ON PAINTING.

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL, ESQ.

O, thou! by whose expressive art
Her perfect image Nature sees
In union with the Graces, start,
And sweeter by reflection please!
In whose creative hand the hues
Stolen from yon orient rainbow shine!
I bless thee, Promethean Muse,
And hail thee brightest of the Nine!

Possessing more than mortal power!
Persuasive more than poet's tongue!
Whose lineage in a raptured hour,

From Love, the lord of Nature, sprung!
Does Hope her high possession meet?
Is joy triumphant,-sorrow flown?
Sweet is the trance, the tremour sweet,
When all we love is all our own.

But hush, thou pulse of pleasure dear;
Slow, throbbing, cold, I feel thee part;
Lone absence plants a pang severe,
Or death inflicts a keener dart;
Then for a beam of joy, to light

In Memory's sad and wakeful eye;
To banish from the noon of night
Her dreams of deeper agony.

Shall song its witching cadence roll;
Yea, even the tenderest air repeat,

That breathed when soul was knit to soul,
And heart to heart responsive beat;

What visions rise to charm, to melt!

The lost, the loved, the dead are near; Oh, hush that strain too deeply felt, And cease that solace too severe.

But thou serenely silent art,

By heaven and love both taught to lend A milder solace to the heart

The sacred image of a friend;

All is not lost if yet possest

For me that sweet memorial shine,
If close and closer to my breast
I hold the image all divine.

Or gazing through luxuriant tears,
Melt over the departed form,
Till death's cold bosom half appears

With life, and speech, and spirit warm;
She looks, she lives, this tranced hour
Her bright eye seems a purer gem
Than sparkles on the throne of power,
Or Glory's starry diadem.

Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid

A treasure to my soul has given, When Beauty's canonized shade

Smiles through the sainted hues of heaven. No spectre form of pleasure fled,

Thy softening, sweetening tints restore; For thou canst give us back the dead, Even in the loveliest garb she wore.

Then blest be Nature's guardian muse, Whose hand her polished grace redeems; Whose tablet of a thousand hues

The mirror of creation seems;

From Love began thy high descent;

And lovers charmed with gifts of thine,
Shall bless thee,-mutely eloquent,—
And hail thee brightest of the NINE!
Literary Gazette.

NIGHT.

BY JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ.

NIGHT is the time for rest;

How sweet when labours close,

To gather round an aching breast
The curtain of repose;

Stretch the tired limbs and lay the head

Upon our own delightful bed!

Night is the time for dreams;

The gay romance of life,

When truth that is and truth that seems

Blend in fantastic strife;

Ah! visions less beguiling far

Than waking dreams by daylight are!

Night is the time for toil;

To plough the classic field,
`Intent to find the buried spoil
Its wealthy furrows yield;
Till all is ours that sages taught,
That poets sang or heroes wrought.

Night is the time to weep;

To wet with unseen tears

Those graves of memory, where sleep
The joys of other years!

Hopes that were Angels in their birth,
But perished young, like things on earth!

Night is the time to watch;

On ocean's dark expanse; To hail the Peliades, or catch

The full moon's earliest glance, That brings into the home-sick mind All we have loved and left behind.

Night is the time for care;

Brooding on hours mis-spent,
To see the spectre of Despair
Come to our lonely tent;

Like Brutus midst his slumbering host
Startled by Cæsar's stalwart ghost.

Night is the time to muse;

Then from the eye the soul

Takes flight, and with expanding views,

Beyond the starry pole;

Descries, athwart the abyss of night,

The dawn of uncreated light.

Night is the time to pray;

Our Saviour oft withdrew
To desert mountains far away;

So will his follower do;

Steal from the throng to haunts untrod,
And hold communion there with God.

Night is the time for death;

When all around is peace,

Calmly to yield the weary breath,
From sin and suffering cease,
Think of heaven's bliss and give the sign
To parting friends.-Sugh death be mine!
Ackermann's 'Forget Me Not.'

FROM THE ARABIC.

THE morn that ushered thee to life, my child,
Saw thee in tears, whilst all around thee smiled!
When summoned hence to thy eternal sleep,
Oh may'st thou smile, whilst all around thee weep.

E.

E

ODE,

BY LORD BYRON.

Он, shame to thee, Land of the Gaul!
Oh, shame to thy children and thee!
Unwise in thy glory and base in thy fall,
How wretched thy portion shall be !
Derision shall strike thee forlorn,

A mockery that never shall die;
The curses of Hate and the hisses of Scorn
Shall burthen the winds of thy sky;

And proud o'er thy ruin, for ever be hurled
The laughter of Triumph, the jeers of the World.

Oh, where is thy spirit of yore,

The spirit that breathed in thy dead,
When gallantry's star was the beacon before
And honour the passion that led !
Thy storms have awakened their sleep;
They groan from the place of their rest,
And wrathfully murmur, and sullenly weep,
To see the foul stain on thy breast;

For where is the glory they left thee in trust ?—
"Tis scattered in darkness. "Tis trampled in dust!

Go look through the kingdoms of earth,
From Indus all round to the Pole,

And something of goodness, of honour, and worth,
Shall brighten the sins of the soul;

But thou art alone in thy shame!

The world cannot liken thee there;

Abhorrence and vice have disfigured thy name

Beyond the low reach of compare ;

Stupendous in guilt, thou shalt lend us, through time, A proverb, a bye-word, for treachery and crime.

While conquest illumined his sword,
While yet in his prowess he stood,