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THE NILE.

Ir flows through old hush'd Egypt and its sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands,Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roam'd through the young world, the glory

extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong, As of a world left empty of its throng, And the void weighs on us; and then we wake, And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along 'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take Our own calm journey on for human sake.

ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL.

ABOU Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold;
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold:
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The vision rais'd its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,

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Answer'd, "The names of those who love the Lord."
And is mine one?" said Abou. Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."

The angel wrote and vanish'd. The next night It came again, with a great wakening light,

And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd,

And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

SPRING IN RAVENNA.

THE sun is up, and 'tis a morn of May

Round old Ravenna's clear-shown towers and bay,
A morn, the loveliest which the year has seen,
Last of the spring, yet fresh with all its green;
For a warm eve, and gentle rains at night,
Have left a sparkling welcome for the light,
And there's a crystal clearness all about;
The leaves are sharp, the distant hills look out;

A balmy briskness comes upon the breeze;

The smoke goes dancing from the cottage trees;
And when you listen, you may hear a coil,
Of bubbling springs about the grassy soil;
And all the scene, in short-sky, earth, and sea-
Breathes like a bright-eyed face, that laughs out

openly.

"Tis Nature, full of spirits, waked and springing:The birds to the delicious time are singing,

Darting with freaks and snatches up and down,
Where the light woods go seaward from the town;
While happy faces, striking through the green
Of leafy roads, at every turn are seen;

And the far ships, lifting their sails of white
Like joyful hands, come up with scattery light,
Come gleaming up, true to the wish'd-for day,
And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the
bay.

TO A CHILD, DURING SICKNESS.
SLEEP breathes at last from out thee,
My little patient boy;
And balmy rest about thee
Smooths off the day's annoy.

I sit me down, and think

Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.

Thy sidelong pillow'd meekness,
Thy thanks to all that aid,
Thy heart, in pain and weakness,
Of fancied faults afraid;

The little trembling hand

That wipes thy quiet tears,-
These, these are things that may demand
Dread memories for years.

Sorrows I've had, severe ones
I will not think of now;
And calmly midst my dear ones,
Have wasted with dry brow:
But when thy fingers press,

And pat my stooping head,
I cannot bear the gentleness,-
The tears are in their bed.

Ah! first-born of thy mother,

When life and hope were new;
Kind playmate of thy brother,
Thy sister, father, too:
My light where'er I go,

My bird when prison-bound,-
My hand in hand companion,-no,
My prayers shall hold thee round.
To say, "He has departed,"-
"His voice, his face,-is gone;"
To feel impatient-hearted,

Yet feel we must bear on :
Ah, I could not endure

To whisper of such wo, Unless I felt this sleep ensure

That it will not be so.

Yes, still he's fix'd and sleeping!
This silence too the while—
Its very hush and creeping
Seem whispering us a smile :-
Something divine and dim

Seems going by one's ear,
Like parting wings of cherubim,
We've finish'd here."

Who say,

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S

BRYAN WALLER PROCTOR.

MR. PROCTOR, better known as BARRY CORNWALL, was born in London, and educated at Harrow, where BYRON was among his classmates. On leaving school he entered the office of a solicitor at Calne, in Wiltshire: an uninteresting town, but celebrated for having been at various periods the residence of BOWLES, CRABBE, COLERIDGE, and MOORE, with all of whom PROCTOR became intimately acquainted. At the end of four years, passed in the study of his profession, he went to London, and was soon after called to the bar.

Mr. PROCTOR'S Dramatic Scenes-the work in which he first appeared as an author-were published in 1815. They were succeeded by A Sicilian Story, Marcian Colonna, The Flood of Thessaly, the tragedy of Mirandola, and several volumes of dramatic fragments, songs, and miscellaneous poems, which have together won him a very high position among contemporary poets. CHARLES LAMB said of his Fragments, that there was not one of them, had he found them among the Garrick Plays in the British Museum, to which he would have refused a place in his Dramatic Specimens. His songs are among the best in the English language. They are full of tenderness and enthusiasm; and if not as carefully finished as they might be, they flow musically and naturally like the unstudied effusions of an improvisator. PROCTOR has written besides his poems several works in prose, among which are a Life of Edmund Kean, a Life of Ben Jonson, and An Essay upon the Genius of Shakspeare.

N. P. WILLIS, a warm admirer of the poet, has given in his Pencillings by the Way an interesting account of his visit to him in 1838. "With the address he had given me at parting," says Mr. WILLIS, "I drove to a large house in Bedford square; and, not accustomed to find the children of the muses waited on by servants in livery, I made up my mind, as I walked up the broad staircase, that I was blundering upon some Mr. PROCTOR of the exchange, whose respect for his poetical namesake, I hoped, would smooth my apology for the intrusion. Buried in a deep morocco

chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I found the poet himself-choice old pictures filling every nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings in all the cor ners; and, more important for the nonce, a table at the poet's elbow, set forth with as sensible a breakfast as the most unpoetical of men could desire."

Mr. PROCTOR married a daughter of BASIL MONTAGU, the best of Lord BACON's editors, and a friend and patron of literary men. "The exquisite beauty of the Dramatic Scenes," our traveller informs us, "interested this lovely woman in his favour before she knew him, and far from worldly-wise as an attachment so grounded would seem, I never saw two people with a more habitual air of happiness. I thought of his touching song,

'How many summers, love, Hast thou been mine?'

and looked at them with an irrepressible feeling of envy. A beautiful girl of eight or nine years, the 'golden-tressed Adelaide,' delicate, gentle, and pensive, as if she was born on the lip of Castaly, and knew she was a poet's child, completed the picture of happiness.......

"I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his company," continues Mr. WILLIS, "with the impression that he makes upon every one-of a man whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an affectionate husband, a business-man of the closest habits of industry-one reads his strange ima ginations, and high-wrought and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which most to wonder-the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his books."

An edition of Mr. PROCTOR's English Songs and other Short Poems was published in London by Moxon in the summer of 1844; and they have been reprinted in this country by Ticknor and Company of Boston. I believe no edition of his dramatic writings has appeared in the United States. The selections in this volume are from the last English edition.

THE RISING OF THE NORTH.

HARK-to the sound!

Without a trump, without a drum,
The wild-eyed, hungry millions come,
Along the echoing ground.

From cellar and cave, from street and lane,
Each from his separate place of pain,

In a blackening stream,

Come sick, and lame, and old, and poor,
And all who can no more endure;

Like a demon's dream!

Starved children with their pauper sire,
And labourers with their fronts of fire,
In angry hum,

And felons, hunted to their den,

And all who shame the name of men,
By millions come.

The good, the bad, come hand in hand,
Link'd by that law which none withstand;
And at their head

Flaps no proud banner, flaunting high,
But a shout-sent upwards to the sky,

Of "Bread!-Bread!"

That word their ensign-that the cause
Which bids them burst the social laws,
In wrath, in pain,

That the sole boon for lives of toil
Demand they from their natural soil:-
Oh, not in vain!

One single year, and some who now

Come forth, with oaths and haggard brow,

Read prayer and psalm,

In quiet homes: their sole desire
Rude comforts near their cottage fire,

And Sabbath calm.

But hunger is an evil foe:

It striketh truth and virtue low,
And pride elate:

Wild hunger, stripp'd of hope and fear!
It doth not weigh; it will not hear;
It cannot wait.

For mark what comes:-To-night the poor (All mad) will burst the rich man's door, And wine will run

In floods, and rafters blazing bright
Will paint the sky with crimson light,
Fierce as the sun;

And plate carved round with quaint device,
And cups all gold will melt, like ice

In Indian heat!

And queenly silks, from foreign lands,
Will bear the stamps of bloody hands

And trampling feet:

And murder-from his hideous den
Will come abroad and talk to men,
Till creatures born

For good (whose hearts kind pity nursed)
Will act the direst crimes they cursed
But yester-morn.

So, wealth by want will be o'erthrown,
And want be strong and guilty grown,
Swollen out by blood.

Sweet peace! who sitt'st aloft, sedate,
Who bind'st the little to the great,
Canst thou not charm the serpent Hate?
And quell this feud?

Between the pomp of Croesus' state,
And Irus, starved by sullen fate-
"Tween "thee" and "me"-
"Tween deadly frost and scorching sun-
The thirty tyrants and the one-
Some space must be.

Must the world quail to absolute kings, Or tyrant mobs, those meaner things, All nursed in gore

Turk's bowstring-Tartar's vile ukase-
Grim Marat's bloody band, who pace
From shore to shore?

O God!-since our bad world began,
Thus hath it been-from man to man

War, to the knife!

For bread-for gold-for words-for air!
Save us, O God! and hear my prayer!
Save, save from shame-from crime-despair,
Man's puny life!

STANZAS.

THAT was not a barren time

When the new world calmly lay

Bare unto the frosty rime,

Open to the burning day.

Though her young limbs were not clad
With the colours of the spring,
Yet she was all inward glad,
Knowing all she bore within,
Undeveloped, blossoming.

There was beauty, such as feeds
Poets in their secret hours;
Music mute; and all the seeds

And the signs of all the flowers.

There was wealth, beyond the gold
Hid in oriental caves;
There was-all we now behold

"Tween our cradles and our graves.

Judge not, then, the poet's dreams
Barren all, and void of good:
There are in them azure gleams,
Wisdom not all understood.

Fables, with a heart of truth;
Mysteries, that unfold in light;
Morals, beautiful for youth;

Starry lessons for the night.

Unto man, in peace and strife,

True and false, and weak and strong,

Unto all, in death and life,

Speaks the poet in his song.

THE RETURN OF THE ADMIRAL.

And never, from that moment

Save one shudder through the sea, Saw we (or heard) the shark That had follow'd in our lee!

How gallantly, how merrily,

We ride along the sea!
The morning is all sunshine,
The wind is blowing free:
The billows are all sparkling,

And bounding in the light,
Like creatures in whose sunny veins
The blood is running bright.
All nature knows our triumph:

Strange birds about us sweep;
Strange things come up to look at us,
The masters of the deep:

In our wake, like any servant,
Follows even the bold shark-
Oh, proud must be our admiral

Of such a bonny bark!

Proud, proud, must be our admiral,
(Though he is pale to-day,)
Of twice five hundred iron men,
Who all his nod obey;
Who've fought for him, and conquer'd-
Who've won, with sweat and gore,
Nobility which he shall have

Whene'er he touch the shore.
Oh! would I were our admiral,
To order, with a word-
To lose a dozen drops of blood,

And straight rise up a lord!
I'd shout e'en to yon shark, there,

Who follows in our lee,

"Some day I'll make thee carry me,

Like lightning through the sea."

-The admiral grew paler,
And paler as we flew :
Still talk'd he to his officers,

And smiled upon his crew;
And he look'd up at the heavens,
And he look'd down on the sea,
And at last he spied the creature,
That kept following in our lee.
He shook-'t was but an instant-
For speedily the pride

Ran crimson to his heart,

Till all chances he defied:
It threw boldness on his forehead;
Gave firmness to his breath;
And he stood like some grim warrior

New risen up from death.

That night, a horrid whisper

Fell on us where we lay;

And we knew our old fine admiral
Was changing into clay;
And we heard the wash of waters,
Though nothing could we see,
And a whistle and a plunge

Among the billows in our lee!
Till dawn we watch'd the body
In its dead and ghastly sleep,
And next evening at sunset,
It was slung into the deep!

FORBIDDEN LOVE.

I LOVE thee! Oh, the strife, the pain,
The fiery thoughts that through me roll!
I love thee! Look-again, again!

O stars! that thou couldst read my soul: I would thy bright bright eye could pierce The crimson folds that hide my heart; Then wouldst thou find the serpent fierce That stings me-and will not depart!

Look love upon me, with thine eyes!
Yet, no men's evil tongues are nigh:
Look pity, then, and with thy sighs
Waste music on me-till I die!
Yet, love not! sigh not! Turn (thou must)
Thy beauty from me, sweet and kind;
'Tis fit that I should burn to dust-

To death: because I am not blind!

I love thee-and I live! The moon
Who sees me from her calm above,
The wind who weaves her dim soft tune
About me,
know how much I love!
Naught else, save night and the lonely hour,
E'er heard my passion wild and strong;
Even thou yet deem'st not of thy power,
Unless-thou readst aright my song!

A REPOSE.

SHE sleeps among her pillows soft, (A dove, now wearied with her flight,) And all around, and all aloft,

Hang flutes and folds of virgin white: Her hair out-darkens the dark night,

Her glance outshines the starry sky; But now her locks are hidden quite, And closed is her fringed eye!

:

She sleepeth wherefore doth she start?
She sigheth: doth she feel no pain?
None, none! the dream is near her heart:
The spirit of sleep is in her brain.
He cometh down like golden rain,

Without a wish, without a sound;
He cheers the sleeper (ne'er in vain)
Like May, when earth is winter-bound.

All day within some cave he lies,

Dethroned from his nightly swayFar fading when the dawning skies

Our souls with wakening thoughts array. Two Spirits of might doth man obey;

By each he's wrought, from each he learns: The one is Lord of life by day;

The other when starry night returns.

A STORM.

THE spirits of the mighty sea,
To-night are waken'd from their dreams,
And upward to the tempest flee,

Baring their foreheads where the gleams
Of lightning run, and thunders cry,
Rushing and raining through the sky!

The spirits of the sea are waging

Loud war upon the peaceful night,
And bands of the black winds are raging
Through the tempest blue and bright;
Blowing her cloudy hair to dust
With kisses, like a madman's lust!

What ghost now, like an Até, walketh
Earth-ocean-air? and aye with time,
Mingled, as with a lover talketh?

Methinks their colloquy sublime
Draws anger from the sky, which raves
Over the self-abandon'd waves!

Behold! like millions mass'd in battle,

The trembling billows headlong go,
Lashing the barren deeps, which rattle
In mighty transport till they grow
All fruitful in their rocky home,
And burst from phrensy into foam.

And look! where on the faithless billows

Lie women, and men, and children fair; Some hanging, like sleep, to their swollen pillows, With helpless sinews and streaming hair, And some who plunge in the yawning graves! Ah! lives there no strength beyond the waves?

"Tis said, the moon can rock the sea

From phrensy strange to silence mildTo sleep-to death :-But where is she,

While now her storm-born giant child Upheaves his shoulder to the skies? Arise, sweet planet pale-arise!

She cometh-lovelier than the dawn

In summer, when the leaves are green-
More graceful than the alarmed fawn,
Over his grassy supper seen:
Bright quiet from her beauty falls,
Until-again the tempest calls!

The supernatural storm-he waketh

Again, and lo! from sheets all white,
Stands up unto the stars, and shaketh

Scorn on the jewell'd locks of night.
He carries a ship on his foaming crown,
And a cry, like hell, as he rushes down!
And so still soars from calm to storm,
The stature of the unresting sea:
So doth desire or wrath deform
Our else calm humanity-
Until at last we sleep,

And never wake nor weep,
(Hush'd to death by some faint tune,)
In our grave beneath the moon!

I DIE FOR THY SWEET LOVE.

I DIE for thy sweet love! The ground
Not panteth so for summer rain,
As I for one soft look of thine:
And yet I sigh in vain!

A hundred men are near thee now-
Each one, perhaps, surpassing me:
But who doth feel a thousandth part
Of what I feel for thee?

They look on thee, as men will look

Who round the wild world laugh and rove: I only think how sweet 't would be To die for thy sweet love!

A PETITION TO TIME.

TOUCH us gently, Time!

Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently-as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream!
Humble voyagers are We,

Husband, wife, and children three-
(One is lost-an angel, fled
To the azure overhead!)

Touch us gently, Time!

We've not proud nor soaring wings; Our ambition, our content, Lies in simple things, Humble voyagers are We, O'er life's dim unsounded sea, Seeking only some calm clime ;Touch us gently, gentle Time!

A CHAMBER SCENE.

TREAD Softly through these amorous rooms;
For every bough is hung with life,
And kisses in harmonious strife,
Unloose their sharp and wing'd perfumes!
From Afric, and the Persian looms,

The carpet's silken leaves have sprung,
And heaven, in its blue bounty, flung
These starry flowers, and azure blooms.
Tread softly! By a creature fair

The deity of love reposes,
His red lips open, like the roses
Which round his hyacinthine hair
Hang in crimson coronals;

And passion fills the arched halls;
And beauty floats upon the air.
Tread softly-softly, like the foot

Of Winter, shod with fleecy snow, Who cometh white, and cold, and mute, Lest he should wake the Spring below. Oh, look! for here lie Love and Youth, Fair spirits of the heart and mind: Alas! that one should stray from truth; And one-be ever, ever blind!

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