculated to correct the taste, and give birth to the genuine effusions of unfettered poetry.

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