CURIOSITY.*

IT came from Heaven-its power archangels knew,

When this fair globe first rounded to their view;
When the young sun reveal'd the glorious scene
Where oceans gather'd and where lands grew green;
When the dead dust in joyful myriads swarm'd,
And man, the clod, with God's own breath was
warm'd:

It reign'd in Eden-when that man first woke,
Its kindling influence from his eye-balls spoke;
No roving childhood, no exploring youth
Led him along, till wonder chill'd to truth;
Full-form'd at once, his subject world he trod,
And gazed upon the labours of his God;
On all, by turns, his charter'd glance was cast,
While each pleased best as each appear'd the last;
But when She came, in nature's blameless pride,
Bone of his bone, his heaven-anointed bride,
All meaner objects faded from his sight,
And sense turn'd giddy with the new delight;
Those charm'd his eye, but this entranced his soul,
Another self, queen-wonder of the whole!
Rapt at the view, in ecstasy he stood,
And, like his Maker, saw that all was good.

It reign'd in Eden-in that heavy hour
When the arch-tempter sought our mother's bower,
In thrilling charm her yielding heart assail'd,
And even o'er dread JEHOVAH's word prevail'd.
There the fair tree in fatal beauty grew,
And hung its mystic apples to her view:
"Eat," breathed the fiend, beneath his serpent guise,
"Ye shall know all things; gather, and be wise!"
Sweet on her ear the wily falsehood stole,
And roused the ruling passion of her soul.
"Ye shall become like Gon,"-transcendent fate!
That Gon's command forgot, she pluck'd and ate;
Ate, and her partner lured to share the crime,
Whose wo, the legend saith, must live through time.
For this they shrank before the Avenger's face,
For this He drove them from the sacred place;
For this came down the universal lot,
To weep, to wander, die, and be forgot.

It came from Heaven-it reigned in Eden's
shades-

It roves on earth, and every walk invades:
Childhood and age alike its influence own;
It haunts the beggar's nook, the monarch's throne;
Hangs o'er the cradle, leans above the bier,
Gazed on old Babel's tower-and lingers here.

To all that's lofty, all that's low it turns,
With terror curdles and with rapture burns;
Now feels a seraph's throb, now, less than man's,
A reptile tortures and a planet scans;
Now idly joins in life's poor, passing jars,
Now shakes creation off, and soars beyond the stars.
"Tis CURIOSITY-who hath not felt
Its spirit, and before its altar knelt?
In the pleased infant see the power expand,
When first the coral fills his little hand;
Throned in its mother's lap, it dries each tear,
As her sweet legend falls upon his ear;

Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, in 1829.

Next it assails him in his top's strange hum,
Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum;
Each gilded toy, that doting love bestows,
He longs to break, and every spring expose.
Placed by your hearth, with what delight he pores
O'er the bright pages of his pictured stores;
How oft he steals upon your graver task,
Of this to tell you, and of that to ask;
And, when the waning hour to-bedward bids,
Though gentle sleep sit waiting on his lids,
How winningly he pleads to gain you o'er,
That he may read one little story more!

Nor yet alone to toys and tales confined,
It sits, dark brooding, o'er his embryo mind:
Take him between your knees, peruse his face,
While all you know, or think you know, you trace;
Tell him who spoke creation into birth,
Arch'd the broad heavens, and spread the rolling
earth;

Who formed a pathway for the obedient sun,
And bade the seasons in their circles run;
Who fill'd the air, the forest, and the flood,
And gave man all, for comfort, or for food;
Tell him they sprang at Gon's creating nod—
He stops you short with, "Father, who made Gon?”
Thus through life's stages may we mark the power
That masters man in every changing hour.
It tempts him from the blandishments of home,
Mountains to climb and frozen seas to roam;
By air-blown bubbles buoy'd, it bids him rise,
And hang, an atom in the vaulted skies;
Lured by its charm, he sits and learns to trace
The midnight wanderings of the orbs of space;
Boldly he knocks at wisdom's inmost gate,
With nature counsels, and communes with fate;
Below, above, o'er all he dares to rove,

In all finds GoD, and finds that Gon all love.

Turn to the world-its curious dwellers view, Like PAUL'S Athenians, seeking something new. Be it a bonfire's or a city's blaze,

The gibbet's victim, or the nation's gaze,
A female atheist, or a learned dog,
A monstrous pumpkin, or a mammoth hog,
A murder, or a muster, 'tis the same,
Life's follies, glories, griefs, all feed the flame.
Hark, where the martial trumpet fills the air,
How the roused multitude come round to stare;
Sport drops his ball, Toil throws his hammer by,
Thrift breaks a bargain off, to please his eye;
Up fly the windows, even fair mistress cook,
Though dinner burn, must run to take a look.
In the thronged court the ruling passions read,
Where STORY dooms, where WIRT and WEBSTER

plead;

Yet kindred minds alone their flights shall trace,
The herd press on to see a cut-throat's face.
Around the gallows' foot behold them draw,
When the lost villain answers to the law;
Soft souls, how anxious on his pangs to gloat,
When the vile cord shall tighten round his throat;
And, ah! each hard-bought stand to quit how
grieved,

As the sad rumour runs--" The man's reprieved!"
See to the church the pious myriads pour,
Squeeze through the aisles and jostle round the door,

Does LANGDON preach ?-(I veil his quiet name Who serves his GOD, and cannot stoop to fame ;)No, 'tis some reverend mime, the latest rage, Who thumps the desk, that should have trod the stage;

Cant's veriest ranter crams a house, if new, When PAUL himself, oft heard, would hardly fill a pew.

Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warp'd mirror to a gaping age;
There, where, to raise the drama's moral tone,
Fool Harlequin usurps Apollo's throne;
There, where grown children gather round, to praise
The new-vamp'd legends of their nursery days;
Where one loose scene shall turn more souls to
shame,

Then ten of CHANNING's lectures can reclaim;
There, where in idiot rapture we adore
The herded vagabonds of every shore:
Women unsex'd, who, lost to woman's pride,
The drunkard's stagger ape, the bully's stride;
Pert. lisping girls, who, still in childhood's fetters,
Babble of love, yet barely know their letters;
Neat-jointed mummers, mocking nature's shape,
To prove how nearly man can match an ape;
Vaulters, who, rightly served at home, perchance
Had dangled from the rope on which they dance;
Dwarfs, mimics, jugglers, all that yield content,
Where Sin holds carnival and Wit keeps Lent;
Where, shoals on shoals, the modest million rush,
One sex to laugh, and one to try to blush,
When mincing RAVENOT sports tight pantalettes,
And turns fops' heads while turning pirouettes;
There, at each ribald sally, where we hear
The knowing giggle and the scurrile jeer;
While from the intellectual gallery first
Rolls the base plaudit, loudest at the worst.

Gods! who can grace yon desecrated dome,
When he may turn his SHAKSPEARE O'er at home?
Who there can group the pure ones of his race,
To see and hear what bids him veil his face?
Ask ye who can? why I, and you, and you;
No matter what the nonsense, if 't is new.
To Doctor Logic's wit our sons give ear;
They have no time for HAMLET, or for LEAR;
Our daughters turn from gentle JULIET's wo,
To count the twirls of ALMAVIVA's toe.

Not theirs the blame who furnish forth the treat, But ours, who throng the board and grossly eat; We laud, indeed, the virtue-kindling stage, And prate of SHAKSPEARE and his deathless page; But go, announce his best, on COOPER call, COOPER, "the noblest Roman of them all;" Where are the crowds, so wont to choke the door? 'Tis an old thing, they've seen it all before.

Pray Heaven, if yet indeed the stage must stand, With guiltless mirth it may delight the land; Far better else each scenic temple fall, And one approving silence curtain all. Despots to shame may yield their rising youth, But Freedom dwells with purity and truth; Then make the effort, ye who rule the stageWith novel decency surprise the age; Even Wit, so long forgot, may play its part, And Nature yet have power to melt the heart;

Perchance the listeners, to their instinct true, May fancy common sense-'t were surely something new.

Turn to the Press-its teeming sheets survey, Big with the wonders of each passing day; Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks,

Harangues, and hail-storms, brawls, and broken necks;

Where half-fledged bards, on feeble pinions, seek
An immortality of near a week;

Where cruel eulogists the dead restore,
In maudlin praise, to martyr them once more;
Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite,
And need no venom'd dagger while they write:
There, (with a quill so noisy and so vain,
We almost hear the goose it clothed complain,)
Where each hack scribe, as hate or interest burns,
Toad or toad-eater, stains the page by turns;
Enacts virtu, usurps the critic's chair,
Lauds a mock GUIDO, or a mouthing player;
Viceroys it o'er the realms of prose and rhyme,
Now puffs pert "Pelham," now "The Course of
Time;"

And, though ere Christmas both may be forgot,
Vows this beats MILTON, and that WALTER SCOTT;
With SAMSON'S vigour feels his nerves expand,
To overthrow the nobles of the land;
Soils the green garlands that for OTIS bloom,
And plants a brier even on CABOT's tomb;
As turn the party coppers, heads or tails,
And now this faction and now that prevails;
Applauds to-day what yesterday he cursed,
Lampoons the wisest, and extols the worst;
While, hard to tell, so coarse a daub he lays,
Which sullies most, the slander or the praise.

Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst,
While still the more we drink, the more we thirst
Trade hardly deems the busy day begun,
Till his keen eye along the page has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by,
And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh,
While the grave mother puts her glasses on,
And gives a tear to some old crony gone;
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down,
To know what last new folly fills the town;
Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things,
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings;
Naught comes amiss, we take the nauseous stuff,
Verjuice or oil, a libel or a puff.

'Tis this sustains that coarse, licentious tribe Of tenth-rate type-men, gaping for a bribe; That reptile race, with all that's good at strife, Who trail their slime through every walk of life, Stain the white tablet where a great man's name Stands proudly chisell'd by the hand of Fame; Nor round the sacred fireside fear to crawl, But drop their venom there, and poison all. "T is Curiosity-though, in its round, No one poor dupe the calumny has found, Still shall it live, and still new slanders breed; What though we ne'er believe, we buy and read, Like Scotland's war-cries, thrown from hand to

hand,

To rouse the angry passions of the land.

So the black falsehood flies from ear to ear, While goodness grieves, but, grieving, still must hear.

All are not such? O no, there are, thank Heaven, A nobler troop, to whom this trust is given; Who, all unbribed, on Freedom's ramparts stand, Faithful and firm, bright warders of the land. By them still lifts the Press its arm abroad, To guide all-curious man along life's road; To cheer young Genius, Pity's tear to start, In Truth's bold cause to rouse each fearless heart; O'er male and female quacks to shake the rod, And scourge the unsex'd thing that scorns her Gon; To hunt Corruption from his secret den,

And show the monster up, the gaze of wondering

To find a name-the heralds never penn'd;
Dig through the lava-deluged city's breast,
Learn all we can, and wisely guess the rest:
Ancient or modern, sacred or profane,
All must be known, and all obscure made plain;
If 't was a pippin tempted EVE to sin;

If glorious BYRON drugg'd his muse with gin;
If Troy e'er stood; if SHAKSPEARE stole a deer;
If Israel's missing tribes found refuge here;
If like a villain Captain HENRY lied;
If like a martyr Captain MORGAN died.

Its aim oft idle, lovely in its end,
We turn to look, then linger to befriend;
The maid of Egypt thus was led to save
A nation's future leader from the wave;
New things to hear, when erst the Gentiles ran,
Truth closed what Curiosity began.
How many a noble art, now widely known,
Owes its young impulse to this power alone;
Even in its slightest working, we may trace
A deed that changed the fortunes of a race:
BRUCE, bann'd and hunted on his native soil,
With curious eye survey'd a spider's toil:
Six times the little climber strove and fail'd;
Six times the chief before his foes had quail'd;
"Once more," he cried, "in thine my doom I
read,

Once more I dare the fight, if thou succeed;"
'T was done-the insect's fate he made his own,
Once more the battle waged, and gain'd a throne.
Behold the sick man, in his easy chair,
Barr'd from the busy crowd and bracing air,-
How every passing trifle proves its power
To while away the long, dull, lazy hour.
As down the pane the rival rain-drops chase,
Curious he'll watch to see which wins the race;
And let two dogs beneath his window fight,
He'll shut his Bible to enjoy the sight.

So with each new-born nothing rolls the day,
Till some kind neighbour, stumbling in his way,
Draws up his chair, the sufferer to amuse,
And makes him happy while he tells-the news.
The news! our morning, noon, and evening
cry,

Day unto day repeats it till we die.
For this the cit, the critic, and the fop,
Dally the hour away in Tonsor's shop;
For this the gossip takes her daily route,
And wears your threshold and your patience out;
For this we leave the parson in the lurch,
And pause to prattle on the way to church;
Even when some coffin'd friend we gather round,
We ask, "What news?" then lay him in the
ground;

To this the breakfast owes its sweetest zest,
For this the dinner cools, the bed remains un-
press'd.

What gives each tale of scandal to the street, The itchen's wonder, and the parlour's treat? See the pert housemaid to the keyhole fly, When husband storms, wife frets, or lovers sigh; See Tom your pockets ransack for each note, And read your secrets while he cleans your coat; See, yes, to listen see even madam deign, When the smug seamstress pours her ready strain. This wings that lie that malice breeds in fear, No tongue so vile but finds a kindred ear; Swift flies each tale of laughter, shame, or folly, Caught by Paul Pry and carried home to Polly; On this each foul calumniator leans, And nods and hints the villany he means; Full well he knows what latent wildfire lies In the close whisper and the dark surmise; A muffled word, a wordless wink has woke A warmer throb than if a DEXTER spoke; And he, o'er EVERETT'S periods who would nod, To track a secret, half the town has trod.

O thou, from whose rank breath nor sex can

save,

Nor sacred virtue, nor the powerless grave,-
Felon unwhipp'd! than whom in yonder cells
Full many a groaning wretch less guilty dwells,
Blush-if of honest blood a drop remains,
To steal its lonely way along thy veins,
Blush-if the bronze, long harden'd on thy cheek,
Has left a spot where that poor drop can speak;
Blush to be branded with the slanderer's name,
And, though thou dread'st not sin, at least dread
shame.

We hear, indeed, but shudder while we hear
The insidious falsehood and the heartless jeer;
For each dark libel that thou lick'st to shape,
Thou mayest from law, but not from scorn escape;
The pointed finger, cold, averted eye,
Insulted virtue's hiss-thou canst not fly.

The churl, who holds it heresy to think,
Who loves no music but the dollar's clink,
Who laughs to scorn the wisdom of the schools,
And deems the first of poets first of fools;
Who never found what good from science grew,
Save the grand truth that one and one are two;
And marvels BowDITCH o'er a book should pore,
Unless to make those two turn into four;

Who, placed where Catskill's forehead greets the sky,

Grieves that such quarries all unhewn should lie; Or, gazing where Niagara's torrents thrill, Exclaims, "A monstrous stream-to turn a mill!" Who loves to feel the blessed winds of heaven, But as his freighted barks are portward driven: Even he, across whose brain scarce dares to creep Aught but thrift's parent pair-to get, to keep: Who never learn'd life's real bliss to knowWith Curiosity even he can glow.

Go, seek him out on yon dear Gotham's walk, Where traffic's venturers meet to trade and talk: Where Mammon's votaries bend, of each degree, The hard-eyed lender, and the pale lendee; Where rogues, insolvent, strut in white-wash'd pride,

And shove the dupes, who trusted them, aside.
How through the buzzing crowd he threads his way,
To catch the flying rumours of the day,-
To learn of changing stocks, of bargains cross'd,
Of breaking merchants, and of cargoes lost;
The thousand ills that traffic's walks invade,
And give the heart-ache to the sons of trade.
How cold he hearkens to some bankrupt's wo,
Nods his wise head, and cries, "I told you so:
The thriftless fellow lived beyond his means,
He must buy brants-I make my folks eat beans;"
What cares he for the knave, the knave's sad wife,
The blighted prospects of an anxious life?
The kindly throbs, that other men control,
Ne'er melt the iron of the miser's soul;
Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends,
An incarnation of fat dividends;

But, when to death he sinks, ungrieved, unsung,
Buoy'd by the blessing of no mortal tongue,—
No worth rewarded, and no want redress'd,
To scatter fragrance round his place of rest,
What shall that hallow'd epitaph supply-
The universal wo when good men die?
Cold Curiosity shall linger there,
To guess the wealth he leaves his tearless heir;
Perchance to wonder what must be his doom,
In the far land that lies beyond the tomb;—
Alas! for him, if, in its awful plan,
Heaven deal with him as he hath dealt with man.
Child of romance, these work-day scenes you

spurn;

For loftier things your finer pulses burn;
Through Nature's walk your curious way you take,
Gaze on her glowing bow, her glittering flake,-
Her spring's first cheerful green, her autumn's last,
Born in the breeze, or dying in the blast;
You climb the mountain's everlasting wall; '
You linger where the thunder-waters fall;
You love to wander by old ocean's side,
And hold communion with its sullen tide;
Wash'd to your foot some fragment of a wreck,
Fancy shall build again the crowded deck
That trod the waves, till, mid the tempest's frown,
The sepulchre of living men went down.
Yet Fancy, with her milder, tenderer glow,
But dreams what Curiosity would know;
Ye would stand listening, as the booming gun
Proclaim'd the work of agony half-done;

There would you drink each drowning seaman's

cry,

As wild to heaven he cast his frantic eye;
Though vain all aid, though Pity's blood ran cold,
The mortal havoc ye would dare behold;
Still Curiosity would wait and weep,
Till all sank down to slumber in the deep.

Nor yet appeased the spirit's restless glow:
Ye would explore the gloomy waste below;
There, where the joyful sunbeams never fell,
Where ocean's unrecorded monsters dwell,
Where sleep earth's precious things, her rifled
gold,

Bones bleach'd by ages, bodies hardly cold,
Of those who bow'd to fate in every form,
By battle-strife, by pirate, or by storm;
The sailor-chief, who Freedom's foes defied,
Wrapp'd in the sacred flag for which he died;
The wretch, thrown over to the midnight foam,
Stabb'd in his blessed dreams of love and home;
The mother, with her fleshless arms still clasp'd
Round the scared infant, that in death she grasp'd;
On these, and sights like these, ye long to gaze,
The mournful trophies of uncounted days;
All that the miser deep has brooded o'er,
Since its first billow roll'd to find a shore.

Once more the Press,-not that which daily flings

Its fleeting ray across life's fleeting things,-
See tomes on tomes of fancy and of power,
To cheer man's heaviest, warm his holiest hour.
Now Fiction's groves we tread, where young Ro-

mance

Laps the glad senses in her sweetest trance;
Now through earth's cold, unpeopled realms we

range,

And mark each rolling century's awful change; Turn back the tide of ages to its head,

And hoard the wisdom of the honour'd dead.
"T was Heaven to lounge upon a couch, said
GRAY,

And read new novels through a rainy day:
Add but the Spanish weed, the bard was right;
"T is heaven, the upper heaven of calm delight;
The world forgot, to sit at ease reclined,
While round one's head the smoky perfumes wind,
Firm in one hand the ivory folder grasp'd,
SCOTT's uncut latest by the other clasp'd;
"T is heaven, the glowing, graphic page to turn,
And feel within the ruling passion burn;
Now through the dingles of his own bleak isle,
And now through lands that wear a sunnier smile,
To follow him, that all-creative one,
Who never found a "brother near his throne."
Look, now, directed by yon candle's blaze,
Where the false shutter half its trust betrays,-
Mark that fair girl, reclining in her bed,
Its curtain round her polish'd shoulders spread,
Dark midnight reigns, the storm is up in power,
What keeps her waking in that dreary hour?
See where the volume on her pillow lies-
Claims RADCLIFFE or CHAPONE those frequent
sighs?

"T is some wild legend,-now her kind eye fills, And now cold terror every fibre chills;

Still she reads on-in Fiction's labyrinth lost—
Of tyrant fathers, and of true love cross'd;
Of clanking fetters, low, mysterious groans,
Blood-crusted daggers, and uncoffin'd bones,
Pale, gliding ghosts, with fingers dropping gore,
And blue flames dancing round a dungeon door;-
Still she reads on-even though to read she fears,
And in each key-hole moan strange voices hears,
While every shadow that withdraws her look,
Glares in her face, the goblin of the book;
Still o'er the leaves her craving eye is cast;
On all she feasts, yet hungers for the last;
Counts what remain, now sighs there are no more,
And now even those half tempted to skip o'er;
At length, the bad all killed, the good all pleased,
Her thirsting Curiosity appeased,

She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep,
Puts out her light, and turns away to sleep.

Her bright, her bloody records to unrol,
See History come, and wake th' inquiring soul:
How bounds the bosom at each wondrous deed
Of those who founded, and of those who freed;
The good, the valiant of our own loved clime,
Whose names shall brighten through the clouds
of time.

How rapt we linger o'er the volumed lore
That tracks the glories of each distant shore;
In all their grandeur and in all their gloom,
The throned, the thrall'd rise dimly from the tomb;
Chiefs, sages, bards, the giants of their race,
Earth's monarch men, her greatness and her grace;
Warm'd as we read, the penman's page we spurn,
And to each near, each far arena turn;
Here, where the Pilgrim's altar first was built,
Here, where the patriot's life-blood first was spilt;
There, where new empires spread along each spot
Where old ones fleurish'd but to be forgot,
Or, direr judgment, spared to fill a page,
And with their errors warn an after age.

And where is he upon that Rock can stand,
Nor with their firmness feel his heart expand,
Who a new empire planted where they trod,
And gave it to their children and their Gon?
Who yon immortal mountain-shrine hath press'd,
With saintlier relics stored than priest e'er bless'd,
But felt each grateful pulse more warmly glow,
In voiceless reverence for the dead below?
Who, too, by Curiosity led on,

To tread the shores of kingdoms come and gone,
Where Faith her martyrs to the fagot led,
Where Freedom's champions on the scaffold bled,
Where ancient power, though stripp'd of ancient
fame,

Curb'd, but not crushed, still lives for guilt and

shame,

But prouder, happier, turns on home to gaze, And thanks his GoD who gave him better days?

Undraw yon curtain; look within that room, Where all is splendour, yet where all is gloom: Why weeps that mother? why, in pensive mood, Group noiseless round, that little, lovely brood? The battledore is still, laid by each book, And the harp slumbers in its custom'd nook. Who hath done this? what cold, unpitying foe Hath made this house the dwelling-place of wo?

"Tis he, the husband, father, lost in care,
O'er that sweet fellow in his cradle there:
The gallant bark that rides by yonder strand,
Bears him to-morrow from his native land.
Why turns he, half-unwilling, from his home?
To tempt the ocean and the earth to roam ?
Wealth he can boast, a miser's sigh would hush,
And health is laughing in that ruddy blush;
Friends spring to greet him, and he has no foe-
So honour'd and so bless'd, what bids him go!-- |
His eye must see, his foot each spot must tread,
Where sleeps the dust of earth's recorded dead;
Where rise the monuments of ancient time,
Pillar and pyramid in age sublime;

The pagan's temple and the churchman's tower, War's bloodiest plain and Wisdom's greenest bower;

All that his wonder woke in school-boy themes,
All that his fancy fired in youthful dreams:
Where SOCRATES once taught he thirsts to stray,
Where HOMER pour'd his everlasting lay;
From VIRGIL's tomb he longs to pluck one flower,
By Avon's stream to live one moonlight hour;
To pause where England "garners up" her great,
And drop a patriot's tear to MILTON's fate;
Fame's living masters, too, he must behold,
Whose deeds shall blazon with the best of old:
Nations compare, their laws and customs scan,
And read, wherever spread, the book of man;
For these he goes, self-banish'd from his hearth,
And wrings the hearts of all he loves on earth.

Yet say, shall not new joy these hearts inspire,
When grouping round the future winter fire,
To hear the wonders of the world they burn,
And lose his absence in his glad return?—
Return! alas! he shall return no more,
To bless his own sweet home, his own proud shore.
Look once again-cold in his cabin now,
Death's finger-mark is on his pallid brow;
No wife stood by, her patient watch to keep,
To smile on him, then turn away to weep;
Kind woman's place rough mariners supplied,
And shared the wanderer's blessing when he died.
Wrapp'd in the raiment that it long must wear,
His body to the deck they slowly bear;
Even there the spirit that I sing is true;
The crew look on with sad, but curious view;
The setting sun flings round his farewell rays;
O'er the broad ocean not a ripple plays;
How eloquent, how awful in its power,
The silent lecture of death's Sabbath-hour:
One voice that silence breaks-the prayer is said,
And the last rite man pays to man is paid;
The plashing waters mark his resting-place,
And fold him round in one long, cold embrace;
Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er,
Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more;
Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep,
With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep.

"Alps rise on Alps"-in vain my muse essays To lay the spirit that she dared to raise: What spreading scenes of rapture and of wo, With rose and cypress lure me as I go. In every question and in every glance, In folly's wonder and in wisdom's trance,

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