As tho' in dark relief to paint on high

A valiant people's discontent below: Unnumber'd ships in dim perspective lie,

Whose myriad spars swing in the fresh'ning breeze, While their tall mainmasts tow'ring to the sky Form a fair forest in the Solent seasMagnificently still - at once our shield and bow, To guard our ramparts, and assail our foe.

Mysteriously now, as in a dream,

The towery shapes like phantom figures pass: No snowy canvas flaps upon the beam ;

No noisy wheel impels the giant mass:

Some fabled spirit, we might almost deem,
Urged on their silent march with magic force :
The driving tempest and the adverse stream

Must mighty be, to turn them from their course; While huge strange1 monsters follow in their wake, Whose iron nerves no cannon storm can shake.

1 Floating batteries.

In mute expression solemnly they speak

How great is England's power to strike the blow— How grand her spirit, that she does not wreak

A fearful vengeance on the stricken foe:

And now her sons, from many a beach and peak,
People the shores with life, and view with pride
Th' armada vast, yet on the gloomy cheek

Glows not the blood of Pleasure's ruddy tide :
No glad enthusiasm fires the downcast eye;
The cheers, as soon as raised, in sullen silence die.

As oft the coming storm in dread repose

Is hush'd-the squadron grimly sleeps - but lo! To-morrow's sun that tempest may disclose

Pouring its hail of bullets on the foe.

Deep as the tide that in the Solent flows,

High as yon mainmast be the lofty cause,
Which next shall empty out the vials of woe,

And loose our war hounds on a foreign shore.
Oh, may the majesty of your colossal might
Be ever guided by the polar star of right.

TINTERN ABBEY.

OH! what a pile divine of human art
Thou standest o'er the Wye's sequester'd vale;
Proclaiming that our fathers had the heart

To weigh their gifts by no restricted scale.

What offerings yield we now, what temple raise,
Whose glory promises one tithe of thine?

Whose stately towers shall claim our children's praise,
And win fresh laurels from the hand of Time?

Think you is God well pleased His house of prayer.

The earthly dwelling of His majesty,

Should in each lineament so bald and bare

Draw forth profane jests from the passer by ?

Say, shall the God we reverence and fear,

In curtains dwell, and we in sumptuous halls Oh! be the temples that to Him we rear,

Statelier, not meaner, than our household walls.

1 2 Samuel, vii. 2.

THE SONG OF DEATH.

It is not in the battle-field, nor on the plague-doom'd

land,

Nor 'neath Lucknow's steep walls alone ye trace my

ghastly hand;

Not only in the cannonade, or in the midnight gloom, Where Lawrence and brave Havelock fell, struck down by early doom;

Far from the hurricane of war, the stormy battle strife,

Where waveth wildly to and fro the flickering flame

of life;

In the chamber of young beauty, by disease's piercing

blast,

Have I extinguish'd suddenly life's bright lamp as I

pass'd.