Rudely beside the gory clay were flung
A broken sceptre and an antique crown,
So, after some imperial tragedy

August alike with sorrow and renown,
We smile to see the gauds that moved our awe,
Purple and orb, in dusty lumber lie;

Alas, what thousands, on the stage of Time,
Envied the bawbles and revered the mime!
Placed by the trunk, with long and whitening hair
By dark-red gouts besprent, the severed head
Up to the gazer's musing eyes, the while,
Look'd with its livid brow and stony smile.
On that sad scene his gaze the dreamer fed,
Familiar both the living and the dead;
Terror, and hate, and strife concluded there,
Calm in his six-feet realm* the monarch lay ;
And by the warning victim's mangled clay
The Phantom-Cromwell smiled, and bending down
With shadowy fingers, toy'd about the shadowy crown.
"Art thou content, at last, a greater thou

Than one to whom the loftiest bent the knee,
Brand to the ́false, but banner to the free-
Avenger and deliverer!"

"Fiend,” replied

The dreamer, “who shall palter with the tide ?

Deliverer! Pilots who the vessel save

Leave not the helm while winds are on the wave.

THE FUTURE is the haven of THE NOW!"

66

True," quoth the fiend; again the darkness spread, And night gave back to air the doomsman and the dead!

VIII.

He look'd again; and now

A lofty senate stern with many a form,

Not unfamiliar to the former strife;

An anxious passion knit each gather'd brow;
O'er all, that hush deep not serene, in life,
As in the air, prophetic of wild storm.

Uprose a stately shapet with dark-bright eye

"Had Nature been his executioner,

He would have outlived me!"-Cromwell, a MS. tragedy. * A whole epic was in the stern epigram of the Saxon when asked by the rival to his throne "What share of territory wilt thou give me?" "Six feet of land for a grave!"

† When Cromwell came down (leaving his musketeers without

And worn cheek lighted with a feverish glow:
It spoke, and at the aspect and the sound

The dreamer breath'd a fierce and restless sigh;
An instinct bade him hate and fear

That unknown shape, as if a foe were near;
For, mighty in that mien of thoughtful youth,
Spoke fraud's most deadly foe-a soul on fire with
Truth;

A soul without one stain

Save England's hallowing tears; the sad and starry

Vane!

There enters on that conclave high

A solitary man;

And rustling through the conclave high

A troubled murmur ran;

A moment more-loud riot all

With pike and morion gleam the startled hall :
And there, where, since the primal date
Of Freedom's glorious morn,

The eternal people solemn sate,

The people's champion spat his ribald scorn!
Dark moral to all ages! Blent in one

The broken fasces and the shatter'd throne;
The deed that damns immortally is done;

And FORCE, the Cain of nations, reigns alone!

The veil is rent, the crafty soul lies bare!

66

Behold," the demon cried, "the Future Cromwell, there!

Art thou content, on earth the greatest thou,
APOSTATE AND USURPER?" From his rest
The dreamer started with a heaving breast,
The better angels of the human heart
Not dumb to his: the hell-born laugh'd aloud,
And o'er the evil vision rush'd the cloud!

the door) to dissolve the Long Parliament, Vane was in the act of urging through the last stage the bill that would have saved the republic. See Forster's spirited account of this scene, Life of Vane, 152.

THE wind comes gently from the west,*
The smile is on the face of day,
And gayly o'er the ocean's breast
The breezes are at play;
Along the deep, upon the foe,

The sails of England bear;
Above, the busy murmurs glow,f
Hush'd in the cabin, kneels below,
A lonely man in prayer.

He pray'd as ought to pray the brave
Before the seraph-guarded throne ;
He pray'd to conquer and to save.
The morn of that immortal strife,
More anxious for a foeman's lifet
Than hopeful for his own.

II.

He rose; before him glow'd,

In limned loveliness, that haunting face,

Where, through the roseate bloom of its abode,

*The wind was now from the west, light breezes, &c. Having seen that all was as it should be, Nelson retired to his cabin and wrote the following prayer, &c.-Southey's Nelson.

"The busy murmur glows."-Gray.

"May humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet. For myself individually, I commit my life to Him that made me," &c.-Nelson's last prayer.

A portrait of Lady Hamilton hung in his cabin. The undisguised and romantic passion with which he regarded it amounted almost to superstition.-Southey's Nelson.

N

Look'd out the starry soul! Celestial, thus, Through sunset clouds, Idalian Hesperus, Breaks on the lover loitering by the sea That laves the passionate shores of soft Parthenope.* The youngest-born of the Olympian race, The Hebe of the martyr-demigod,

Never with looks of more voluptuous light The golden ether trod;

Slow-stealing where at length from earth reposed Her hero-bridegroom, as more blandly bright, Grew with her blush, the glory-purpled skies, Grim by the throne of Zeust the eagle closed At her melodious step his charmed eyes,

And worn Alcides, of his woes beguiled,

Turn'd from the whispering Mars, and Love ambrosial smiled.

III.

What thoughts were his, the doom'd and lonely one, Feeding the last look on that fatal face?

Did conscience darken o'er the evil done,

Or deem that love so deep could be disgrace?
Did that sole deed of vengeance wild and weak,
Which bow'd the warrior to the woman's slave,
Ghastly and mournful o'er his memory break?
Mark'd he the corpse, rejected by the wave,
Floating once more upon the accusing sea;
The livid aspect and the snow-white hair;
The fix'd eyes fearful with a stony glare;
Lifelike in death, the wrong'd Caraccioli ? ‡

* Parthenope, the poetical name of Naples. It was in that city that Nelson first saw Lady Hamilton.

Pind. Pyth. 1. I need scarcely perhaps inform even the general reader, that Zeus, in an application of Greek mythology, is a more appropriate name for the thunder-god than that of Jupiter.

Prince Francesco Caraccioli was at the head of the marine; nearly seventy years of age; served under the Neapolitan or Parthenopean republic against his late sovereign. When the recovery of Naples was evidently near, he applied to Cardinal Ruffo and the Duke of Calvirrano for protection; afterward endeavoured to secrete himself; was discovered in the disguise of a peasant, and carried on board Lord Nelson's ship. He was tried, found guilty, sentenced to death by hanging, the evening of his apprehension; the president (Count Thurn) of the court-martial was his personal enemy. . . . He entreated that he might be shot-in vain. It was obvious, says Mr. Southey, from whom this account is abridged, that Nelson was in

Saw he the dark-wing'd Malice cower above
The doubtful bowers of his Armida-love?
Heard he the sighs which gentler spirits breathe
O'er the one rose-leaf in the laurel wreath?
For envy harmless o'er the laurel blows,

But when did worm forego or canker spare the rose ?
Away; the centred soul, in hours like these,
Daunts not itself with phantom images;
One voice alone is heard within the heart,
"We loved, and we must part!"

Yet while the voice was heard, and heavily
Round that low cell boom'd the voice-echoing sea,
As clouds obscure the unswerving planet, fast
Across the luminous spirit rush'd the past.

IV.

The boy—once more—he was the lonely boy,*
Dreaming oracular sounds and weird, to hear
Where the brook murmur'd in a restless joy,

Or asking anxious Age with wonder," What is fear?" Away, upon the warrior seas,

Amid the icebergs of the deathlike main
Where daylight bleaches in the dreary air;†

fluenced by an infatuated attachment to Lady Hamilton, then on board, whose hatred against those whom she regarded the enemies of the Neapolitan Court made her forget what was due to the character of her sex as well as of her country. The body was carried out to a considerable distance and sunk in the bay, with three doubleheaded shot, weighing 250 pounds, tied to its legs. Between two and three weeks afterward, when the king was on board the Foudroyant, a Neapolitan fisherman came to the ship, and solemnly declared that Caraccioli had risen from the bottom of the sea, and was coming as fast as he could to Naples, swimming half out of the water. The day being fair, Nelson, to please the king, stood out to sea; but the ship had not proceeded far before a body was distinctly seen upright in the water, and approaching them. It was soon recognised to be, indeed, the corpse of Caraccioli, which had risen and floated, while the great weights attached to the legs kept the body in a position like that of a living man.-Southey's Nelson.

* When a mere child he strayed a bird's nesting from his grandmother's house; the dinner-hour elapsed; he was absent, and could not be found; the alarm of the family was very great, &c. At length, after search had been made for him in various directions, he was discovered alone, sitting composedly by the side of a brook which he could not get over. "I wonder, child," said the old lady, when she saw him, "that hunger and fear did not drive you home." "Fear!" replied the future hero, "I never saw fear; what is it?"—Ibid.

The voyage of discovery towards the North Pole in which Nel