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Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble homie,
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon,
The swift and silent lizard of the stones!

But hold!-these dark, these perishing arcades, These mouldering plinths, these sad and blacken'd shafts,

These vague entablatures, this broken frieze, These shatter'd cornices, this wreck, this ruin, These stones-alas! these gray stones, are they

all,

All of the proud and the colossal left By the corrosive hours, to fate and me? "Not all," the echoes answer me, 66 not all, Prophetic sounds, and loud, arise for ever From us, and from all ruin, to the wise, As melody from Memnon to the sun.

We rule the hearts of mightiest men; we rule, With a despotic sway, all giant minds.

We are not impotent, we pallid stones;

Not all our power is gone, not all our fame,

Not all the magic of our high renown,
Not all the wonder that encircles us,
Not all the mysteries that in us lie,
Not all the memories that hang upon
And cling around about us as a garment,
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory."

ST. LEONARD'S.

BY CAMPBELL.

HAIL to thy face and odours, glorious Sea!
'T'were thanklessness in me to bless the not
Great beauteous being! in whose breath and smile
My heart beats calmer, and my very mind
Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer
Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world!
Though like the world thou fluctuat'st, thy din
To me is peace, thy restlessness repose;
Even gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes,
With all the darling field-flowers in their prime,
And gardens haunted by the nightingale's
Long trills and gushing ectasies of song,

For these wild headlands, and the sea-mew's clang.

With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea, I long not to o'erlook earth's fairest glades

And green savannahs-Earth has not a plain
So boundless or so beautiful as thine;

The eagle's vision cannot take it in:

The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space,
Sinks half-way o'er it like a wearied bird:
It is the mirror of the stars, where all

Their hosts within the concave firmament,
Gay marching to the music of the spheres,
Can see themselves at once.

Nor on the stage

Of rural landscape are there lights and shades
Of more harmonious dance and play than thine.
How vividly this moment brightens forth,
Between gray parallel and leaden breadths,
A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league,
Flushed like the rainbow, or the ring-dove's neck,
And giving to the glancing sea-bird's wing
The semblance of a meteor.

Mighty Sea!

Chameleon-like thou changest, but there's love
In all thy change, and constant sympathy
With yonder sky-thy mistress; from her brow
Thou tak'st thy moods and wear'st her colours on
Thy faithful bosom; morning's milky white,
Noon's sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve;
And all thy balmier hours, fair element,
Have such divine complexion-crisped smiles,
Luxuriant bearings, and sweet whisperings,
That little is the wonder Love's own Queen
From thee of old was fabled to have sprung-
Creation's common! which no human power
Can parcel or inclose; the lordliest floods
And cataracts that the tiny hands of man
Can tame, conduct, or bound, are drops of dew
To thee that could subdue the earth itself

And brook'st commandment from the heavens

alone

For marshalling thy waves

Yet, potent Sea!
How placidly thy moist lips speak even now
Along yon sparkling shingles. Who can be
So fanciless as to feel no gratitude

That power and grandeur can be so serene,
Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way,
And rocking even the fisher's litle bark
As gently as a mother rocks her child?
The inhabitants of other worlds behold
Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share
On earth's rotundity; and is he not

A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man.
Who sees not, or, who seeing, has no joy
In thy magnificence? What though thou art
Unconscious and material, thou canst reach
The inmost immaterial mind's recess,

And with thy tints and motion stir its chords
To music, like the light on Memnon's lyre!
The Spirit of the Universe in thee
Is visible; thou hast in thee the life-
The eternal, graceful, and majestic life
Of nature, and the natural human heart

Is therefore bound to thee with holy love.

Earth has her gorgeous towns; the earth-cir.

cling sea

Has spires and mansions more amusive still

Men's volant homes that measure liquid space

On wheel or wing. The chariot of the land, With pained and panting steeds and clouds of dust,

Has no sight-gladdening motion like these fair Careerers with the foam beneath their bows, Whose streaming ensigns charm the waves by day, Whose carols and whose watch-bells cheer the

night,

Moored as they cast the shadows of their masts
In long array, or hither flit and yond
Mysteriously with slow and crossing lights,
Like spirits on the darkness of the deep.
There is a magnet-like attraction in
These waters, to the imaginative power
That links the viewless with the visible,
And pictures things unseen. To realms beyond
Yon highway of the world my fancy flies,
When by her tall and triple mast we know
Some noble voyager that has to woo

The trade-winds, and to stem the ecliptic surge.
The coral-groves-the shores of conch and pearl,
Where she will cast her anchor and reflect
Her cabin-window lights on warmer waves,
And under planets brighter than our own:
The nights of palmy isles, that she will see
Lit boundless by the fire-fly-all the smells
Of tropic fruit that will regale her-all
The pomp of nature, and the inspiriting
Varieties of life she has to greet,

Come swarming over the meditative mind.

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