400 ROGERS

PATRIOT TRIUMPH, AND RETIREMENT.

Lo, there the friend, who entering where he lay,
Breath'd in his drowsy ear Away, away!

Take thou my cloak - Nay, start not, but obey
Take it and leave me.' And the blushing Maid,
Who through the streets as through a desert stray'd;
And, when her dear, dear Father pass'd along,

Would not be held but, bursting through the throng,
Halberd and battle-axe - kiss'd him o'er and o'er;

Then turn'd and went- then sought him as before,
Believing she should see his face no more!"-p. 48 — 50.
What follows is sacred to still higher remembrances.
"And now once more where most he lov'd to be,

--

In his own fields — breathing tranquillity –
We hail him—not less happy, Fox, than thee!
Thee at St. Anne's, so soon of care beguil'd,
Playful, sincere, and artless as a child!

Thee, who wouldst watch a bird's nest on the spray,
Through the green leaves exploring, day by day.
How oft from grove to grove, from seat to seat,
With thee conversing in thy lov'd retreat,

I saw the sun go down! Ah, then 'twas thine
Ne'er to forget some volume half divine,

Shakespeare's or Dryden's- thro' the chequer'd shade
Borne in thy hand behind thee as we stray'd;

And where we sate (and many a halt we made)
To read there with a fervour all thy own,
And in thy grand and melancholy tone,

Some splendid passage not to thee unknown,
Fit theme for long discourse.

Thy bell has toll'd!

But in thy place among us we behold

One that resembles thee.

-p. 52, 53.

The scene of closing age is not less beautiful and attractive nor less true and exemplary.

-

""Tis the sixth hour.

The village-clock strikes from the distant tower.

The ploughman leaves the field; the traveller hears,
And to the inn spurs forward, Nature wears

Her sweetest smile; the day-star in the west

Yet hovering, and the thistle's down at rest.

"And such, his labour done, the calm He knows,
Whose footsteps we have followed. Round him glows
An atmosphere that brightens to the last;
The light, that shines, reflected from the Past,

And from the Future too! Active in Thought
Among old books, old friends; and not unsought
By the wise stranger. In his morning-hours,
When gentle airs stir the fresh-blowing flowers,

SERENE CLOSE OF LIFE.

He muses, turning up the idle weed;
Or prunes or grafts, or in the yellow mead
Watches his bees at hiving-time; and now,
The ladder resting on the orchard-bough,
Culls the delicious fruit that hangs in air,
The purple plum, green fig, or golden pear,
'Mid sparkling eyes, and hands uplifted there.

"At night, when all, assembling round the fire,
Closer and closer draw till they retire,

A tale is told of India or Japan,

Of merchants from Golcond or Astracan,
What time wild Nature revell'd unrestrain'd,
And Sinbad voyag'd and the Caliphs reign'd;-
Of some Norwegian, while the icy gale
Rings in the shrouds and beats the iron sail,
Among the snowy Alps of Polar seas
Immoveable for ever there to freeze!
Or some great Caravan, from well to well
Winding as darkness on the desert fell," &c.

'Age has now
Stamp'd with its signet that ingenuous brow;
And, 'mid his old hereditary trees,

Trees he has climb'd so oft, he sits and sees
His children's children playing round his knees:
Envying no more the young their energies
Than they an old man when his words are wise;
His a delight how pure . . . without alloy;
Strong in their strength, rejoicing in their joy!

"Now in their turn assisting, they repay
The anxious cares of many and many a day;
And now by those he loves reliev'd, restor'd,
His very wants and weaknesses afford

A feeling of enjoyment. In his walks,
Leaning on them, how oft he stops and talks,

While they look up! Their questions, their replies,
Fresh as the welling waters, round him rise,
Gladdening his spirit."—p. 53-61.

401

We have dwelt too long, perhaps, on a work more calculated to make a lasting, than a strong impression on the minds of its readers—and not, perhaps, very well calculated for being read at all in the pages of a Miscel laneous Journal. We have gratified ourselves, however, in again going over it; and hope we have not much wearied our readers. It is followed by a very striking copy of verses written at Pæstum in 1816-and more

402

ROGERS-TEMPLES OF PESTUM.

characteristic of that singular and most striking scene than any thing we have ever read, in prose or verse, on the subject. The ruins of Pæstum, as they are somewhat improperly called, consist of three vast and massive Temples, of the most rich and magnificent architecture; which are not ruined at all, but as entire as on the day when they were built, while there is not a vestige left of the city to which they belonged! They stand in a desert and uninhabited plain, which stretches for many miles from the sea to the mountains-and, after the subversion of the Roman greatness, had fallen into such complete oblivion, that for nearly nine hundred years they had never been visited or heard of by any intelligent person, till they were accidentally discovered about the middle of last century. The whole district in which they are situated, though once the most fertile and flourishing part of the Tyrrhene shore, has been almost completely depopulated by the Mal'aria; and is now, in every sense of the word, a vast and dreary desert. The following lines seem to us to tell all that need be told, and to express all that can be felt of a scene so strange and so mournful.

'They stand between the mountains and the sea;
Awful memorials - but of whom we know not!
The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck.
The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak,
Points to the work of Magic, and moves on.
Time was they stood along the crowded street,
Temples of Gods! and on their ample steps
What various habits, various tongues beset
The brazen gates, for prayer and sacrifice!

66

'How many centuries did the sun go round
From Mount Alburnus to the Tyrrhene sea,
While, by some spell render'd invisible,
Or, if approach'd, approach'd by him alone
Who saw as though he saw not, they remain'd
As in the darkness of a sepulchre,

Waiting the appointed time! All, all within
Proclaims that Nature had resum'd her right,
And taken to herself what man renounc'd;
No cornice, triglyph, or worn abacus,
But with thick ivy hung or branching fern,
Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure!
"From my youth upward have I longed to tread

This classic ground.

And am I here at last?

Wandering at will through the long porticoes,
And catching, as through some majestic grove.
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like,

Mountains and mountain-gulphs! and, half-way up,
Towns like the living rock from which they grew?
A cloudy region, black and desolate,

Where once a slave withstood a world in arms.
"The air is sweet with violets, running wild
'Mid broken sculptures and fallen capitals!
Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts,
Sail'd slowly by, two thousand years ago,
For Athens; when a ship, if north-east winds
Blew from the Pæstan gardens, slack'd her course.
The birds are hush'd awhile; and nothing stirs,
Save the shrill-voic'd cigala flitting round
On the rough pediment to sit and sing;
Or the green lizard rustling through the grass,
And up the fluted shaft, with short quick motion,
To vanish in the chinks that time has made!
"In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk
Seen at his setting, and a flood of light
Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries,
(Gigantic shadows, broken and confus'd,
Across the innumerable columns flung),
In such an hour he came, who saw and told,
Led by the mighty Genius of the Place!
Walls of some capital city first appear'd,
Half raz'd, half sunk, or scatter'd as in scorn ;

- And what within them? what but in the midst
These Three, in more than their original grandeur,
And, round about, no stone upon another!

As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear,
And, turning, left them to the elements."

The volume ends with a little ballad, entitled "The Boy of Egremond"- which is well enough for a Lakish ditty, but not quite worthy of the place in which we meet it.

404

SOUTHEY'S RODERICK.

(JUNE, 1815.)

Roderick: The Last of the Goths. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq., Poet-Laureate, and Member of the Royal Spanish Academy. 4to. pp. 477. London: 1814.*

THIS is the best, we think, and the most powerful of all Mr. Southey's poems. It abounds with lofty sentiments, and magnificent imagery; and contains more rich and comprehensive descriptions more beautiful pictures of pure affection and more impressive representations of mental agony and exaltation than we have often met with in the compass of a single volume.

A work, of which all this can be said with justice, cannot be without great merit; and ought not, it may be presumed, to be without great popularity. Justice, however, has something more to say of it: and we are not quite sure either that it will be very popular, or that it deserves to be so. It is too monotonous too wordy and too uniformly stately, tragical, and emphatic. Above all, it is now and then a little absurd — and pretty frequently not a little affected.

The author is a poet undoubtedly; but not of the

* I have, in my time, said petulant and provoking things of Mr. Southey: and such as I would not say now. But I am not conscious that I was ever unfair to his Poetry and if I have noted what I thought its faults, in too arrogant and derisive a spirit, I think I have never failed to give hearty and cordial praise to its beauties-and generally dwelt much more largely on the latter than the former. Few things, at all events, would now grieve me more, than to think I might give pain to his many friends and admirers, by reprinting, so soon after his death, any thing which might appear derogatory either to his character or his genius; and therefore, though I cannot say that I have substantially changed any of the opinions I have formerly expressed as to his writings, I only insert in this publication my review of his last considerable poem: which may be taken as conveying my matured opinion of his merits - and will be felt, I trust, to have done no scanty or unwilling justice to his great and peculiar

powers.