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SOUTHEY.

Robert Southey is among the most distinguished of living authors, in the various departments of Poetry, History, and Biography. His poetic talent has been chiefly displayed in the Epic.— Thalaba, Madoc, the Curse of Kehama, and Roderick, the Last of the Goths, are his principal poems. The last mentioned of these is the greatest favourite of the public, and deserves to be so. The poem of Roderick, &c. is founded, as the name imports, upon the history of the last Gothic King of Spain. Upon the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, Hispania, the modern Spain, was taken by those northern barbarians called Goths. The Goths established there a regal government, which subsisted from A. D. 411 to A. D. 712. Roderick, the Last of the Goths, had a private quarrel with a distinguished nobleman of his court, and the latter, indignant against the king, conspired with the Moors, a nation of the opposite shores of Africa, to dethrone Roderick and surrender the sovereignty to the Moors.

The authenticity of this statement of the origin of the Moorish conquest of Spain is disputed—but it is the tradition of the Moors and Spaniards, and upon the assumed fact Mr. Southey has founded his poem. Many of Roderick's subjects remained faithful to him, but multitudes rebelled, and after a battle with the Moors and the rebels, Roderick is said to have disappeared, and never to have been found again, A. D. 712.

The most faithful adherent of Roderick was Pelayo, a prince of his blood, who became the founder of a new kingdom, that of Asturia. Pelayo seeking liberty, and preferring a desert to a state of bondage, led a few faithful followers to a sequestered spot enclosed by rocks in the interior of Asturia. Being a man of talent and integrity, he acquired an absolute ascendency over his friends, and they appointed him their king. His subjeets were few, and his territory barren rocks; but the men were faithful and courageous. Their asylum was discovered and invaded by the Moors, but the refugees defended themselves; and from this commencement originated the kingdom of Asturia, long one of the most powerful in Spain. Pelayo died in A. D. 737.

It may here be remarked that under the Moors, Spain was divided into several sovereignties. Kings of Asturia, of Oviedo, of Aragon, of Castile and Leon, were numbered among the Princes of Spain.

Mr. Southey supposes that immediately after his defeat Roderick sought a profound solitude, and in this situation he describes

him. Roderick was accompanied in his concealment by Romano, an old man, who died and left the unhappy king alone.. Roderick had been guilty of a crime, and self-reproach aggravated his affliction."

RODERICK IN SOLITUDE.

The fourth week of their painful pilgrimage
Was full, when they arrived where from the land
A rocky hill, rising with steep ascent,
O'erhung the glittering beach; there on the top
A little lowly hermitage they found,

And a rude cross, and at its foot a grave,
Bearing no name nor other monument.

Where better could they rest than here, where faith
And secret penitence and happiest death

Had blest the spot, and brought good angels down,
And opened as it were a way to Heaven?
Behind them was the desert, offering fruit
And water for their need; on either side
The white sand sparkling to the sun; in front
Great Ocean with its everlasting voice,

As in perpetual jubilee, proclaimed

The wonders of the Almighty filling thus

The pauses of their fervent orisons.

Where better could the wanderers rest than here?
Twelve months they sojourned in their solitude,
And then beneath the burthen of old age
Romano sunk. No brethren were there
To spread the sackcloth, and with ashes strew
The penitential bed, and gather round

To sing his requiem, and with prayer and psalm
Assist him in his hour of agony.

He lay on the bare earth which long had been
His only couch: beside him Roderick knelt,
Moistened from time to time his blackened lips,
Received a blessing with his latest breath,
Then closed his eyes, and by the nameless grave
Of the fore-tenant of that holy place
Consigned him earth to earth.

Two graves are here.

And Roderick transverse at their feet began

To break the third. In all his intervals

Of prayer, save only when he search'd the woods

And fill'd the water-cruise, he labour'd there;

And when the work was done, and he had laid
Himself at length within its narrow sides

And measured it, he shook his head to think
There was no other business now for him.
Poor wretch, thy bed is ready, he exclaimed,
And would that night were come! . . . It was a task,
All gloomy as it was, which had beguiled.
The sense of solitude; but now he felt
The burthen of the solitary hours :—
The silence of that lonely hermitage
Lay on him like a spell; and at the voice
Of his own prayers, he started, half aghast.
Then too, as on Romano's grave he sate
And pored upon his own, a natural thought
Arose within him, . . well might he have spared
That useless toil: the sepulchre would be
No hiding place for him; no Christian hands
Were here who should compose his decent corpse
And cover it with earth. There he might drag
His wretched body at its passing hour,
And there the sea-birds of her heritage
Would rob the worm, or peradventure seize,
Ere death had done its work, their helpless prey.
Even now they did not fear him when he walked
Beside them on the beach, regardlessly

They saw his coming; and their whirring wings
Upon the height had sometimes fanned his cheek,
As if, being thus alone, humanity

Had lost its rank, and the prerogative

Of mai vas done away.

For his lost crown

And sceptre had he never felt a thought
Of pain repentance had no pangs to spare
For trifles such as these,—the loss of these
Was a cheap penalty :—that he had fallen
Down to the lowest depth of wretchedness,
His hope and consolation. But to lose
His human station in the scale of things,—
To see brute Nature scorn him, and renounce
Its homage to the human form divine ;—
Had then almighty vengeance thus revealed
His punishment, and was he fallen indeed
Below fallen man.

Oh for a voice

Of comfort, for a ray of hope from heaven!

A hand that from these billows of despair

May reach and snatch him ere he sink engulphed !
At length, as life when it hath lain long time
Opprest beneath some grievous malady,
Seems to rouse up with re-collected strength,
And the sick man doth feel within himself
A second spring; so Roderick's better mind
Arose to save him. Lo! the western sun
Flames o'er the broad Atlantic; on the verge
Of glowing ocean rests; retiring then
Draws with it all its rays, and sudden night
Fills the whole cope of heaven. The penitent
Knelt by Romano's grave, and, falling prone,
Claspt with extended arms the funeral mould.

Father! he cried; companion, only friend,
When all beside was lost! thou too art gone,
And the poor sinner whom from utter death
Thy providential hand preserved, once more
Totters upon the gulf. I am too weak
For solitude,too vile a wretch to bear
This everlasting commune with myself.

*

Despair hath laid the nets

To take my soul, and Memory, like a ghost,
Haunts me, and drives me to the toils. O Saint,
While I was blest with thee, the hermitage
Was my sure haven! Look upon me still;
For from thy heavenly mansion thou canst see
Thy suppliant; look upon thy child in Christ.

Romano! Father! let me hear thy voice
In dreams, O sainted soul! or from the grave
Speak to thy penitent; even from the grave
Thine were a voice of comfort.

Thus he cried,

Easing the pressure of his burthened heart

With passionate prayer; thus poured his spirit forth Till the long effort had exhausted him,

His spirit failed, and laying on the grave

His weary head, as on a pillow, sleep

Fell on him. He had prayed to hear a voice
Of consolation, and in dreams a voice
Of consolation came. Roderick, it said,—
Roderick, my poor, unhappy, sinful child,
Jesus have mercy on thee !—Not if heaven

Had opened, and Romano, visible
In his beatitude, had breathed that prayer ;-
Not if the grave had spoken, had it pierced
So deeply in his soul, nor wrung his heart
With such compunctious visitings, nor given
So quick, so keen a pang. It was that voice
Which sung his fretful infancy to sleep

So patiently; which soothed his childish griefs;
Counselled with anguish and prophetic tears,
His headstrong youth. And lo! his mother stood
Before him in the vision.

PELAYO AND HIS CHILDREN.

The ascending vale,

Long straitened by the narrowing mountains, here
Was closed. In front a rock, abrupt and bare,
Stood eminent, in height exceeding far
All edifice of human power, by king
Or caliph, or barbaric sultan reared,
Or mightier tyrants of the world of old,
Assyrian on Egyptian, in their pride :
Yet far above, beyond the reach of sight,
Swell after swell, the heathery mountain rose.
Here, in two sources, from the living rock

The everlasting springs of Deva gushed.

Upon a smooth and grassy plat below,

By nature there as for an altar drest,

They joined their sister stream, which from the earth Welled silently.

In such a scene rude man

With pardonable error might have knelt,

Feeling a present Deity, and made

His offering to the fountain nymph devout.

The arching rock disclosed above the springs
A cave, where hugest son of giant birth,

That e'er of old in forest of romance

'Gainst knights and ladies waged discourteous war, Erect within the portal might have stood.

No holier spot than Covadonga, Spain

Boasts in her wide extent, though all her realms
Be with the noblest blood of martyrdom

In elder or in latter days enriched,

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