BY JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ. OH! light is pleasant to the eye, And health comes rustling on the gale, Clouds are careering through the sky, Whose shadows mock them down the dale; Nature as fresh and fragrant seems As I have met her in my dreams. For I have been a prisoner long, To every form of beauty blind; But now the blood, the blood returns With rapturous pulses through my veins; My heart, new-born within me, burns, My limbs break loose, they cast their chains, Rekindled at the sun, my sight Tracks to the point an eagle's flight. I long to climb those old grey rocks, Range the green hills with herds and flocks, O earth! in maiden innocence, O earth! earth! earth! for man's offence, Of how much glory then bereft! The thorn-harsh emblem of the curse- Labour, man's punishment, is nurse And death himself, with all the woes Life, life! with all its burthens dear! One generous hope, one chastening ill? But these have angels never known, Their sea of glass before the throne, Storm, lightning, shipwreck, visit not: Well, I will bear what all have borne, Whence came I?-Memory cannot say; : Far as eternity can go : Thy love to win, thy wrath to flee, O God! Thyself mine helper be! Prose. By a Poet. BY MARY HOWITT. IN thought, I saw the palace domes of Tyre; I saw, with gilded prow and silken sail, Oh gallant ships! 'gainst you what might prevail! I looked again--I saw a lonely shore, A rock amid the waters, and a waste Of matchless sand:- - I heard the black seas roar, Awhile he looked upon the sea, and then Upon a book, as if it might supply The things he lacked: -he read, and gazed again; Yet, as if unbelief so on him wrought, He might not deem this shore the shore he sought. Again I saw him come :-'t was eventide e; The sun shone on the rock amid the sea; The winds were hushed; the quiet billows sighed And pushed his boat ashore;—then gathered he Spread them to catch the sun's warm evening ray. Ruin and silence in his courts are met, And on her city-rock the fisher spreads his net!" Literary Souvenir. CASABIANCA. Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of L'Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile) after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and the gallant youth perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the powder. THE boy stood on the burning deck The flame that lit the battle's wreck A creature of heroic blood, A proud though childlike form! The flames rolled on-he would not go That father, faint in death below, He called aloud:- 66 say, father! say, He knew not that the chieftain lay Unconscious of his son. 'Speak, father!" once again he cried, And"-but the booming shots replied, And fast the flames rolled on. Upon his brow he felt their breath, And in his waving hair, And looked from that lone post of death 2 And shouted but once more aloud, 'My father, must I stay?" While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud, They wrapt the ship in splendour wild, They caught the flag on high, And streamed above the gallant child, There came a burst of thunder sound- With fragments strewed the sea! With mast, and helm, and pennon fair, Monthly Magazine. THE DROOPING WILLOW. GREEN willow! over whom the perilous blast Waiting in meekness till the storm be passed, Is like the wounded heart, which, 'mid the storm, L. E. L. |