All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings;
But, ah! not so when thus, in realms on high,
The eternal voice of God is passing by,

And the red winds are withering in the sky.

"What though in worlds which sightless* cycles

run,

Link'd to a little system, and one sunWhere all my love is folly, and the crowd Still think my terrors but the thunder-cloud, The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath (Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path ?)—— What though in worlds which own a single sun The sands of time grow dimmer as they run, Yet thine is my resplendency, so given To bear my secrets through the upper heaven. Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly With all thy train athwart the moony sky— Apart-like fire-flies in Sicilian night,† And wing to other worlds another light! Divulge the secrets of thy embassy

To the proud orbs that twinkle-and so be

* "Sightless: too small to be seen."-LEGGE.

I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies; they will collect in a body, and fly off, from a common centre, into innumerable radii.

To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban,
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!"

Uprose the maiden in the yellow night, The single-moonèd eve ;—on earth we plight Our faith to one love, and one moon adore : The birthplace of young beauty had no more. As sprang that yellow star from downy hours, Uprose the maiden from her shrine of flowers, And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain Her way, but left not yet her Therasaan reign.*

PART II.

HIGH on a mountain of enamell'd head-
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees,
With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven,"
What time the moon is quadrated in heaven-
Of rosy head, that, towering far away

Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray

* Therasæa, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners.

Of sunken suns at eve-at noon of night,
While the moon danced with the fair stranger light,
Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburden'd air,

Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pavement,* such as fall
Through the ebon air, besilvering the pall

* "Some star which from the ruin'd roof

Of shaked Olympus, by mischance, did fall."-MILTON.

Of their own dissolution, while they die-
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.

A dome, by linked light from heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown;
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look'd out above into the purple air;

And rays from God shot down that meteor chain,
And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,-
Save when between th' empyrean and that ring
Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing.
But on the pillars seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that grayish green
That Nature loves the best for beauty's grave
Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave,
And every sculptured cherub thereabout,
That from his marble dwelling peered out,
Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche--
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
Friezes from Tadmore and Persepolis,*
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
Of beautiful Gomorrah? O, the wavet
Is now upon thee-but too late to save!

* Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, "Je connois bien l'admiration qu'inspirent ces ruines; mais un palais érigé au pied d'une chaîne des rochers sterils, peut-il être un chef-d'œuvre des arts?"

"O, the wave !" Ula Deguisi is the Turkish appellation; but on its own shores it is called Bahar Loth, or Almotanah. There were undoubtedly more than two cities engulfed in the

Sound loves to revel in a summer night :
Witness the murmur of the gray twilight
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,*
Of many a wild star-gazer long ago,
That stealeth ever on the ear of him
Who musing gazeth on the distance dim,
And sees the darkness coming as a cloud-

Is not its form-its voice-most palpable and
loud ?†

But what is this?-it cometh-and it brings
A music with it 'tis the rush of wings!
A pause-and then a sweeping, falling strain,
And Nesace is in her halls again.

From the wild energy of wanton haste

Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;

Dead Sea. In the valley of Siddim were five: Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom, and Gomorrah. Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteen (engulfed); but the last is out of all

reason,

It is said [Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D'Arvieux] that, after an excessive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, &c. are seen above the surface. At any season, such remains may be discovered by looking down into the transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the existence of many settlements in the space now usurped by the "asphaltites."

* Eyraco-Chaldea.

+ I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness as it stole over the horizon.