POETRY.

From the London Monthly Magazines.

YOL. 6.]

I

Original Poetry.

TO THE PLANET JUPITER.*

LOOKED on thee, Jove, till my gaze

Sank, smote from the pomp of thy blaze;
For in heaven, from the sunset's red throne
To the zenith-thy rival was none.
From thy orb rush'd a torrent of light,
That made the stars dim in thy sight,
And the half-risen moon seem'd to die,
And leave thee the realm of the sky.
I look'd on the ocean's broad breast-
The purple was pale in the west;
But down shot thy long silver spire,
And the waves were like arrows of fire
I turn'd from the infinite main,
And thy light was the light of the plain,
"Twas the beacon that blazed on the hill-
Thou wert proud, pure, magnificent still.
▲ cloud spread its wing over heaven,
By the shaft of thy splendour 'twas riven,
And I saw thy bright front through it shine,
Like a god from the depth of his shrine.
But, planet of glory and awe,
It was not thy lustre I saw,

For my soul was absorbed in the night
When last I had gazed on thy light.
I thought of the hand I had held,
Of the heart by that soft hand reveal'd,
Of the eye fixed with mine on thy beam,
And the world was forgot in my dream.
Flame on then, thou king of the sky,
For thy brightness is joy to my eye;
For this hour thou art beaming above
The home of my wife and my love.

• So beautifully seen in the heavens at present.

THI

LINES.

BY BARRY CORNWALL, ESQ.

HE night was glory. Through the skies of June
Rolled the eternal moon,

Midst dark and heavy clouds that bore
A shadowy likeness to those fabled things
That sprung of old from man's imaginings.
Each seem'd a fierce reality: some wore
The forms of sphinx and hippogriff, or seemed
Nourished among the wonders of the deep,
And wilder than the poet ever dreamed:

And there were cars steeds with their proud necks
bent-

Tower, and temple,--and broken continent:
And all, as upon a sea,

In the blue ether floated silently.

I lay upon my bed and sank to sleep:

And then I fancied that I rode upon

The waters, and had power to call
Up people who had lived in ages gone,
And seenes and stories half forgot--and all
That on my young imagination
Had come like fairy visions, and departed.

impressions are therefore strong, and, as
usual, the association of ideas with particular
objects indelible. The habits of the inhabi-
tants are simple and pastoral, and therefore
atural and pleasing.

And ever by me a broad current passed
Slowly, from which at times upstarted
Dim scenes and ill-defined shap s. At last
I bade the billows render up their dead,
And all their wild inhabitants; and I
Summoned the spirits who perished,
Or took their stations in the starry sky.
When Jove himself bowed his Saturnian head
Before the One Divinity.

First I saw a landscape fair
Towering in the clear blue air,

Like Ida's woody summits, and sweet fields,
Where all that Nature yields
Flourishes. Three proud shapes were seen,
Standing upon the green

Like Olympian queen descended.
One was unadorned, and one
Wore her golden tresses bound

With simple flowers; the third was crowned,
And from amidst her raven hair,
Like stars, imperial jewels shone.
-Not one of those figures divine
But might have sate in Juno's chair,
And smiled in great equality

On Jove, though the blue skies were shaken;
Or, with superior aspect, taken
From Hebe's hand nectarian wine.
And that Dardanian boy was there
Whom pale Enone loved: his hair
Was black, and curl'd his temples 'round;
His limbs were free and his forehead fair,
And, as he stood on a rising ground,
And back his dark locks proudly tossed,
A shepherd youth he looked, but trod
On the green sward like a god:
Most like Apollo when he played,
(Fore Midas,) in the Phrygian shade,
With Pan, and to the Sylvan lost.
And now from out the watery floor
A city rose, (and well she wore
Her beauty,) and stupendous walls,

And towers that touched the stars, and halls
Pillar'd with whitest marble, whence

Palace on lofty palace sprung:

And over all rich gardens hung,

Where, amongst silver waterfalls,

Cedars and spice-trees and green bowers,

And sweet winds playing with all the flowers
Of Persia and Araby,

Walked princely shapes: some with an air
Like warriors, some like ladies fair
Listening, and, amidst all, the king
Nebuchadnezzar rioting

In supreme magnificence.
-This was famous Babylon.

That glorious vision passed on.

And then I heard the laurel-branches sigh

87

That still grow where the bright-eyed muses walked:
And Pelion shook his piny locks, and talked

Mournfully to the fields of Thessaly.
And there I saw piercing the deep blue sky,
And radiant with his diadem of snow,
Crowned Olympus: and the hills below
Looked like inferior spirits tending round
His pure supremacy; and a sound
Went rolling onwards through the sunny calm,
As ifimmortal voices then had spoken,
And, with rich noises, broken

The silence which that holy place had bred

NARRATIVE OF D. G. DUMONT, RELATING HIS CAPTIVITY OF THIRTY-FOUR YEARS IN THE TERRITORY OF MOUNT FELIX, BETWEEN ORAN AND ALGIERS. §

HAVING thus given a specimen of the early part of our hero's adventures, and treatment, we shall not follow him so minutely through a variety of less interesting details relative to the manners and customs of the Arabs, more complete accounts of which being to be found in the narratives of Tully and Panantit much more at length. But in order that no material points of so singular a story may be withheld from our readers, they will be given in a more abridged form, when not thought sufficiently important to be related in the words of Dumont himself.

As the prison allowance was totally inadequate to satisfy the cravings of hunger, under such severe labour, the slaves were under the necessity of having recourse to every means within their reach to supply the deficiency. This was generally effected at noon, when the keepers went through a religious ceremony of ablution, or, when no water could be found, rubbing the body over with a stone. As nothing whatever

could induce them either to omit this practice, or suspend it when once be

§ See p. 74.

* Letters written during a Ten Years' Residence at the Court of Tripoly. 4to, 2d edit. 1818. + Narrative of a Residence in Algiers, by Signor Pananti, with Notes and Illustrations by Edw. Blaquiere, esq. 4to. 1818.

M ATHENEUM VOL. 6.

gun, it was invariably the signal of foraging for the slaves, who instantly spread themselves around the spot, and seized every thing they could lay their hands on, whether in a garden or house, that did not happen to be carefully watched. The marauders generally paid rather dearly for this species of indulgence, for no sooner were they discovered by the pious keepers, than vollies of stones, kept in bags suspended from the saddles of the latter's horses, brought them back, for the purpose of receiving the usual salutations of the bamboo!

On one occasion Dumont was fortunate enough to steal a sheep; this enabled him to regale the two slaves who slept next to him in the prison for a whole week; to complete this good fortune, he sold the skin for an old copper kettle, which induced them to stew the bones, and make a very good soup. The only bad consequences attending this proof of Dumont's ingenui ty, was a few hundred blows from one of the keepers.

It seems they suffered dreadfully from heat and thirst; to remedy the first, it was usual for each slave to cover his head with a wreath of leaves while his beard generally shielded his breast— that of Dumont reached to his middle. The intolerable sensations caused by thirst were assuaged by chewing some

straw, or keeping an olive stone in his mouth. Nothing, however, could exceed the misery occasioned by the prison's taking fire, while all the slaves were shut up in it; though no lives were lost, nearly all the victims had their hair and beards burnt off; and as the water intended for their use was employed to extinguish the flames; they were left without a drop for several hours, in the midst of a suffocating heat, and suffering great pain from the effects of the fire. This horrible scene was terminated by a most liberal distribution of the bamboo, which the keepers applied to some for not foreseeing the accident, and to others because they would have gladly taken advantage of the general confusion to effect their escape!

The narrator remarked that the keepers were most barsh in their treatment of those who appeared to be endowed with a greater share of sensibility than the rest; this he profited by, in making a point of assuming an air of cheerfulness, singing, &c. whenever the taskmasters began their office of daily punishment, a proof of philosophy which generally saved him from half the quota. "This fellow," the keepers would exclaim, "is made of iron, it's therefore of no use to beat him!"

The arrival of a prince, who came from Morocco for the purpose of collecting the annual tribute, indirectly led to a series of persecutions from Dumont's keeper, which not only embittered his situation very much, but eventually almost produced his death. Having contrived to excite the prince's commiseration in favour of his companions, the former gave him a hundred sequins, which he immediately distributed among them. As the keeper wit nessed the receipt and distribution of this sum, it occurred to him that Dumont ought to have made him a participator: a neglect of which duty exposed him to the most cruel treatment imaginable. No longer able to endure the severity of his persecutor he formed the resolution of being revenged; and accordingly, when next struck by the latter, he seized a large stone, and threw it with such force at the keeper's eye,

that it was forced from the socket.
Upon this, and without giving the ene-
my time to breathe, the enraged Du-
mont flew upon him like a tiger, and
remained fixed to his body, until the
united blows heaped upon him by the
whole posse of keepers obliged him to
relax from his hold.
This fracas was
followed by his being taken before Ös-
man, and confronted with the keeper:
for if the chief keeper had been present
when the scuffle ensued, instant death
must have been the portion of Dumont.
The result of this examination was,
however, infinitely more favourable than
our hero expected; for he only receiv-
ed several hundred blows from two
Arabs on the palm of his left hand,
whereas the keeper was suspended from
the nearest tree," for having preferred
money to the law of Mahomet ;"-such
were the words of Osman on giving
orders for his execution.

Owing to the blows received on his hand disabling Dumont from pursuing the ordinary labours of the field, he was appointed to turn a grindstone, a service in which he continued for a twelvemonth, exposed to the insults of all the Mussulmans, who, knowing him to be the cause of getting a keeper put to death, did not fail to manifest their rage by frequent kicks, abuse, spitting in his face, &c.

The keepers are responsible for every slave committed to their charge; so that if the head or chain of any one that may be missing is not brought back to the prison, their lives are surely forfeited. They are not treated with more ceremony than the slaves themselves on these occasions: the mode of executing a

keeper is by making him kneel down between two Koubals, one of whom pierces his side with a lance; this causes him to raise his head, upon which the other takes it off with a single blow of a Damascus. It sometimes happens that the blade comes in contact with a bone in this case a sound is produced like that of a small bell.

Osman has two sons, both very fine looking young men, who sometimes visited the prison to show their dexterity in using the attaghan and scymetar.