.

That mocks the tear it forced to flow;

Cold is Cadwallo's tongue, And keen Remorse with blood defiled,

That hushed the stormy main : And moody Madness laughing wild

Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed : Amid severest wo.

Mountains, ye mourn in vain

Modred, whose magic song Lo! in the vale of years beneath

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped head. A grisly troop are seen,

On dreary Arvon's shorel they lie, The painful family of Death,

Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale: More hideous than their queen :

Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail; This racks the joints, this fires the veins,

The famished eagle2 screams, and passes by. That every labouring sinew strains,

Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Those in the deeper vitals rage :

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Lo! Poverty, to fill the band,

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, That numbs the soul with icy hand,

Ye died amidst your dying country's criesAnd slow-consuming Age.

No more I weep. They do not sleep. To each his sufferings : all are men,

On yonder cliffs, a grisly band, Condemned alike to groan;

I see them sit; they linger yet, The tender for another's pain,

Avengers of their native land: The unfeeling for his own.

With me in dreadful harmony they join, Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,

And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.' Since sorrow never comes too late,

Weave the warp, and weave the woof, And happiness too swiftly flies ?

The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Thought would destroy their paradise.

Give ample room, and verge enough No more; where ignorance is bliss,

The characters of hell to trace. 'Tis folly to be wise.

Mark the year, and mark the night,

When Severn shall re-echo with affright, [The Bard.—A Pindaric Ode.]

The shrieks of death through Berkeley’s3 roof that ring,

Shrieks of an agonising king! [This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that She-wolf4 of France, with unrelenting fangs, Edward I., when he completed the conquest of that country, That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs death.]

The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him “Ruin seize thee, ruthless king,

wait! Confusion on thy banners wait;

Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, Though fanned by conquest's crimson wing,

And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind. They mock the air with idle state.

Mighty victor, mighty lord, Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,

Lowo on his funeral couch he lies ! Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail

No pitying heart, no eye afford To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,

A tear to grace his obsequies.
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!'

Is the sable warrior7 fied!
Such were the sounds, that o'er the crested pride Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.

Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay, The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born? As down the steep of Snowdon's 1 shaggy side

Gone to salute the rising morn. He wound with toilsome march his long array. Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, Stout Glo’ster2 stood aghast in speechless trance; While proudly riding o'er the azure realm, * To arms! cried Mortimer,3 and couched his quiver- In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; ing lance,

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;

Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, On a rock, whose haughty brow

That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey. Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

Fill high the sparkling bow1,9 Robed in the sable garb of wo,

The rich repast prepare ; With haggard eyes the poet stood

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast : (Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Close by the regal chair
Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air);

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire, A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
• Hark, how each giant oak, and desert cave,

1 The shores of Caernarvonshire, opposite to the Isle of Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!

Anglesey. O'er thee, oh king! their hundred arms they wave,

Heard ye the din of battle bray,

Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings, Lance to lance, and horse to horse !

Waves in the eye of Heaven her many-coloured wings.
Long years of havoc urge their destined course,
And through the kindred squadrons mow their way. The verse adorn again
Ye Towers of Julius, London's lasting shame,

Fierce War, and faithful Love,
With many a foul and midnight murder fed, And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction dressed.
Rerere his consort's faith,3 his father's4 fame,

In buskinedl measures move
And spare the meek usurper's5 holy head !. Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,
Above, below, the rose of snow,6

With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. Twined with her blushing foe, we spread :

A voice as of the cherub-choir, The bristled boar7 in infant gore

Gales from blooming Eden bear; Wallows beneath the thorny shade.

And distant warblings3 lessen on my ear, Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, That, lost in long futurity, expire. Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom. Fond, impious man, think’st thou yon sanguine cloud,

Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day! “Edward, lo! to sudden fate

To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, (Weave we the woof. The thread is spun).

And warms the nations with redoubled ray. Half of thy heart: we consecrate.

Enough for me: with joy I see (The web is wove. The work is done)."

The different doom our Fates assign. Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn

Be thine Despair, and sceptred Care ; Leave me unblessed, unpitied, here to mourn :

To triumph, and to die, are mine.' In yon bright tract, that fires the western skies, He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height, They melt, they vanish from my eyes.

Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night. But oh! what solemn scenes, on Snowdon's height Descending slow, their glittering skirts unroli !

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight;

Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!
No more our long-lost Arthur? we bewail.
All hail, ye genuine kings!10 Britannia's issue bail!
Girt with many a baron bold,

Sublime their starry fronts they rear;
And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old,

In bearded majesty appear.
In the midst a form divine !
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line;
Her lion-port, 11 her awe-commanding face,
Attempered sweet to virgin-grace.
What strings symphonious tremble in the air,
What strains of vocal transport round her play!
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, 12 hear!

They breathe & soul to animate thy clay.
confederate lords in their manifesto, by Thomas of Walsing-
ham, and all the older writers) was starved to death. The
story of his assassination by Sir Piers, of Exon, is of much
later date.

Ruinous civil wars of York and Lancaster. 2 Henry VI., George, Duke of Clarence, Edward V., Richard, Duke of York, &c., believed to be murdered secretly in the Tower of London. The oldest part of that structure is vulgarly attributed to Julius Cæsar.

3 Margaret of Anjou, a woman of heroic spirit, who struggled hard to save her husband and her crown. * Henry V.

6 Henry VI., very near been canonised. The line of Lancaster had no right of inheritance to the € The white and red roses, devices of York and Lancaster. 7 The silver boar was the badge of Richard III. ; whence

Stoke Pogeis Church, and Tomb of Gray. he was usually known, in his own time, by the name of the The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, Boar. 2 Elcanor of Castile died a few years after the conquest of

The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea, Wales. The heroic proof she gave of her affection for her lord The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, is well-known. The monuments of his regret and sorrow for

And leaves the world to darkness and to me. the loss of her, are still to be seen at Northampton, Gedding- Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, ton, Waltham, and other places.

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, " It was the common belief of the Welsh nation, that King Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, Arthur was still alive in Fairy Land, and should return again And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds : to reign over Britain.

10 Both Merlin and Taliessin had prophesied, that the Welsh Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower, should regain their sovereignty over this island, which seemed The moping owl does to the moon complain to be accomplished in the house of Tudor.

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 11 Speed, relating an audience given by Queen Elizabeth to Molest her ancient solitary reign. Paul Dzialinski, ambassador of Poland, says, “And thus she, lion-like, rising, daunted the malipert orator no less with her tury. His works are still preserved, and his memory held in stately port and majestical deporture, than with the tartnesse high veneration among his countrymen. of her princelie checkes.'

9 Milton. 14 Taliessin, chief of the bards, flourished in the sixth cen- 3 The succession of poets after Milton's time.

con.

Their name,

1

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

their years, spelt by the unlettered muse, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, The place of fame and elegy supply: Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

And many a holy text around she strews, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

I The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind !
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

Some pious drops the closing cye requires ;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured dead, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; How jocund did they drive their team a-field! If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate; Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, The short and simple annals of the poor.

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
Await alike the inevitable hour:-

His listless length at noontide would he stretch, The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

And pore upon the brook that babbles by, Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scom, If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,

Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault Now drooping, woful, wan, like one forlorn,

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love, il Can storied urn or animated bust

One morn I missed him on the 'customed hill,

i Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Along the heath and near his favourite tree;
Con llonour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Ur Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

The next, with dirges due in sad array
Sume heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Slow through the church-way path we saw him bome:
Ilands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
De waked to ecstacy the living lyre.

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.'
But knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

THE EPITAPH.
Chill Pemury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth,

A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown; Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:

And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Pull inany a flower is born to blush unseen,
Aud waste its sweetness on the desert air.'

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send : Sorne village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast 'I la little tyrant of his fields withstood;

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

Hegained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. Some nute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

No farther seek his merits disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, Tho applause of listening senates to command, (There they alike in trembling hope repose), The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

The bosom of his Father and his God. l'o scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes,

The Alliance between Government and Education ; Their lut forbade: nor circumscribed alone

a Fragment. Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

As sickly plants betray a niggard earth, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

Whose barren bosom starves her generous birth,

Nor genial warmth, nor genial juice retains The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, Their roots to feed, and fill their verdant veins :

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, And, as in climes where Winter holds his reign, Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

The soil, though fertile, will not teem in vain, With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Forbids her germs to swell, her shades to rise, Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

Nor trusts her blossoms to the churlish skies : Their sober wishes never learned to stray;

To draw mankind in vain the vital airs, Along the cool sequestered vale of life

Unformed, unfriended by those kindly cares, Thoy kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

That health and vigour to the soul impart,

Spread the young thought, and warm the opening heart. Yet eron these bones from insult to protect,

So fond instruction on the growing powers Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

Of nature idly lavishes her stores, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, If equal justice, with unclouded face, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Smile not indulgent on the rising race,

a

And scatter with a free, though frugal hand,

To turn the torrent's swift-descending flood, Light golden showers of plenty o'er the land; it! To brave the savage rushing from the wood, But tyranny has fixed her empire there,

What wonder, if to patient valour trained, To check their tender hopes with chilling fear, They guard with spirit what by strength they gained ! And blast the blooming promise of the year.

And while their rocky ramparts round they see, The spacious animated scene survey,

The rough abode of want and liberty,
From where the rolling orb that gives the day, (As lawless force from confidence will grow),
His sable sons with nearer course surrounds, Insult the plenty of the vales below?
To either pole, and life's remotest bounds.

What wonder, in the sultry climes that spread, How rude soe'er the exterior form we find,

Where Nile, redundant o'er his summer bed, Howe'er opinion tinge the varied mind,

From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
Alike to all the kind impartial Heaven

And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings,
The sparks of truth and happiness has given : If with adventurous oar and ready sail,
With sense to feel, with memory to retain,

The dusky people drive before the gale;
They follow pleasure, and they fly from pain; Or on frail floats to neighbouring cities ride,
Their judgment mends the plan their fancy draws, That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide.
The event presages, and explores the cause;
The soft retums of gratitude they know,

WILLIAM MASON.
By fraud elude, by force repel the foe;
While mutual wishes mutual woes endear,

WILLIAM Mason, the friend and literary executor The social smile and sympathetic tear.

of Gray, long survived the connection which did him Say, then, through ages by what fate confined,

so much honour, but he appeared early as a poet. To different climes seem different souls assigned ?

He was the son of the Rev. Mr Mason, vicar of St. Here measured laws and philosophic ease

Trinity, Yorkshire, where he was born in 1725. Fix and improve the polished arts of peace.

At Pembroke college, Cambridge, he became acThere industry and gain their vigils keep, Command the winds, and tame the unwilling deep.

quainted with Gray, who assisted him in obtaining

his degree of M.A. His first literary production Here force and hardy deeds of blood prevail; There languid pleasure sighs in every gale.

was an attack on the Jacobitism of Oxford, to which

Thomas Warton replied in his Triumph of Isis. In Oft o'er the trembling nations from afar Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war;

1753 appeared his tragedy of Elfrida, written,' says And, where the deluge burst, with sweepy sway,

Southey, on an artificial model, and in a gorgeous Their arms, their kings, their gods were rolled

diction, because he thought Shakspeare had pre

cluded all hope of excellence in any other form of away. As oft have issued, host impelling host,

drama.' The model of Mason was the Greek drama, The blue-eyed myriads from the Baltic coast,

and he introduced into his play the classic accomThe prostrate south to the destroyer yields

paniment of the chorus. A second drama, CaractaHer boasted titles, and her golden fields ;

cus, is of a higher cast than Elfrida:' more noble With grim delight the brood of winter view

and spirited in language, and of more sustained A brighter day, and heavens of azure hue,

dignity in scenes, situations, and character. Mason Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose,

also wrote a series of odes on Independence, Memory, And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows.

Melancholy, and The Fall of Tyranny, in which his Proud of the yoke, and pliant to the rod,

gorgeousness of diction swells into extravagance Why yet does Asia dread a monarch's nod,

and bombast. His other poetical works are his While European freedom still withstands

English Garden, a long descriptive poem in blank The encroaching tide that drowns her lessening lands, verse, extended over four books, and an ode on the And sees far off, with an indignant groan,

Commemoration of the British Revolution, in which he Her native plains and empires once her own?

asserts those Whig principles which he steadfastly Can opener skies and suns of fiercer flame

maintained during the trying period of the AmeriO'erpower the fire that animates our frame;

As in his dramas Mason had made an inAs lamps, that shed at eve a cheerful ray,

novation on the established taste of the times, he Fude and expire beneath the eye of day?

ventured, with equal success, to depart from the Need we the influence of the northern star

practice of English authors, in writing the life of To string our nerves and steel our hearts to war?

his friend Gray. Instead of presenting a continuous And where the face of nature laughs around,

narrative, in which the biographer alone is visible, Must sickening virtue fly the tainted ground?

he incorporated the journals and letters of the poet Unmanly thought! what seasons can control,

in chronological order, thus making the subject of What fancied zone can circumscribe the soul,

the memoir in some degree his own biographer, Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, and enabling the reader to judge more fully and By reason's light, on resolution's wings,

correctly of his situation, thoughts, and feelings. Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes

The plan was afterwards adopted by Boswell in his O'er Lybia's deserts and through Zembla's snows? Life of Johnson, and has been sanctioned by subseShe bids each slumbering energy awake,

quent usage, in all cases where the subject is of im. Another touch, another temper take,

portance enough to demand copious information and Suspends the inferior laws that rule our clay; minute personal details. The circumstances of The stubborn elements confess her sway;

Mason's life are soon related. After his career at Their little wants, their low desires, refine,

college, he entered into orders, and was appointed And raise the mortal to a height divine.

one of the royal chaplains. He held the living of Not but the human fabric from the birth

Ashton, and was precentor of York cathedral. Imbibes a flavour of its parent earth.

When politics ran high, he took an active part on As various tracts enforce a various toil,

the side of the Whigs, but was respected by all The manners speak the idiom of their soil.

parties. He died in 1797. An iron race the mountain-cliffs maintain,

Mason's poetry cannot be said to be popular, even Foes to the gentle genius of the plain ;

with poetical readers. His greatest want is simpliFor where unwearied sinews must be found,

city, yet at times his rich diction has a fine effect. With side-long plough to quell the flinty ground, In his · English Garden,' though verbose and lan

can war.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

guid as a whole, there are some exquisite images.
Thus, he says of Time, its
Gradual touch

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, whose writings range over Has mouldered into beauty many a tower

every department of miscellaneous literature, chalWhich, when it frowned with all its battlements,

lenges attention as a poet chiefly for the unaffected Was only terrible.

ease, grace, and tenderness of his descriptions of rural

and domestic life, and for a certain vein of pensive Of woodland scenery

philosophic reflection. His countryman Burke said Many a glade is found

of himself, that he had taken his ideas of liberty not The haunt of wood-gods only; where, if art too high, that they might last him through life, E’er dared to tread, 'twas with unsandaled foot, Goldsmith seems to have pitched his poetry in a Printless, as if 'twere holy ground.

subdued under tone, that he might luxuriate at will Gray quotes the following lines in one of Mason's among those images of quiet beauty, comfort, beneodes as 'superlative:

volence, and simple pathos, that were most congenial

to his own character, his hopes, or his experience. While through the west, where sinks the crimson day, This popular poet was born at Pallas, a small village Meek twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners gray. in the parish of Forney, county of Longford, Ireland,

on the 10th of November 1728. He was the sixth [From Caractacus.]

of a family of nine children, and his father, the Rev. Mona on Snowdon calls :

Charles Goldsmith, was a poor curate, who eked Hear, thou king of mountains, hear ;

out the scanty funds which he derived from his proHark, she speaks from all her strings : fession, by renting and cultivating some land. The Hark, her loudest echo rings ;

poet's father afterwards succeeded to the rectory of King of mountains, bend thine ear :

Kilkenny West, and removed to the house and farm Send thy spirits, send them soon, Now, when midnight and the moon

vlat Meet upon thy front of snow ;

yugaid See, their gold and ebon rod,

Where the sober sisters nod,
And greet in whispers sage and slow,
Snowdon, mark ! 'tis magic's hour,
Now the muttered spell hath power ;
Power to rend thy ribs of rock,
And burst thy base with thunder's shock :
But to thee no ruder spell
Shall Mona use, than those that dwell
In music's secret cells, and lie
Steeped in the stream of harmony.

Snowdon has heard the strain :
Hark, amid the wondering grove

Other harpings answer clear,

Other voices meet our ear, Pinions flutter, shadows move,

Busy murmurs hum around,

Rustling vestments brush the ground; Round and round, and round they go,

Through the twilight, through the shade,

Mount the oak's majestic head,
And gild the tufted misletoe,
Cease, ye glittering race of light,
Close your wings, and check your flight;
Here, arranged in order due,

Tog
Spread your robes of saffron hue;
For lo! with more than mortal fire,
Mighty Mador smites the lyre:

Ruins of the house at Lissoy, where Goldsmith spent Hark, he sweeps the master-strings ; Listen all

his youth.

of Lissoy, in his former parish. Here Goldsmith's Epitaph on Mrs Mason, in the Cathedral of Bristol.

youth was spent, and here he found the materials Take, holy earth! all that my soul holds dear: for his Deserted Village. After a good country eduTake that best gift which heaven so lately gave :

cation, Oliver was admitted a sizer of Trinity college, To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care Dublin, June 11, 1745. The expense of his education

Her faded form ; she bowed to taste the wave, was chiefly defrayed by his uncle, the Rev. Thomas And died ! Does youth, does beauty, read the line ? Contarini, an excellent man, son to an Italian of the

Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm? Contarini family at Venice, and a clergyman of the Speak, dead Maria ! breathe a strain divine;

established church. At college, the poet was Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm. thoughtless and irregular, and always in want. His Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee;

tutor was a man of fierce and brutal passions, and Bid them in duty's sphere as meekly move ; having struck him on one occasion before a party And if so fair, from vanity as free;

of friends, the poet left college, and wandered about As firm in friendship, and as fond in love.

the country for some time in the utmost poverty, Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die, His brother Henry clothed and carried him back to

('Twas even to thee) yet the dread path once trod, college, and on the 27th of February 1749, he was Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,

admitted to the degree of B.A. Goldsmith now And bids 'the pure in heart behold their God.' gladly left the university, and returned to Lissoy.