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The beauty whom perhaps his witless heart,
Unknowing what the joy-mixt anguish means,
Sincerely loves, by that best language shown
Of cordial glances, and obliging deeds.
Onward they pass, o'er many a panting height,
And valley sunk, and unfrequented; where
At fall of eve the fairy people throng,
In various game and revelry, to pass
The summer night, as village-stories tell.
But far about they wander from the grave
Of him, whom his ungentle fortune urg'd
Against his own sad breast to lift the hand
Of impious violence. The lonely tower
Is also shunn'd; whose mournful chambers hold,
So knight-struck fancy dreams, the yelling ghost.

SHIELD. Satan's described.

His pond'rous shield

Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,

Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At ev'ning from the top of Fesole,

Or in Daldarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains on her spotty globe.
His spear (to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand.)

SHIPWRECK. Described.

Her giant-form,

O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,

Majestically calm, would go

Mid the deep darkness white as snow!

Thomson.

Milton.

But gently now the small waves glide
Like playful lambs o'er mountain's side.
So stately her bearing, so proud her array,

The main she will traverse for ever and aye.

Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast

-Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour is her last. Five hundred souls in one instant of dread

Are hurried o'er the deck;

And fast the miserable ship

Becomes a lifeless wreck.

Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock,

Her planks are torn asunder,

And down comes her masts with a reeling shock

And a hideous crash like thunder,

Her sails are draggled in the brine

That gladden'd late the skies,

And her pendant that kiss'd the fair moonshine,

Down many a fathom lies.

Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues
Gleamed softly from below,

And flung a warm and sunny flash

O'er the wreaths of murmuring snow,
To the coral rocks are hurrying down
To sleep amid colours as bright as their own.
Oh! many a dream was in the ship,

An hour before her death;

And sights of home with sighs disturb'd
The sleeper's long-drawn breath.
Instead of the murmur of the sea
The sailor heard the humming tree
Alive through all its leaves,
The hum of the spreading sycamore
That grows before his cottage-door,
And the swallow's song in the eaves.

His arms enclosed a blooming boy,
Who listen'd with tears of sorrow and joy
To the dangers his father had pass'd;
And his wife-by turns she wept and smiled,
As she look'd on the father of her child
Return'd to her heart at last.

--He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll,
And the rush of waters is in his soul.
Now is the ocean's bosom bare,
Unbroken as the floating air;

The ship hath melted quite away,
Like a struggling dream at break of day,

No image meets my wandering eye

But the new-risen sun, and the sunny sky.

Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapour dull

Bedims the waves so beautiful

While a low and melancholy moan

Mourns for the glory that hath flown.

SIN. Satan's Encounter with.

The other shape,

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint or limb;

Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd;
For each seem'd either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand; and from his seat
The monster, moving onward, came as fast
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.
Th' undaunted fiend what this might be admir'd;
Admir'd, not fear'd; God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valued he, nor shunn'd;

Wilson.

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And with disdainful look thus first began
"Whence and what art thou, execrable shape,
That dar'st, thou grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated front athwart my way
To yonder gates? through them I mean to pass,
That be assur'd, without leave ask'd of thee:
Retire, or taste thy folly; and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of Heav'n."
To whom the goblin, full of wrath, reply'd:
"Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he,

Who first spoke peace in Heav'n and faith, till then
Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms

Drew after him the third part of Heav'n's sons,
Conjur'd against the High'st for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemn'd
To waste enternal days in wo and pain?
And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of Heaven,
Hell-doom'd, and breath'st defiance here and scorn
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy ling'ring, with one stroke of this dart
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."
So spake the grisly terror, and in shape,

So speaking and so threat'ning, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform: on th' other side
Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified; and like a comet burn'd,

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the artic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Leve ll'd his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend; and such a frown

Each cast at th' other, as when two black clouds,
With Heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front
Hov'ring a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid air :

So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell"
Grew darker at their frown, so match'd they stood;
For never but once more was either like

To meet so great a foe.

SKULL. Reflections on.

Remove yon skull from out the scatter'd heaps :
Is that a temple where a God may dwell?

Milton.

Why ev'n the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell!
Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:
Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall,
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;
Behold through each lack-lustre eyeless hole,
The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,
And passion's port, that never brook'd control,
Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ,
People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

SLAVERY. Its suffering.

The broken heart which kindness never heals,
The home-sick passion which the negro feels,
When toiling, fainting, in the land of canes,
His spirit wanders to his native plains;
His little lovely dwelling there he sees,
Beneath the shade of his paternal trees,
The home of comfort:-then before his eyes
The terrors of captivity arise.

Byron.

-'Twas night :-his babes around him lay at rest, Their mother slumber'd on their father's breast;

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