Vivea contento, &c.

VIVEA Contento alla capanna mia

In povertade industre, in dolce stento, E perche al canto, ed al lavora intento Qualche fama di me spander s'udia. Vivea contento alla capanna mia. Fatto percio superbo io mi nutria

D'un van desio d'abbandonar l'armento: Fui negli alti palagi, e in un momento Senza pregio restai, ne piu qual pria Vivea contento alla capanna mia. Degli anni miei perdendo il piu bel fiore, Il viver lieto, e la virtu perdei; L'ozio, la gola, e gli aggi ebber l'onore Degli anni miei perdendo il piu bel fiore: Scorno e dolore, i giorni tristi e rei M' occupa al fine, e dico a tutte l'ore, Ah! s'io pover vivea, or non avrei Scorno e dolore, i giorni tristi e rei." FERDINANDO PASSERINI.

Translation.

I DWELT contented in my little cot, Poor, but with all the peaceful comforts blest

That industry can give; my name was known

As one who laboured well, and well could sing.

I dwelt contented in my little cot.
So I grew vain, and cherish'd idle hopes
To quit my country toil. The princely domes
I sought, and in a moment found myself
Unknown, unnoted there, nor now, as once,
I dwelt contented in my humble cot.
Destroying the fair spring-tide of my life,
Virtue I lost, and lost the cheerful heart,
Sloth, and intemperance, and sorrow came,
Destroying the fair spring-tide of my life.
Contempt and grief, and sad and guilty days,
Came on at last, and every hour I think,
Ah! in my little cot I should not know
Contempt and grief, and sad and guilty days!
R. S.

Io grido, e gridero, finche mi senta L'Adria, il Tebro, il Tirren, l'Arno, e'l Tesino,

E chi primo udira, scuota il vicino, Ch' e periglio comun quel, che si tenta. Non val, che Italia a' piedi altrui si penta, E obbliando il valor, pianga il destino; Troppo innamora il bel terren Latino, E in disio di regnar pietate e spenta. Invan con occhi molli, e guance smorte

Chiedi perdon; che il suo nemico audace Non vuole il suo dolor, ma la sua morte. Piaccia il soffrire a chi 'l pugnar non piace. E stolto orgoglio in cosi debil sorte Non voler guerra, e non soffrir la pace. CARLO MARIA MAGGI.

Green light of the evening sky where it last lingers.

July 6. In the College Green and at Redland the row of lime trees already begins to shed its leaves.

The afternoon was cloudy, the sky was partly clear over the channel, and the clouds in that part, though heavy, were white and brilliant. The water lay below, a sheet of white glory, whose boundary was only made visible by the less radiant line of shore and horizon.

July 15. It has been a showery afternoon, over Kingsweston the clouds lie heavy, yet hazy, a faint yellow tinge over their base; their summits like distant snow in sunshine. A heavier mass of dark cloud lies nearer, spreading to the left, and falling in rain at Clevedon. At its nearer verge beams the white glory of the sun, and the sky still nearer is varied with the waviness of clouds dazzling white, and dark spots and the clear

old steward to relate it.

A woman going to see her son, lying in a hospital after having been wounded by the French stinkpots.*

Subjects for Idylls.

FROM what William Taylor has told me of the Idylls of Gessner and Voss, and the translation he has shown me of one by Goethe, I am tempted to introduce them here. Surely I also can seize the fit objects of common life, and place them in the right point of view.

A village wedding. The feelings that I and poor Edmund Seward' experienced in Bedfordshire that evening; even the scenery will excellently suit. A hamlet well embowered in elms amid a flat country: the evening clear: the distant bells. The traveller and a woman, a poor married woman.

The visit from Oxford to Godstow. This I will try in hexameters.

A ruined mansion-house,2-rather going to ruin. An old man breaking stones on the road (or some such hard labour) must be the other speaker, who remembered its old master. Or would it not be well to make this like the fine old house at Stowey, being modernised by a young heir-the yew trees cut down-the casement windows altered -the porch and its jessamine destroyed? and old hospitality, and old fashions, and old benevolence, all gone together?

The funeral of a young man, the last of his family. A fine young man, the victim

1 Southey's early friend. See the beautiful lines to his memory, "The Dead Friend." Poems, in one volume, p. 131. For the "Wedding," see English Eclogues, p. 158.-J. W. W.

See English Eclogues, "The Old Mansion House," p. 149.

Ibid. p. 155.

A ruined cottage. Its story not to be told in dialogue. A mother and her daughter once dwelling there. The girl a streetwalker now-the mother dying at the workhouse.

The vices of the poor should not be kept out of sight when their miseries are exposed. I think an eclogue may be made upon an industrious woman afflicted with a drunken bad husband.

The ruined cottage has matter for a best poem. The path overgrown-the holyhock blooming amid weeds. It shall be related to a friend whom I have purposely led there in an evening walk. She may be described as when a girl the May Queen. The idle fellows standing on the bridge in the way to church would look up from the water as she passed, and bid her good to-morrow. Something may be said on the strange want of conscience in the libertine.

Ballads.

THE murderer made to touch the dead man's face. No blood follows-no miracle to criminate. He is left alone with the body. The dead man then lifts up his head, and looks at him. They find him mad when they return.

There dwells a maniac in a castle, its lord. One female dwells with him, young and beautiful. Her he had married; another he had seduced. On his wedding day, a raven, by his repeated flights about the hall window, disturbed the guests. They go to

See "The Sailor's Mother," p. 152. "It was no ball, Sir, but some cursed thing Which bursts and burns, that hurt him. Something, Sir,

They do not use on board our English ships, It is so wicked." J.W.W.

$ Ibid. p. 156.

see on what he was fixed, and find the corpse of the forsaken one. He drinks and drinks, to drown his agonies, till he enters the bridal chamber; then he thinks he sees her spirit by the bridal bed, and screams, and becomes a madman-a maniac. The wife alone remains with him. She does her duty.

One of the Welsh superstitions is, that if a murdered person has been secretly buried, his grave may be discovered by a lambent blue flame, which hovers over it till the body is discovered.

The Primitive Monks.

"Here they in the desarts hoped to find rocks and stocks, yea, beasts themselves, more kind than men had been to them. What would hide and heat, cover and keep warm, served them for cloathes, not placing (as their successors in after ages) any holinesse in their habit, folded up in the affected fashion thereof. As for their food, the grasse was their cloath, the ground their table, herbs and roots their diet wild fruits and berries their dainties, hunger their sauce, their nails their knives, their hands their cups, the next well their wine cellar. But what their bill of fare wanted

in cheer, it had in grace, their life being constantly spent in prayer, reading, musing, and such like pious employments. They turned solitarinesse itself into society, and cleaving themselves asunder by the divine art of meditation, did make of one two or more, opposing, answering, moderating in their own bosoms, and busy in themselves with variety of heavenly recreations. It would do one good even but to think of their goodness, and at the rebound and second hand to meditate on their meditations For if ever poverty was to be envied, it was here; and I appeal to the moderate men of these times, whether in the heighth of these wofull warres, they have not sometimes wisht (not out of passionate distemper, but serious recollection of themselves) some such private place to retire unto, where, out of the noise of this clamorous world, they might

Their gestures, every varying wish can

Piango di gioja, &c.

"PIANGO di gioja, se 'l Divin rigore Amabilmente mi flagella, e pace

Tal sento in me, che ogni altro ben mi spiace,

E dolcezza mi si schianta il core. per

Tal chi d'un finto comico dolore

Ode il racconto, in lagrime si sface, E piange piu, quanto l'udir piu piace E fa il piacer, la doglia sua maggiore. Or mentre un lieto e dolce pianto io verso, L'usato arbitrio del tacer m'invola Forza occulta, ed esclamo al Ciel converso, Spirti celesti, se la gioja sola Voi fai nel gaudio entrar, me con diverso Maggior portento anco il dolor consola." FILICAIA.

Qual Madre, &c.

"QUAL Madre i figli con pietoso affetto
Mira, e d'amor si strugge a lor davante,
E un bacia in fronte, e l'un si stringe al petto,
Uno tien su i ginocchi, un sulle piante ;
E mentre a gli atti, a i gemiti, all' aspetto
Lor voglie intende si diverse, e tante,
A questi un guardo, a quei dispensa un detto.
E se ride, o s'adira, e sempre amante.
Tal per noi Provvidenza alta infinita

Veglia, e questi conforta, e quei provede E tutti ascolta, e porge a tutti aita,

E se niega talor grazia, o mercede,
O niega sol, perche a pregar ne invita,
O negar finge, e nel negar concede."
FILICAIA.

read,

And if she smiles, or with a frown denies, The frown, the smile, alike from love proceed.

Even so the all-wise Providence beholds The children of the earth, and hears their prayers,

Supplies their wants, consoles them in their cares,

And grants the boons they pray for, or with

Santa Maria Maddalena, piangente nella
Grotta di Marsilia.

"ANTRO, in cui visse incognito il rigore
Di lei, che tanto erro, pianse poi tanto,
Di lei, cui letto il suol, bevanda il pianto,
Cibo il cordoglio fu, gioja il dolore.
Antro dall' onda di quel sacro umore

Piu, che da gli anni logorato e infranto;
E voi silenzi alpestri, che d'un santo
Orror m'empiete, e mi parlate al core:
Io col guardo v'ascolto, e udir mi sembra

Ch' ella qui giunse, e qui ritenne il passo, E qui poso le affiticate membra;

E risponder vorria, ma'l pianto, ahi lasso! M'abbonda si, che 'l volto mio rassembra Per doglia un fiume, e per stupore un sasso." FILICAIA.

Adites.

"THE tribe of Ad were descended from Ad, the son of Aws or Uz, the son of Aram, the son of Sem, the son of Noah, who after kâf, or the Winding Sands' in the province the confusion of tongues, settled in Al Ah

See Thalaba, where part of this material is used up.

"O'er all the Winding Sands The tents of Ad were pitch'd;

H

of Hadramaut, where his posterity greatly multiplyed. Their first king was Shedâd, the son of Ad, of whom the eastern writers deliver many fabulous things, particularly that he finished the magnificent city his father had begun, wherein he built a fine palace, adorned with delicious gardens, to embellish which he spared neither cost nor labour, proposing thereby to create in his subjects a superstitious veneration of himself as a god. This garden or paradise was called the garden of Irem, and is mentioned in the 'Koran, and often alluded to by the oriental writers. The city, they tell us, is still standing in the desarts of Aden, being | preserved by Providence as a monument of divine justice, though it be invisible, unless very rarely, when God permits it to be seen, a favour one Colabah pretended to have received in the reign of the Khalif Moâwiyah, who sending for him to know the truth of the matter, Colabah related his whole adventure; that as he was seeking a camel he had lost, he found himself on a sudden at the gates of this city, and entering it, saw not one inhabitant, at which being terrified, he stayed no longer than to take with him some fine stones which he shewed the Khalif."-SALE.

| desarts of Aden, and called it Irem, after the name of his great-grandfather: when it was finished, he set out with a great attendance to take a view of it; but when they were come within a day's journey of the place, they were all destroyed by a terrible noise from heaven.

"They say Pharaoh used to tie those he had a mind to punish, by the hands and feet to four stakes fixed in the ground, and so tormented them."

A fine poem might be made upon this story. A female Arabian, blameless and miserable, finds herself in this city; she meets one inhabitant, who had been so much better than his countrymen, that when they were destroyed and thrown into hell, he was left alone, a wretched man. And every full moon Azrael appeared to him to know if he were willing to die, and the wretched man, though death was his hourly wish, yet durst not die. The angel comes again, -she falls prostrate before him, and as a reward he drops the drops of bitterness from his sword, but the drops of death are sweet to her, and she expires with a smile. The Adite then takes courage, and blesses God, and dies.

Happy Al Ahkâf then,

For many and brave were his sons,
His daughters were many and fair.”—i. 19.
J. W. W.

"Hast thou not considered how thy Lord dealt with Ad, the people of Irem, adorned with lofty buildings, the like whereof hath not been erected in the land? and with Thamud, who hewed the rocks in the valley into houses? and with Pharaoh, the contriver of the stakes, who had behaved insolently in the earth, and multiplied corruptions therein?"- Koran, ch. 89. The day break.

God into idolatry, God sent the prophet Hûd (who is generally agreed to be Heber) to preach to and reclaim them. But they refusing to acknowledge his mission, or to obey him, God sent a hot and suffocating wind, which blew seven nights and eight days together, and entering at their nostrils, past through their bodies, and destroyed them all, a very few only excepted, who had believed in Hûd, and retired with him to another place. Schedad is also called Iram Ben Omad.

Le Prophete Houd.

"DIEU le destina pour précher à ce peu. ple l'unité de son essence, et pour le detourner du culte des Idoles. Ces Idoles