With words, and looks, that tigers could but rue,
Where each of us did plead the other's right;
The palm-play, where despoiled for the game,
With dazed eyes oft we, by gleams of love,
Have missed the ball, and got sight of our dame,
To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above.
The gravelled ground, with sleeves tied on the helm,
On foaming horse, with swords and friendly hearts,
With chear as though one should another whelm,
Where we here fought, and chased oft with darts;
With silver drops the meads yet spread for ruth;
In active games of nimbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth,
Our tender limbs, that yet shot up in length;
The secret groves, which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies praise,
Recording soft what grace each one had found,
What hope of speed, what dread of long delays;
The wild forest, the clothed holts with green;
With rains availed, and swift y-breathed horse
With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,
Where we did chase the fearful hart of force;
The void walls eke that harboured us each night;
Wherewith, alas! revive within my heart
The sweet accord, such sleeps as yet delight,
The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest,
The secret thoughts imparted with such trust,
The wanton talk, the divers change of play,
The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,-
Wherewith we past the winter nights away.
And with this thought the blood forsakes the face;
The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue:
The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas!
Up-supped have, thus I my plaint renew:
"O place of bliss! renewer of my woes!
Give me account, where is my noble fere?
Whom in thy walls thou didst each night enclose,
To other lief, but unto me most dear.”
Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue,
Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine with bondage and restraint;
And with remembrance of the greater grief
To banish the less, I find my chief relief."
If the muse of Surrey, the first noble English poet, be imbued with the romantic spirit of his time, perhaps in the more emphatic verse of Byron, the latest and the greatest, we may trace the chartered and fiercer energies that are supposed to have affected the moral temperament of our own time. One of the very finest passages in all his voluminous works is an address to Napoleon, the individual in whom whatever was peculiar, to the revolutionary period that has just passed, may be said to have been embodied. After adverting to the singular combination of magnanimity and meanness, which formed the brightness and the blackness of that extraordinary political phenomenon, the author proceeds:
"Yet well thy soul hath brook'd the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled With a sedate and all-enduring eye ;
When Fortune fled her spoil'd and favourite child, He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.
"Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them
Ambition steel'd thee on too far to show
That just habitual scorn which could contemn
Men and their thoughts. 'Twas wise to feel, not so
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow,
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use
Till they were turn'd unto thine overthrow ;
"Tis but a worthless world to win or lose !—
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot who choose.
"But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
"This makes the madmen who have made men mad By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings, Founders of sects and systems, to whom add Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, And are themselves the fools to those they fool; Envied, yet how unenviable ! what stings
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule:
"Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last;
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast With sorrow and supineness, and so die; Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste With its own flickering; or a sword laid by, Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.
"He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.'
The stern sublimity of this highly-poetical and descriptive passage may be agreeably contrasted with the introduction to Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming, a poem of rare merit and delightful beauty, but comparatively very little known, except by name, notwithstanding the celebrity of the author. The excellence of the execution, and the tenderness of feeling in this composition, should have secured it a much larger share of public admiration than it will ever obtain: the remoteness of the scene, however, and the imagery being drawn from descriptions in books, and not from impressions on the poet's sense, have impaired the effect of his power; and hence, though as a work of art, Gertrude of Wyoming will always rank high, yet it will never be in much request, notwithstanding all its numberless beauties, and the exquisite refinement of the sensibility that breathes and trembles in the pathos of every line.
GERTRUDE OF WYOMING.
"On Susquehana's side, fair Wyoming,
Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall
And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall,
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all
That see the Atlantic waves their morn restore.
Sweet land! may I thy lost delights recall,
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore,
Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore !
"It was beneath thy skies that, but to prune
His autumn fruits, or skim the light canoe,
Perchance, along thy river calm at noon,
The happy shepherd swain had nought to do
From morn till evening's sweeter pastime grew:
Their timbrel in the dance of forests brown
When lovely maidens prankt in flow'ret new,
And aye, those sunny mountains half way down
Would echo flagelet from some romantic town.
"Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takes
His leave, how might you the flamingo see
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes-
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree:
And every sound of life was full of glee,
From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of men,
While hark'ning, fearing nought their revelry,
The wild deer arch'd his neck from glades, and then,
Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again.
"And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime Heard but in transatlantic story rung,
For here the exile met from every clime,
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