THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT. ERE the birth of my life, if I wished it or no NATURE'S ANSWER. Is't returned as 'twas sent? Is't no worse for the wear ? Think first, what you ARE! Call to mind what you WERE! I gave you innocence, I gave you hope, Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope. Return you me guilt, lethurgy, despair? Make out the Invent'ry; inspect, compare! THE BLOSSOMING OF THE SOLITARY DATE TREE. A LAMENT. I SEEM to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew Writers, an Apologue or Rabbinical Tradition to the following purpose: While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: "Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so! for the Man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise." And the word of the Most High answered Satan: "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Fiend! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to bave the heart of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should have been inflicted on thyself." The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact mentioned by Linnæus, of a Date-tree in a nobleman's garden which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, but never produced fruit, till a branch from a Date-tree had been conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the MS. from which the poem has been transcribed, and which contained the two or three introductory stanzas, is wanting: and the author has in vain taxed his memory to repair the loss. But a rude draught of the poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and the reader is requested to receive it as the substitute. It is not impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed those of the author, at the time the poem was written, may find a pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integrity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite Metre. S. T. C. THE BLOSSOMING OF THE SOLITARY DATE-TREE: A LAMENT. 1. BENEATH the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. "What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own." The presence of a ONE, The best belov'd, who loveth me the best, is for the heart, what the supporting air from within is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without, that would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen and crushes it into flatness. 2. 'The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether VOL. II. H in fact the viands and the ministering graces are shadowy or real, to him who has not hand to grasp nor arms to embrace them? 3. Imagination; honourable Aims; Free Commune with the choir that cannot die; 4. For never touch of gladness stirs my heart, And wishing without hope I restlessly despair. 5. The mother with anticipated glee Smiles o'er the child, that standing by her chair Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare |