Lives one in all this scene below, With spirits lighter than the play A frame where health with even sway A mind in whose gigantic grasp All science lives enrolled; A memory whose tenacious clasp A soul where blazing genius breaks And ever thinking fancy wakes No! such exuberance of bliss "Tis all a dream, a beau ideal--- By reason crushed, as when you stir THE MANIAC. MORAL reflections are not easily clothed in the smiling robes of poetry, because they possess neither the levity of its lighter graces, nor the pathos of its deeper tones. When they are grafted, however, upon a pathetic subject, they are capable of producing an admirable effect. The piety that arises from sympathy is of a much higher order than that which emanates from a cold sense of duty. We have seldom met with moral reflections so happily introduced, or which leave a more pleasing impression on the mind, than those which occur in the following lines. They render us pious, and so far from resisting the hallowed emotion, we yield to it with pleasure, an effect entirely arising from our sympathy with the Maniac, or rather from our fears of that mental anarchy to which our nature is exposed. The effect, however, would have been stronger had the reflections been grafted on the story of some particular maniac.-ED. To see the human mind o'erturn'd,-- - And reason's lamp, which brightly burn'd, A sight like this may well awake It is a painful, humbling thought To-day he sits on Reason's throne, Yet think not, though forlorn and drear Than these sad records have rehears❜d : There are before whose mental eye Truth has her chastest charms display'd, There are whose mental ear has heard The "still small voice!" yet, prone to wrong, Have proudly, foolishly preferr'd The sophist's creed, the syren's song ;- There are, in short, whose days present Who hourly for themselves invent Fresh conflicts;---'till this dream of Life Has made their throbbing bosoms ache, And yet, alas! they fear to wake. With theirs compared, the Maniac's doom, At times may know a vacant rest:--- O THOU! Whose cause they both espouse, The dark'ning clouds of madness roll. London Magazine. SONNET By a Person who never could write one. THIS person could have written a sonnet had he recollected these two lines in the Dunciad ; "How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug, And sucked all o'er like an industrious bug."-ED. Sonnets are things I never yet could write: Come, try another. making, Scritch-scratch---Poh! you're Truly, a pretty piece of business of it; scrawling, Gave me his crown I could not do it. Tut! man. London Magazine. SONNET. THE RHINE VISITED.* THIS Sonnet is beautifully picturesque, but we must say that, for our own parts, we could never relish this prosaic, tame, monotonous, and creeping structure of verse. It may have charms, however, for other ears, particularly those who find a charm in every thing that is in fashion and request.-ED. 'Twas yet a dream!-The golden light of day * Vide Wordsworth's "Yarrow Unvisited." |