A Pavilion it seem'd which the Deity graced,
And Justice and Mercy met there, and embraced.
Awhile, and it sweetly bent over the gloom,
Like Love o'er a death-couch, or Hope o'er the tomb;
Then left the dark scene, whence it slowly retired,
As Love had just vanish'd, or Hope had expired.
I gaz'd not alone on that source of my song ;-
To all who beheld it these verses belong,
Its presence to all was the path of the Lord !
Each full heart expanded,-grew warm,—and adored !
Like a visit—the converse of friends—or a day,
That Bow from my sight pass’d for ever away;
Like that visit, that converse, that day—to my heart,
That Bow from remembrance can never depart.
'Tis a picture in memory distinctly defined,
With the strong, and unperishing colours of mind;
A part of my being beyond my controul,
Beheld on that cloud, and transcribed on my soul.

SONNET.

It is not that she moveth like a queen,

(Although her graceful air I must admire ;)

Nor that her eye shoots forth the falcon's fire,
(And yet her gentle glance is bright and keen :)
Perhaps Diana's hair had scarcely been

Thus braided; nor the voice of choiring bird
Entirely thus, in old times, sweetly heard,
When that great huntress trod the forests green.
What matters this ?-To me her eye is fill’d

With radiant meaning, and her tones are clear

And soft as music, a sweet soul betraying;
And o'er her flushing cheek (ah! sensitiye child !)

Beautiful pain is seen, too often, playing,
As though to say, “ Perfection dwells not even here.”

B.

SONNET,
Written in the Woods of Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire.
There is no lovelier scene in all the land.-

Around me far a green enchantment lies,

Fed by the weeping of these April skies,
And touch'd by Fancy's great “all-charming wand.”
Almost I expect to see a lightsome band

Come stealing thro' the hazel boughs, that cross

My path—or half-asleep upon the moss
Some Satyr, with stretch'd arm, and clenched hand.
It is a place of beauty: here, half hid

By yellowing ash and drooping aspens, run
The river waters,*-as to meet the sun;

And in the distance, boiling in its might,
The fatal fall is seen,-the thundering strid;

And over all the morning blue and bright.

B.

• The river (the Wharfe) runs eastward.

LINES

Written for a Young Lady's Pocket Book, near the Ruins of Horace's

Villa (80 called,) a little above the Cascades at Tivoli.
What do I see? waters that glide
Gracefully slow where olives wave;
The aloes on the mountain-side-
A mound, -perhaps the poet's grave.
What do I hear? an under-sound
From yonder chasm that yawns below,
Which darts a shudder through the ground,
And shakes the flowers that round me grow.
"Tis thus, when moments smoothly pass,
An inward trembling of the soul
Predicts, with fatal truth, alas !
That tow'rds a fearful change they roll.
But let me check those thoughts of pain,
That from black memory take their hue,
For flowery hopes should deck the strain
That comes an offering to you :--
Yes—you shall tread those paths of life
By which the peaceful streamlets roam,
Far from the horrors of the strife
Where 'gainst the dark rock strikes the foam.

LETTER FROM JOHN O'GROATS' TO THE EDITOR,

ENCLOSING SPECIMENS OF A POEM.

SIR,- I take the liberty of sending you some extracts from a new poem which a friend of mine threaters to publish. I have perused the work, and shall only say it treats upon every subject ; but, principally, on Poetry,– Criticism,—the Fancy,-Nature,—Coleridge,-Waterloo Bridge,–Aristotle, -Walter Scott, -Youth,-Port Wine,-the Author,- Astronomy,– Tom Moore,—Botany,- Intoxication,-Manias, — Rauicalism, - Mr. Ex-Sheriff Pu-rk-ns-Sunset,-Chemistry,—and other similar subjects. My extracts are, like tea-pots, of various sorts and sizes :—but, if I write a long proem, my sheet will be filled, -and I cannot afford a double letter from this great distance. By the way, 'tis a pity you Magazine Editors will not, like other tradesmen, send travellers round the country to solicit orders and communications; a shilling, or eighteen-penny postage on every communication, is a serious tax to a poor bard, and must debar you from many a choice article.

John O'Groats',
Nov. 8, 1820.

19.
Last year, kind reader, it comes o'er my mind

With Chemistry I was awhile quite thick ;
I broke retorts with decomposing wind,

And burnt my house with mixtures phosphoric,
And with voltaic batteries refin'd

Gold, silver, charbon (Anglicè, burnt stick)
But now my folly's chang'd—I'd have you know it,
I've clos'd my lab’ratory, and turn’d poet.

'Tis like the witching voice of Beauty's daughters

When on your face their vivid glances flash; Or the gay sound of childhood's heartfelt laughters,

Which oft against my recreant memory clash, And bid the forms of long-since vanished years Appear (a bull !) and trickle into tears!

*

109. A lovely night, by Styx! the ocean's hue

More beautiful than ever seems to me; It vies with heav'n in deepness of its blue,

And that I deem appears a floating sea More distant, yet inviting to the view

Oh! that if there my spirit now might be ! Oh! that I dwelt in yon bright twinkling star, And view'd this earthly planet from afar!

110. Calm is the deep-except upon the shore

Where stretching capes encroach upon its waves, And there the bursting breakers loudly roar,

And hoarsely chafe against their sea-worn caves ; The wild fowl's note the distant bay comes o'er

From where the ooze the silent water laves : -But, lo! a tlash-and hark! a sound proceedsMan, man is there! some helpless victim bleeds !

120. I cease this strain-lest such convulsive starts

Should make the world believe me like that wight, Who long hath wafted home from foreign parts

Tokens his bosom is in wretched plight; Mine is as bad no doubt, but there are hearts

Of which too little can't be said :-I'll write About my sorrows on some future day When my cheveux are grown more scant and grey.

121. Now I've no fancy for such public sorrow,

I keep my woes and griefs lock'd up at home, I may, however, change my mind to-morrow,

And take a fancy in the east to roam :
Then moodiness and morbidness I'll borrow,

And send to press a misanthropic tome;
But as I take it these loose rambling verses
Would come but badly from a moaning Thirsis.

Suppose at each, as it is past me flying,
I take a shot, and bag it in my poem-
Well I begin—and here I end my proem.

等

199.
As lately boxing has become poetical

It ill becomes my verses to speak light of it,
So I will merely add a line p’renthetical,

Which is-Oh! ever keep me from the sight of it!
And, if my stanza can become pathetical

I'll weep o'er one who loved with wit to write of it
Alas! poor Corcoran-Laureate of the ring !
Let me this garland o'er thy coffin fling !

210.
Here comes a lawyer-of his wiles beware!

His smile is death, his frown with danger teems;
Yet, he so softly leads you to his snare,

You think that blessings hover round his schemes ;
His words so kind-his promises so fair !

Unto the last he soothes with hope's gay dreams,
Like the decoy which leads the wild fowl on
Till it turns round-and all egress is gone.

*

229.
But I must cease—nor write a stanza more,

My printer is engag'd-my price is fix'd,
And if I raise my stanzas to twelve score

I fear my publisher would be perplex'd
To sell my book for current shillings four-

So here 'tis done-good, bad, and middling mix’d:
Reader, I ask but little-being shy-
Abuse me if you please—but pray first buy.

N.

LIVING AUTHORS.

No. IV.

LORD BYRON.

LORD BYRON's compositions do not horizon of his age; and he is desentitle him to be called the best of tined so to endure, and to captivate our present poets ; but his personal and astonish the eye of posterity, character, and the history of his life when all that is common of our poshave clearly rendered him the most sessions is forgotten, and all that is interesting, and remarkable of the weak and little is crumbled into dust; persons who now write poetry. If when the outline of that busy and he is not, as we have said of another, crowded portion of space and time « the author we would most wish to which is so much to us, will be be," he is certainly the living author traced, like that of an ancient city, by who is chiefly " the marvel, and the a few single, elevated, and imperisha show" of our day and generation- able monuments. leaving the word “ boasť" out of the It does seem scarcely possible to quotation, as leading to premature pay too much for the glorious assurdiscussion.-Whatever general judg- ance of so enduring, to be so here, ment we may pronounce on his qua- after regarded ;

yet, by Lord lities as a writer, guiding ourselves Byron, it has been purchased at a by the rules of criticism, there can be most serious, and even appalling exno doubt of his standing a towering pense in more than one kind of earthobject in the moral and intellectually good. Never,-in our opinion at

us

a

least,-has that which is properly analogy to the author's own charace called notoriety been so intimately ter. A confusion is thus occasioned, united with the more noble essence in the breast of him whose attention of true fame, as it is in the case of is captivated by the productions in this writer; and, what strikes us as question, unfavourable altogether to more strange still, he even recon- right and pure feeling. The impresa ciles those dubious and questionable sion left on the mind, is neither stricte qualities, which fall under the head ly that of a work of art, to be proof empirical, with the acquirement nounced upon according to the rules of sterling renown.-The personal in- applicable to art,-nor of a matterterest, we believe, has always been of-fact, appealing to the principles of above the poetical in Lord Byron's sound judgment in such cases ;-—but compositions ; and, what is much what is striking in poetry is made

worse, they appear to have been, in a set-off against what is objectione • almost every instance, studiously able in morals, while that which

calculated to produce this effect. It would be condemned as false, theais true, the noble author has never trical, or inconsistent, according to distinctly offered professed the laws of poetical criticism, is portrait of himself in any of his often rendered the most taking part heroes ;

but his plan, we think, of the whole composition by its evihas been a more objectionable one. dent connection with real and priWhile he has introduced, in most of vate circumstances, that are of a them, features so odious and anti- nature to tickle the idle, impertinent, social, that self-exposure in such a and most unpoetical curiosity of the light might be regarded as an unna- public. This sort of balancing sys. tural offence, and one more directly tem is not fair :-Lord Byron should insulting to moral feeling than the either give us Childe Harold, Conbare practice of vice,-he has boldly rad, &c. as what painters call hisand bare-facedly coupled the his- torical portraits of himself, or he tories of his bravoes and villains with should leave us free to judge of them the incidents of his own life ; min- as we would judge of a statue, or of gled their feelings with even affected- a picture, or of any strictly poetical ly open disclosures of his own;—nay, personage. As it is, the literary imhe has sketched from the most sacred perfections of the Childe, &c. merge recesses of his own privacy, to the in the personal peculiarities of the injury of other sensibility than his author ;-and again, where it might own, accompaniments to the scenes be useful to hold the latter to answer of debauchery, despair, and violence personally for certain licences, renof which he has chiefly formed his dered stimulating and seductive by poetical representations. Rousseau's irregular and unfit allusions,

he confessions were avowedly of him- escapes from this responsibility into self : whatever may be their abso- the fictitious hero-after perhaps lute truth, they are most curious- mortally corrupting principle by ly true as an exhibition of character: touching the sensiblity with traits their minute moral anatomy is as that derive all their force from stupendous as the system of the his own history. The unsoundness blood-vessels and capillary tubes of of this style of composition, is of a the body; and, though indecent and double nature: it depraves the taste offensive as a piece of self-exposure, as well as taints the purity of the they are coupled, all the way through, moral feeling. with so much evidence of actual per- A personal interest of this nature sonal responsibility, that the fancy is by no

enters legitimately kept in subordination to the moral amongst the qualities that form poejudgment of the reader, and the tical power and beauty: if the reusual rules of social intercourse and flection of the author's character human duty are not respited in his must be seen in such compositions as mind. Lord Byron's creations, how- profess to be imaginative, it too ever, are addressed to the poetical should take an imaginative hue, and sympathies of his readers, while their lie deep and dim in the heart of the main interest is derived from awaken- strain, going, shadow-like, with all ing a recollection of some fact of the the variations of its current. Lord author's life, or a conviction of an Lord Byron's egotisms therefore, we