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Hushed were the tones of mirthful revelry,
Stayed were the music and the dance, as tell
On Croydon's Gothic towers and battlements,
The shades of dreary midnight. In the hall
The hearth's brands were decaying ; but a flame
Lambently lighted up the vaulted roof,
And circling walls, where antlers branehing wide,
And forehead skins of elk and deer were seen,
And fox's brush; the trophies of the chase;
And warriors cloaks depending, and the gleam
Of burnished armour.-

In her chamber, one
Sleepless alone remained, where all was still ;
Reclining on a couch, and dreaming o'er
The thoughts—the happy scenes of other years ;
And, with a sweet, seraphic countenance,
Shining in beauty and in solitude,
Like morning's rosy star, when from the sky
Her sisters have in silence disappeared.
Sorrowful Emma! were not thine of yore
Thoughts of unrest, and mournful countenance !
But sparkling eyes, that matched unclouded heaven
In their deep azure; and carnationed cheeks,
Round which the snow-drops like a halo spread ;
And an elastic footstep, like the nymph
Health, when in very wantonness of play,
She brushes from the green the dews of morn.

And why, wrapt up in cloak of eider-down,
Chilling thy beauty in the midnight air,
Breathing, in solitude, the deep-drawn sigh,
Con’st thou, unheard of all, the love-born tale,
The tale of hapless lovers, soft and sad;
And why, when all is still, and balmy sleep
Should seal the weary eyelids, dost thou sit
Mournfully beside the lattice, and attend
To the hollow murmurs of the distant sea,
Which fitfully, upon the passing gale
Break in, and die away?

The winter's breath
Destroys the bloomy flowers—the ocean tide
Is governed by the moon; and, for thy grief,
Although unmarked by all, there is a cause !

And she hath laid her down, and silently,
As Retrospection wandered through the past,
Have her chaste eyelids closed ; and, in her dream,
Lo! forests darken round with gloomy boughs,
And wolves are heard to howl; around her path
The forky lightnings flash; and deeply loud,
The thunders roll amid the blackening skies.
Anon her steps have gained a precipice
Above the roaring sea, where, waste and wild,
The foamy billows chafe among the rocks
The rocks whose sable heads, at intervals,
Are seen and disappear. Awfully dark
Night's shadows brood around; but, in the flash
Of the blue arrowy lightnings, far away
A vessel is descried upon the deep ;

While moaning sounds are heard, and dismal shrieks
O'er the tempestuous billows breaking loud;
Until its stormy fury vented forth,
And the winds hushed to silence and to rest,
And the bright stars appearing, and the clouds
Breaking away, like armies from the field
When battle's clangor ceases, she belolds,
Pallid beneath a cliff, the form of him,
Her chosen hero, bleached by wave and wind,
Unconscious of the seamew with a shriek
Hovering around—the victim of the storm!

Anon the vision changes; armies throng
The arid fields of Palestine afar,
And, glittering in the setting sun, she sees
The Moorish crescent over Salem's walls,
The Infidel victorious, and the hosts
Of baffled Christendom dispersed: she sees
Disasters and defeat the lot of those,
Who, 'neath Godfredo's banner, daring, left
On perilous enterprise their native shore.-
The battle's voice hath ceased; the trumpet's note
Hath died upon the west-wind; bird and beast,
From mountain cliff on high, and woody dell,
Lured by the scent of blood, have come to gorge
On the unburied dead. Rider and horse,
The lofty and the low, commingled, lie
Unbreathing, and the balmy evening gale
Fitfully lifts the feathers on the crest
Of one, who slumbers with his vizor up!

Starting she wakes; and, o'er the eastern bill,
Lo! beautiful the radiant morn appears,
And, thro' the lattice, steadily streams in
The flood of crimson light; while, sitting there
Upon the outward ivy wreath, in joy
Happy the robin sings; his lucid tones
Of harmony delight her listening ear,
Dispel the gathered sadness of her heart,
And, tell her that her fears are but a dream.

But hark ! why sounded is the warder's horn?
Doth danger threaten, or do foes approach?
The guard are at their station; and, she hears
The ring of brazen arms, as anxious there
The soldiers, girding on their swords, draw up;
The bugle's sound of peace is faintly heard,
Mournfully pleasing, in a dying strain,
Melodious-melancholy-far away!
An answer is returned; heavily down
Sinks the huge drawbridge and the iron tramp
Of steeds is heard fast-crossing. Joy to her,
To long forsaken Emma, joy to her!

-
Obscured by tempests dark, and brooding storms,
The sun may wander through the sky unseen
The livelong day; until, above the tops
Of the steep western mountains, forth he glows,
Glorious, the centre of a crimson flood,
In brightness unapproachable : so oft
The span of human life is measured out:
Sorrow and care, companions of our steps,
Hover around us, blotting out the hopes
We long had cherished; banishing the bliss

We oft have tasted, till our path is dark;
Then lo ! amid the gloom of hope deferred,
Breaks in a blessed light, a living day,
Like that of polar regions, glowing bright,
Unclouded, and unconscious of an end.
A group of happy faces throng the hall,
And scarce hath Emma entered, like a flower
Blushing, and beautiful, with downcast eyes,
And palpitating bosom, ere her knight,
Young Ethelrid, from holy wars returned
With laurels on his crest to part no more,
Kneels faithful at her feet in ecstasy,
And lifts her snowy fingers to his lips.

THE VISION.

Kατισχι με σκιτος δεινον. I Call upon thee in the night,

The auburn hair is braided soft When none alive are near ;

Above thy snowy browi I dream about thee with delight,

Why dost thou gaze on me so oft ! And then thou dost appear

I cannot follow now ! Fair, as the day-star o'er the hill,

It would be crime, a double death When skies are blue, and all is still. To follow by forbidden path. Thou stand'st before me silently,

But let me press that hand again, The spectre of the past ;

I oft have pressed in love, The trembling azure of thine eye,

When sauntering thro' the grassy plain, Without a cloud o'ercast;

Or summer's evening grove ; Calm as the pure and silent deep,

Or pausing, as we marked afar, When winds are hush'd and waves asleep. The twinkling of the evening star. Thou gazest on me! but thy look It is a dream, and thou art gone ; Of angel tenderness,

The midnight breezes sigh ; So pierces, that I less can brook

And downcast-sorrowful-aloneThan if it spoke distress,

With sinking heart, I lie Or came in anguish here to me

To muse on days, when thou to me
To tell of evil boding thee !

Wert more than all on earth can be !
Around thee robes of snowy white, Oh! lonely is the lot of him,
With virgin taste are thrown ;

Whose path is on the earth,
And, at thy breast, a lily bright,

And when his thoughts are dark and dim, In beauty scarcely blown :

Hears only vacant mirth; Calmly thou gazest like the moon A swallow left, when all his kind Upon the leafy woods of June.

Have crossed the seas, and winged the wind.

REFLECTIONS ON A BRUMAL SCENE.

I HAVE an old remembrance there are hours,
When clouds, that mantle о'er, with folds opaque,
The calm, clear mirror of the soul, disperse
Like icebergs from the pole; and leave behind
The pristine feelings of our youth unchanged,
Our boyish visions and romantic dreams,
Like landscapes pictured in a quiet lake.
I have an old remembrance-many a year
Hath come, and passed away; and many a smile
Been chased ; and many a clamorous wo appeased;
And many a chance and change come o'er my lot,
Since then-but, from the shadows of the past,
It streams like sunbeams o'er an eastern hill,
And all its feelings thrill along my soul !

Chill is the air ; the spirit of the frost
Reigns, with his icy sceptre ; vale and field
Are sprinkled o'er with snowy offerings ;

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And from each leafless bough-what time the wind
Low-toned sighs past a thousand glimmering shreds
Descending, tinkle on the ground beneath.
Chained are the sluggish waters to the shore;
And icicles, from overhanging shrubs,
Gleam in the sunshine with a sparry light:
Far o'er the surface comes the shadowy depth
Of the steep mountain-banks; and from the ledge,
Over whose downward rocks the river falls,
Comes back the chastened murmur with a tone,
Whose memory conjures up departed years.-
How pale is now the sunshine, pale and soft,
And tender as the faint smiles of a child;
Not on the far blue concave of the sky
Gleams forth one fleecy cloudlet, from the depth
Above me, to the hoary mountain tops,
Far distant, that engird the horizon in.

Enough.-Between these banks precipitous,
When school hours were departed, oft-how oft,
Along the crackling ice, with glittering heel,
All eager have I glided; breathing out
The smoky breath in the clear frosty air ;
When round me all was motion ; and the ice
With many a winding semicerque was traced,
Whitening around, a labyrinthine clue.
Too soon gloomed twilight's feeble ray around,
Too soon the sun departed, while serene,
Above the hills, peeped forth the evening star.

How many a loved companion revelled here
Alive in every fibre to the smile,
And thrilling touch of pleasure ; boisterous
And noisy in their mirth,-like ocean waves,
When winds are piping loud,--but innocent,
And all unpractised in the guileful world.
My soul recoils—I dare not number them-
Oh ! fast, and fearfully hath the spoiler death

Thinned their young ranks ;—this, sickened at his home;
And this, in far off lands; this, like the beam
Of daylight on the western hemisphere,
Died with a slow, invisible decay!

Many yet survive;
Yea, many, but all changed; with blackening wing,
The demon of the world hath seared their hearts
With sorrow, and with sufferings, and with guilt;
And what they were, can be but faintly traced
In what we find them now; a grievous change
Hath shadowed them ; nor more resemblance they
Bear to themselves of yore, than doth the year,
Wrapt in the glorious garment of the spring,
To bleak November on her hill of storms!
How piercing is the air ; far distant things,
Girt by a pure translucent atmosphere,
Seem near: with hoary scalps, the mountains high
Stretch their gigantic pyramids to heaven;
So, to the Roman bard's domestic eye,
In golden ages past, Soracte stood,
White with its diadem of snow. 'Tis we,
Who change, alas! not nature; and where I,
Now moralizing, stray, shall others stray
To moralize, when I shall be no more!

NOTICES OF THE ACTED DRAMA IN LONDON."

No VIII.

If the reader has any thing better to which makes it poetry-will inevitado than be idle we advise him to skip bly evaporate, and leave nothing bea Cover our dramatic notice this month; hind but a jargon of words, or a caput for the theatres have been more than mortuum of detail. usually dull lately; and all we pre- We are not acquainted with Mary tend to do at the best is to reflect a Stuart in the original German; but little of their light when they put are certain that it never could have forth any. The race of these rival acquired the reputation which it postheatres has been, this season, against sesses, if it had been any thing like the public as well as against each the doleful and dreary exhibition we other : And from certain symptoms- have just witnessed. It was a total particularly that of both of them puf- failure. Instead of being poetry ilfing very much--we may now be pret- lustrating history, or history suggestty sure that they have nearly run ing poetry, it was neither poetry nor themselves to a stand still. The most history. Take one example: Mary friendly counsel we can offer these and Elizabeth, who never met at all, unweildy rivals—who would be high- are set to fight a pitched battle of flyers, contrary to the will of " fate words together, on the green opposite and metaphysical aid”-is that they Fotheringay Castle, in a twenty-four at once relinquish their opposition foot ring kept by the courtiers and atstages, and set up a comfortable and tendants of each. As the play has convenient patent safety coach. If been withdrawn for the present, to these latter do notcut so dashing an ap- undergo alterations, we shall reserve pearance, they carry the passengers any further remarks we may have to much more commodiously—are in not make on it till it is brought forward near so great danger of being upset again. In the mean time we would and, above all, they fill much better. by no means be understood to say

The only novelty of any importance that the play is entirely without mesince our last article, has been a tra- rit. gedy at Covent Garden, called Mary There are, in particular, two very Stuart ; a translation from a very ce- interesting scenes ;-the one in which lebrated tragedy of Schiller's, of the Elizabeth hears the various opinions same name. A translator, now-a-days, of her council on the proposed death seems to think that if he understands of Mary,--and that in which she the languages out of which and into signs the death-warrant. But these which he translates, nothing more were rendered prominent chiefly by can reasonably be required of him : the admirable performance of Mrs So he takes up a poern-changes the Bunn; who conceived the character words of it from one language into in a very fine historical manner. Her their corresponding words in another acting was altogether too elaborate ; and thinks that all is done. As if but there was the true tragic spirit poetry were a business of moods and and tone about it. We happened to tenses ! If, after this, what was inspi- see this lady the first time she ever ration in one language, becomes insi- appeared on the stage ; and we shall pidity in the other, he has no notion not easily forget the effect her person that the fault lies in him. But the and voice produced upon us. They truth is, he has "rendered unto Cæsar realized our very ideal of a heroine of the things which are Cæsar's,” and romance ; and sent us back at oncem let all the rest escape. It would be (a long journey !)—to the days of considered as a ludicrous blunder if chivalry. We could fancy her stately one unacquainted with the mathema- steps ascending to her place in the tics, should attempt to translate Eu- lists, to the sound of trumpets and clid's Elements, from the language in the shouts of admiring multitudes.which they are written, into another. We could picture her, bending from It is nothing less for one who is not her state, to place the reward of vaa poet to attempt to translate poetry. lour round the neck of an armed The essential qualities of it-that knight knceling at her feet; or lend