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And morn's sole sovereign, the almighty

sun,

Surveys his kingdom with a regal eye,
On the blue, broad, and braided firmament
Throned, while his cloud-retinue hovering
hangs

In idol-worship round the fount of light-
King call him not, he is indeed a god!"

But the caprice of fancy, in a modified aspect of the same objects, will trace the lineaments of other and less sublime meanings:

"See, see, King Richard doth himself
appear,

As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east,
When he perceives the envious clouds are
bent

To dim his glory, and to stain the track
Of his bright passage to the occident."

The Hebrew poet sings that a tabernacle hath been set for the sun, "which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber." He is indeed a bridegroom, and his bride is the earth,

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who rejoices in all her beauty at the
splendour of his coming. Glorious is
the vision of their nuptials: number-
shall adorn their bed!
less and lovely the offspring that
The life that

which we intertwine with the light
we confer upon the orb of day, and
that is his essence, diffuses itself upon
all the objects of lower creation which
his presence illumes.

"What soul was his, when, from the naked top

Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light! He
looked-

Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds
were touch'd

And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love."

addresses the bright ruler of those
Thus, too, the poet of the Seasons
immortal song :—
fair vicissitudes which diversify his

from thy touch

By thee refined, relucent stream

"The very dead creation
Assumes a mimic life.
In brighter mazes the
Plays o'er the mead. The precipice abrupt,
Projecting horror on the blacken'd flood,
Softens at thy return. The desert joys
Wildly, through all his melancholy bounds.
Rude ruins glitter; and the briny deep,

Seen from some pointed promontory's top,
Far to the blue horizon's utmost verge,
Restless, reflects a floating gleam."

Take yet another example of this diffusive happiness, not limited to the

hour of morning :

"There was not, on that day, a speck to stain

The azure heaven; the blessed Sun, alone,

In unapproachable divinity,

Career'd, rejoicing in his fields of light.
How beautiful, beneath the bright blue sky,
The billows heave! one glowing green expanse,
Save where along the bending line of shore
Such hue is thrown as when the peacock's neck
Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst,
Embathed in emerald glory. All the flocks
Of Ocean are abroad: like floating foam,
The sea-gulls rise and fall upon the waves;
With long-protruded neck, the cormorants
Wing their far flight aloft ; and round and round
The plovers wheel, and give their note of joy.
It was a day that sent into the heart

A summer feeling: even the insect swarms
From their dark nooks and coverts issued forth,
To sport through one day of existence more;
The solitary primrose on the bank,
Seemed now as though it had no cause to mourn
Its bleak autumnal birth; the rocks, and shores,
The forest and the everlasting hills

Smiled in that joyful sunshine-they partook
The universal blessing."

The sun has a race to run through the heavens will any spell or allurement from earth arrest his progress? None surely but the most powerful: but Adam well thought that such power resided on the lips of Raphael, when first recounting to man the wonders of creation :

"The greater light of day yet wants to run Much of his race, though steep; suspense in heaven,

Held by thy voice, thy potent voice, he hears,

And longer will delay to hear thee tell
His generation, and the rising birth
Of Nature from the unapparent deep."

At deepest noon the full-blazing sun seems to us to sit "high in his meridian tower;" nor, in the hour of his departure, do we forget the honour due to the object of our morning admiration. We still regard him as a mon. arch pursuing, in regal pomp, his beneficent progress through distant dominions; or we think of him as one retiring to repose from the scene of his triumphs, till we almost wish that we too could follow in his train.

"Oh happy,' cried the priests, Your brethren who have fallen! already they

Have join'd the company of blessed souls;
Already they with song and harmony,
And in the dance of beauty, are gone
forth,

To follow down his western path of light You sun, the Prince of Glory, from the world

Retiring to the palace of his rest.""

Is not the last ray that he throws on earth like the interchange of parting looks with a dear friend, whose smile even in separation is joyful, because his return is certain ?—

"As when from mountain tops the dusky

clouds

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I fell,-how glorious once above thy sphere!"

But the apostrophe is not long sustained. The perturbed soul of the outcast angel soon wanders from other objects to his own bitter recollections and guilty prospects; and, ranging through all the emotions that belong to remorse and revenge, subsides into the fearful invocation that foretells his fate-"Evil, be thou my good."

The bard of Morven has a more formal address to that luminary, whose light was withdrawn from his outward vision. It is familiar to all our readers, and need not be quoted. It is undoubtedly a noble effusion of genius'; and if it have a few specks on its splendour, the Sun himself is not free from them, and we on earth may humbly repeat the much-forgotten sentence: "Ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis offendar maculis."

A modern poet, in choosing as a

LOVE'S ANNIVERSARY. To the Sun.

"Thou art return'd (great light) to that blest hour,

theme an Oriental story of the Fireworshippers, had a noble occasion for presenting in an impressive aspect that object which, in the hearts of his heroes, combined the mysteriousness of religious awe with the radiance of natural beauty. We doubt, however, if he has successfully done so in the passage where the attempt seems to have been made :

"And see-the Sun himself!-on wings
Of glory up the East he springs.
Angel of light! who from the time
Those heavens began their march sublime,
Hath-first of all the starry choir-
Trod in his Maker's steps of fire!

Where are the days, thou wondrous
sphere,

When Iran, like a sun-flower, turn'd
To meet that eye where'er it burn'd?

When from the banks of Bendemeer
To the nut-groves of Samarcand,
Thy temples flamed o'er all the land!"

We do not much like the representation of the Sun" with wings." It suggests to our ornithological faculties an image of rather a clumsy contour; and if the luminary was to be painted flying, we should have preferred the wings to be kept out of sight. But, letting that pass-what shall we say to the concluding appellation, on which we stumble as over a stone, when we are expecting the climax of the address? "Where are the days, thou wondrous sphere ?" Alas! the mighty Mithras-the winged Sun-the Angel of Light-is become a sphere! "This, indeed, realizes the lament of Schiller, and makes it quite unnecessary to answer the poet's question; where are the days when the sphere was supposed to be something very different? But, possibly, Mr Moore may have been here too intent on his parallel between Iran and Erin, and too anxious to show that his friends in both countries could distinguish between spiritual adoration and its physical types.

Let us conclude this topic by inserting some lines to the solar power, of a much humbler, but, in our opinion, a more successful kind, flowing from the heart of one who wrote with less of fiction than poets usually employ. It is an address, by the virtuous Habington, in commemoration of the endurance of that united love which sometimes scarcely survives the first rapid revolution of the sister-luminary :

In which I first by marriage' sacred power
Join'd with Castara hearts: and as the same
Thy lustre is as then, so is our flame;
Which had increased but that, by love's
decree,

'Twas such at first, it ne'er could greater be.
But tell me, glorious lamp, in thy survey
Of things below thee, what did not decay
By age to weakness? I since that have seen
The rosebud forth and fade, the tree grow

green

And wither-and the beauty of the field With winter wrinkled. Even thyself dost yield

Something to time, and to thy grave fall nigher;

But virtuous love is one sweet endless fire.

As our previous observations touched on the superstitions connected with eclipses of the sun and moon, it may be interesting to insert two descrip tions of a solar eclipse, which will help to illustrate the transition from the mythological to the poetical personification. The one by Wordsworth, represents the eclipse of 1820, as seen through the softness of Italian skies.

"High on her speculative tower Stood Science, waiting for the hour

When Sol was destined to endure That darkening of his radiant face Which Superstition strove to chase, Erewhile with rites impure.

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expression, might well deserve the praise of sublimity.

“Their faith must yet be tried: the sun at

noon

Shrinks from the shadow of the passing

moon,

Till, ray by ray, of all his pomp bereft, (Save one slight ring of quivering lustre left;)

Total eclipse involves his peerless eye : Portentous twilight creeps along the sky; The frighted sea-birds to their haunts repair;

There is a freezing stillness in the air, As if the blood through nature's veins ran cold,

A prodigy so fearful to behold;

A few faint stars gleam through the dread serene,

Trembling and pale spectators of the

scene;

While the rude mariners with stern amaze,
As on some tragic execution gaze,
When calm but awful guilt is stretch'd to
feel

The torturing fire, or dislocating wheel,
And life, like light from yonder orb, retires,
Spark after spark, till the whole man
expires.

Yet may the darken'd sun and mourning skies,

Point to a higher, holier sacrifice;

The brethren's thoughts to Calvary's brow ascend,

Round the Redeemer's Cross their spirits bend,

And while heaven frowns, earth shudders, graves disclose

The forms of sleepers, startled from repose, They catch the blessing of his latest breath, Mark his last look, and through th' eclipse of death,

See lovelier beams than Tabor's vision shed,

Wreathe a meek halo round his sacred head."

The honours that imagination has paid to the sun have scarcely exceeded those which the milder beauty of his sister has received. To the poet's eye she too appears to ascend the heavens in regal majesty, where she holds sway over the "common people of the skies," who acknowledge her precedence, and give place to her glory as she moves among them.

"Now glow'd the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the

moon

Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw." NO. CCXCVII. VOL. XLVIII.

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To me, that feel the like, thy state descries."

How many aspects of varying beauty does the enlightener of the night assume to our mental vision? When a livelier fancy is on the wing, the fictions of other days reappear, and the goddess traverses the sky with all the appliances of Pagan splendour; not disdaining for a while to suspend her course as she sees or hears things de lightful to her heart. Thus it is when the pensive spirit of the poet implores that

"Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustomed oak."

Does not the lovely light seem sometimes to rejoice when the blue concave is all her own, and not a cloud remains to checker its purity!—

"The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare."

But now again does it not seem as if she were all uncertain in the path she was pursuing, and in need of a guide to lead her along the sea-like sameness of the untrodden sky?

"I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wandering Moon Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the Heaven's wide pathless way; And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud." May we not readily, too, assimilate the course that she thus purely and patiently pursues amidst the dusky vapours that surround her, to the mild majesty in which innocent and ethereal

D

souls advance on their earthly path, through the exhalations of sin and sorrow, on which they have even power to bestow a portion of their own passing lustre? Take as an illustration this beautiful address to a child of a month old :

66 Thy sinless progress, through a world By sorrow darken'd and by care disturb'd, Apt likeness bears to hers, through gathering clouds,

Moving untouch'd in silver purity,

And cheering oftimes their reluctant gloom.
Fair are ye both, and both are free from
stain:

But thou, how leisurely thou fill'st thy horn
With brightness! leaving her to post along
And range about-disquieted in change,
And still impatient of the shape she wears.
Once up, once down the hill, one journey,
babe,

That will suffice thee."

It were endless to advert to the infinite forms in which incense from the shrine of poetry has ascended to the lunar throne. In many of such offerings, unfortunately, the divinity addressed seems to have exercised too characteristic an influence over her votaries, whose effusions seem to be prompted by the "fine frenzy," not of the lover or the poet, but of the other unhappy enthusiast whom Shakspeare has associated with these, as "of imagination all compact.' To which of these sources must we assign the following lines?

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66

-By the feud
'Twixt nothing and Creation, I here swear,
Eterne Apollo! that thy sister fair
Is of all these the gentlier-mightiest.
When thy gold breath is misty in the west,
She, unobserved, steals unto her throne,
And there she sits most meek and most
alone,

As if she had not pomp subservient;
As if thine eye, high poet! was not bent
Towards her with the Muses in thine heart;
As if the ministering stars kept not apart,
Waiting for silver-footed messages.

O, Moon! the oldest shades 'mong oldest

trees

Feel palpitations when thou lookest on:
O, Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din
The while they feel thine airy fellowship.
Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip
Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping
kine,

Couch'd in thy brightness, dream of fields
divine:

Innumerable mountains rise and rise,
Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes;

And yet this benediction passeth not
One obscure hiding-place, one little spot
Where pleasure may be sent: the nested

wren

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We do not know if this be genius; in some points it looks very like it, but if it be genuine it seems to be divided by even a thinner partition than usual from one of its next door neighbours, and a very Pyramus and Thisbe-like intercourse seems to be kept up between them. The passage is from Keats' Endymion, a poem in which one of the loveliest of classical fables is defaced by an absurd incoherency of detail, and overlaid by an extravagant profusion of embellishment. One line had told the story

infinitely better:

"Peace ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion."

The mysterious connexion between the moon and the ocean, which supplies a topic in these lines from Keats, is well adapted for the exercise of poetical fancy. The moon, as "the governess of floods," could not be disregarded by the poet, when she seems to look upon the sea beneath her as if darting down those rays of sympathy which so beautifully bind together the subject and the sovereign. The lines that follow, give a worthy expression to that relation, though they do not certainly contain such "farspooming" epithets, as those of the poet whom we have just quoted.

The mighty Moon she sits above,
Encircled with a zone of love;
A zone of dim and tender light,
That makes her wakeful eye more bright.
She seems to shine with a sunny ray,
And the night looks like a mellow'd day!
The gracious mistress of the main,
Hath now an undisturbed reign;
And from her silent throne looks down,
As upon children of her own,

On the waves that lend their gentle breast,
In gladness for her couch of rest.

In whose eyes besides those of the lover whose visions we have noticed, is the Moon likely to wear the fairest

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