But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee;
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true,
Since Sion's desolation, when that He
Forsook His former city, what could be
Of earthly structures, in His honour piled,
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

Enter its grandeur overwhelms thee not;
And why? It is not lessen'd; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode, wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by His brow.

Thou movest, but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

Vastness which grows-but grows to harmonise— All musical in its immensities;

Rich marbles-richer paintings-shrines where flame

The lamps of gold-and haughty dome, which vies In air with earth's chief structures, though their frame

Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the clouds must claim.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;
And, as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye-so here condense thy soul

To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts, until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

In mighty graduations, part by part,

The glory which at once upon thee did not dart.

Not by its fault-but thine: our outward sense
Is but a gradual grasp-and, as it is,

That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expressions; even so, this
Outshining and overwhelming edifice

Fools our fond gaze, and, greatest of the great,
Defies, at first our nature's littleness;

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

Then pause, and be enlighten'd; there is more
In such a survey than the sating gaze

Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore
The worship of the place, or the mere praise
Of art and its great masters, who could raise
What former time, nor skill, nor thought could
plan;

The fountain of sublimity displays

Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions

can.

THE OCEAN.

BY BYRON.

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he
wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth :—there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts ;—not so thou, Unchangeable save to thy wild wave's playTime writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow— Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now,

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear,
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

THE ENIGMA.

'Twas whisper'd in Heaven, 'twas mutter'd in Hell, And Echo caught faintly the sound as it fell; On the confines of Earth 'twas permitted to rest, And the Depths of the Ocean its presence confest; 'Tis found in the Sphere, when 'tis riven asunder'Tis seen in the Lightning and heard in the Thunder! 'Twas allotted to man with his earliest Breath, It attends at his Birth, and awaits him in DeathWithout it, the Soldier and Seaman may roam, But woe to the wretch that expels it from Home!

SHELLEY.-BORN 1792; DIED 1822.

THE WINTER NIGHT.

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene.

vault,

Heaven's ebon

Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love had spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow-
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless, that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pure beam-yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth on the time-worn tower
So idly that wrapt fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace ;-all form a scene