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The world it is empty, the heart will die,
There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky;
Thou Holy One, call thy child away!

I've lived and loved, and that was to-day—
Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow.

LINES.

SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF BERENGARIUS OB. ANNO DOM. 1088.

O more 'twixt conscience staggering and the

Να

Pope,

appear,

Soon shall I now before my God
By him to be acquitted, as I hope;
By him to be condemned, as I fear.—

REFLECTION ON THE ABOVE.

Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed,
Be of good cheer, meek soul! I would have said:
I see a hope spring from that humble fear.

All are not strong alike through storms to steer

Right onward. What? though dread of threatened

death

And dungeon torture made thy hand and breath
Inconstant to the truth within thy heart?

That truth, from which, through fear, thou twice didst start,

Fear haply told thee, was a learned strife,

Or not so vital as to claim thy life;

And myriads had reached Heaven, who never knew Where lay the difference 'twixt the false and true!

Ye, who secure 'mid trophies not your own,
Judge him who won them when he stood alone,
And proudly talk of recreant Berengare —
O first the age, and then the man compare!
That age how dark! congenial minds how rare!
No host of friends with kindred zeal did burn!
No throbbing hearts awaited his return!
Prostrate alike when prince and peasant fell,
He only disenchanted from the spell,

Like the weak worm that gems the starless night,
Moved in the scanty circlet of his light:

And was it strange if he withdrew the ray
That did but guide the night-birds to their prey?

The ascending day-star with a bolder eye
Hath lit each dew-drop on our trimmer lawn!
Yet not for this, if wise, shall we decry
The spots and struggles of the timid dawn;
Lest so we tempt th' approaching noon to scorn
The mists and painted vapors of our morn.

SANCTI DOMINICI PALLIUM;

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN POET AND FRIEND, FOUND WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF AT THE BEGINNING OF BUTLER'S BOOK OF THE CHURCH.

POET.

NOTE the moods and feeling's men betray, And heed them more than aught they do or say; The lingering ghosts of many a secret deed Still-born or haply strangled in its birth;

These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed! These mark the spot where lies the treasure Worth!

At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
The enamored rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows he makes the shadow he pursues!

ERE

THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT.

RE the birth of my life, if I wished it or no, No question was asked me-it could not be so! If the life was the question, a thing sent to try, And to live on be Yes; what can No be? to die.

NATURE'S ANSWER.

Is't return'd, as 'twas sent ? Is't no worse for the wear?

Think first, what you are! Call to mind what you

I

were!

gave you innocence, I gave you hope,

Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope.

Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the invent'ry; inspect, compare!
Then die-if die you dare!

* This phenomenon, which the author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passage of the Aids to Reflection:

66

Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music, on different characters, holds equally true of Genius ; as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognises it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."-Aids to Reflection, p. 220.

POET.

What think I now? Ev'n what I thought before ;— boasts tho' may deplore,

What

Still I repeat, words lead me not astray

When the shown feeling points a different way.

Snooth

can say grace at slander's feast,

And bless each haut-gout cooked by monk or priest;
Leaves the full lie on -'s gong to swell,
Content with half-truths that do just as well;
But duly decks his mitred comrade's flanks,
And with him shares the Irish nation's thanks!

So much for you, my Friend! who own a Church,
And would not leave your mother in the lurch!
But when a Liberal asks me what I think--
Scared by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink.
And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam,
In search of some safe parable I roam—
An emblem sometimes may comprise a tome!
Disclaimant of his uncaught grandsire's mood,
I see a tiger lapping kitten's food:

And who shall blame him that he purrs applause,
When brother Brindle pleads the good old cause;
And frisks his pretty tail, and half unsheathes his
claws!

Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt,

I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws
More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt,
Impearling a tame wild-cat's whiskered jaws!

27*

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS.

I.

FROM his brimstone bed at break of day,
A walking the Devil is gone,

To visit his snug little farm the Earth,
And see how his stock goes on.

II.

Over the hill and over the dale,

And he went over the plain,

And backward and forward he switched his long tail As a gentleman switches his cane.

III.

And how then was the Devil drest?

Oh! he was in his Sunday's best:

His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through.

IV.

He saw a Lawyer killing a viper

On a dunghill hard by his own stable ; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel.

V.

He saw an Apothecary on a white horse

Ride by on his vocations;

And the Devil thought of his old friend
Death in the Revelations.

VI.

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,

A cottage of gentility;

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