THE PAINS OF SLEEP.

ERE on my bed my limbs I lay,

It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,

In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.

Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!

Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know,
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night's dismay Saddened and stunned the coming day. Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me Distemper's worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;

And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,-
For aye entempesting anew

The unfathomable hell within

The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed.

LIMBO.

'Tis a strange place, this Limbo !—not a Place, Yet name it so;—where Time and weary Space Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of

fleeing,

Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;-
Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,
Not mark'd by flit of Shades,-unmeaning they
As moonlight on the dial of the day!

But that is lovely-looks like human Time,—
An old man with a steady look sublime,
That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;
But he is blind-a statue hath such eyes;-
Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant white hairs, with foretop bald and high,
He gazes still, his eyeless face all eye;—
As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,
His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!-
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb-
He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!
No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,
Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure,
By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral.

A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;

Hell knows a fear far worse,

A fear-a future state;-'tis positive Negation!

NE PLUS ULTRA.

SOLE Positive of Night!
Antipathist of Light!

Fate's only essence! primal scorpion rod-
The one permitted opposite of God!-
Condensed blackness and abysmal storm
Compacted to one sceptre

Arms the Grasp enorm

The Intercepter

The Substance that still casts the shadow Death!The Dragon foul and fell

The unrevealable,

And hidden one, whose breath

Gives wind and fuel to the fires of Hell!-
Ah! sole despair

Of both th' eternities in Heaven!

Sole interdict of all-bedewing prayer,
The all-compassionate!

Save to the Lampads Seven

Reveal'd to none of all th' Angelic State,
Save to the Lampads Seven,

That watch the throne of Heaven!

66

APOLOGETIC PREFACE.

ΤΟ FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER."

Ar the house of a gentleman, who, by the principles and corresponding virtues of a sincere Christian, consecrates a cultivated genius and the favourable accidents of birth, opulence, and splendid connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in a dinner-party, with more men of celebrity in science or polite literature, than are commonly found collected round the same table. In the course of conversation, one of the party reminded an illustrious poet, then present, of some verses which he had recited that morning, and which had appeared in a newspaper under the name of a War-Eclogue, in which Fire, Famine, and Slaughter were introduced as the speakers. The gentleman so addressed replied, that he was rather surprised that none of us should have noticed or heard of the poem, as it had been, at the time, a good deal talked of in Scotland. It may be easily supposed, that my feelings were at this moment not of the most comfortable kind. Of all present, one only knew, or suspected me to be the author; a man who would have established himself in the first rank of England's living poets, if the Genius of our country had not decreed that he should rather be the first in the first rank of its philosophers and scientific benefactors. It appeared the general wish to hear the lines. As my friend chose to remain silent, I chose to follow his example, and Mr. ***** recited the poem. This he could do with the better grace, being known to have ever been not only a firm and active Anti-Jacobin and Anti-Gallican, but likewise a zealous admirer of Mr. Pitt, both as a good man and a great statesman. As a poet exclusively, he had been amused with the

See page 141.