No laurel flourish o'er thy grave.

For why, proud King, thy ruthless hand

Hurl'd desolation o'er the land,

And crushed the subject race, whom kings are born to save; Eternal infamy shall blast thy name,

And all thy sons shall share their father's shame.

"Rise, purple slaugher! furious rise;
Unfold the terror of thine eyes;
Dart thy vindictive shafts around:
Let no strange land a shade afford,
No conquer'd nations call them lord;

Nor let their cities rise to curse the goodly ground.
For thus Jehovah swears; no name, no son,
No remnant, shall remain of haughty Babylon.

"Thus saith the righteous Lord:

My vengeance shall unsheath the flaming sword:
O'er all thy realms, my fury shall be pour'd.
Where yon proud city stood,

I'll spread the stagnate flood;

And there the bittern in the sedge shall lurk,
Moaning with sullen strain ;

While, sweeping o'er the plain,
Destruction ends her work.

Yes, on mine holy mountain's brow,
I'll crush this proud Assyrian foe.
The irrevocable word is spoke;

From Judah's neck the galling yoke

Spontaneous falls, she shines with wonted state;

Thus by myself I swear, and what I swear, is Fate."

Of Descriptive Poetry.

THE object of descriptive poetry is to exhibit beautiful pictures of nature or art, so as to convey to the

mind of the reader, all the information and pleasure that he would receive from an actual survey of the objects described. Sometimes a single object is described, and sometimes a group or a succession of objects. The excellence of the description is to be estimated by the power afforded to the reader, of forming a just conception of whatever scene, object, or circumstance, the writer describes. Of this species of poetical composition, every one believes himself competent to judge, and is apt to suppose, that nothing is more easy than to perform what he admires: but experience sufficiently proves, that few are qualified to excel.

In some poems, the professed object is description, but there is no descriptive poem, in which other kinds of composition do not occasionally find place; nor is there any poetry, whether epic, didactic, pastoral, or lyric, that is not sometimes descriptive. In this kind of poetry there is less occasion for the inventive power of genius, than in the epic, the dramatic, or even the lyric; but a writer may shew much judgment in his observation, and much taste in his delineation of the objects observed.

As a descriptive poet, Thomson stands the first in the first rank. Other authors may in some instances hav bolder landscapes, but none has collected so

many beautiful pictures, nor arranged and described them with so much skill and originality. Every one who reads The Seasons, recognizes in the descriptions objects with which he is familiar, but they are exhibited to his view in a manner so novel, that he often experiences greater pleasure in reading of them, than he ever enjoyed in contemplating the objects themselves. But this poem is so well known, that, for the purpose of making the young acquainted with the beauties of language, it may be better to introduce some fine examples of description from the works of other authors. In the works of living authors instances of this kind are so numerous, as to render selection difficult. The following possess much truth and beauty:

"A valley, from the river shore withdrawn,

Was Albert's home, two quiet woods between,
Whose lofty verdure overlook'd his lawn ;
And waters to their resting-place serene
Came freshening and refreshing all the scene;
(A mirror in the depths of flowery shelves :)
So sweet a spot of earth, you might, (I ween)
Have guessed some congregation of the elves,
To sport by summer moons, had shaped it for themselves.

"Yet wanted not the eye far scope to muse,

Nor vistas open'd by the wandering stream;
Both where at evening Allegany views,
Through ridges burning in the western beam,

Lake after lake interminably gleam:

And past those settlers' haunts the eye might roam
Where earth's unliving silence all would seem;
Save where on rocks the beaver built his dome,
Or buffalo remote low'd far from human home."

Gertrude of Wyoming.

"Sweet was the scene! apart the cedars stood,
A sunny islet open'd in the wood;

With vernal tints the wild-brier thicket glows,
For here the desert flourish'd as the rose;
From sapling trees with lucid foliage crown'd,
Gay lights and shadows twinkled on the ground:
Up the tall stems luxuriant creepers run
To hang their silver blossoms in the sun;
Deep velvet verdure clad the turf beneath,

Where trodden flowers their richest odours breathe;
O'er all, the bees with murmuring music flew
From bell to bell, to sip the treasured dew;
Whilst insect myriads, in their solar gleams,
Glanced to and fro, like intermingling beams;
So fresh, so pure, the woods, the sky, the air,
It seemed a place where angels might repair
And tune their harps beneath those tranquil shades,
To morning songs, or moonlight serenades."

World before the Flood.

"Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd,

For fairer scene he ne'er survey'd.
When sated with the martial show
That peopled all the plain below,
The wandering eye could o'er it
And mark the distant city glow

With gloomy splendour red;

go,

For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,

The morning beams were shed,

And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder cloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge castle holds its state
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town;
But northward far, with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And as each heathy top they kiss'd,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
Here Preston-bay and Berwick-Law;
And, broad between them roll'd,
The gallant Firth the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,

Like emeralds chas'd in gold."

"And thus an airy point he won,
Where, gleaming with the setting sun,
One burnish'd sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll'd;
In all her length far winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands, that impurpled bright,
Floated amid the livelier light;
And mountains that like giants stand,
To centinel enchanted land.
High on the south, huge Benvenue

Down on the lake in masses threw

Crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurl'd,

The fragments of an earlier world,

A wildering forest feather'd o'er

His ruin'd sides and summit hoar,

While on the north, through middle air,

Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.

Marmion

The Lady of the Lake.