Agib.

Weak as thou art, yet, hapless, must thou know
The toils of flight, or some severer wo!

Still, as I haste, the Tartar shouts behind,
And shrieks and sorrows load the saddening wind:
In rage of heart, with ruin in his hand,
He blasts our harvests, and deforms our land.
Yon citron grove, whence first in fear we came,
Droops its fair honors to the conquering flame.
Far fly the swains, like us, in deep despair,
And leave to ruffian hands their fleecy care.

Secander.

Unhappy land, whose blessings tempt the sword,
In vain, unheard, thou call'st thy Persian lord!
In vain thou court'st him, helpless, to thine aid,

To shield the shepherd, and protect the maid!
Far off, in thoughtless indolence resigned,

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Soft dreams of love and pleasure soothe his mind: 'Midst fair sultanas lost in idle joy,

No wars alarm him, and no fears annoy.

Agib.

Yet those green hills in summer's sultry heat,
Have lent the monarch oft a cool retreat.

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Sweet to the sight is Zabran's flowery plain;

At once by maids and shepherds loved in vain !

No more the virgins shall delight to rove
By Sargis' bank, or Irwan's shady grove;
On Tarkie's mountains catch the cooling gale,

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Or breathe the sweets of Aly's flowery vale:

Fair scene! but, ah! no more with peace possest,
With ease alluring, and with plenty blest!
No more the shepherd's whitening tents appear,
Nor the kind products of a bounteous year;

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1 Rule XIV.

No more the date, with snowy blossoms crowned!
But ruin spreads her baleful fires around.

Secander.

In vain Circassia boasts her spicy groves,
Forever famed for pure and happy loves:
In vain she boasts her fairest of the fair,
Their eyes' blue languish, and their golden hair!
Those eyes in tears their fruitless grief must send;
Those hairs the Tartar's cruel hand shall rend.

Agib.

Ye Georgian swains, that piteous learn from far
Circassia's ruin and the waste of war:

fair.

Some weightier arms than crooks and staffs prepare,
To shield your harvest and defend your
The Turk and Tartar like designs pursue,
Fixed to destroy and steadfast to undo.
Wild as his land, in native deserts bred,

By lust incited, or by malice led,

The villain Arab, as he prowls for prey,

Oft marks with blood and wasting flames the way;

Yet none so cruel as the Tartar foe,

To death inured, and nursed in scenes of woe.

He said; when loud along the vale was heard

A shriller shriek, and nearer fires appeared;
The affrighted shepherds, through the dews of night,
Wide o'er the moonlit hills renewed their flight.

THE WORLD'S FALSITY.-[CARLYLE.]

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60

65

70

1. It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world's maladies, when you call it a Sceptical World. An insincere world; a godless untruth of a world! It is out of this, as I consider, that the whole

1

1 Rule XIV.

tribe of social pestilences, French Revolutions, Chartisms, and what not, have derived their being, their chief necessity to be.

2. This must alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially alter. My one hope of the world, my inexpugnable consolation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plausibility and Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and the world is alive, instinct with Godhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of days! One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by and by1 come to know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever will take the spectacles off his eyes and honestly look to know!

1

3. For such a man the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed Products, is already past; a new century is already come. The old unblessed Products and Performances, as solid as they look, are Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other noisy, very good looking Simulacrum, with the whole world huzzahing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: Thou art not true; thou art not extant, only semblant; go thy way!

2

I

4. Yes, hollow Formulism, gross Benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an exception,-such as now and then occurs. prophesy that the world will once more become sincere; a believing world; with many Heroes in it, a Ileroic world! It will then be a victorious world; never till then.

1 An adverbial phrase, of time. 2 Wrong. Why?

HYMN. [THOMSON.]

These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness, and love.
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm ;
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;
And every sense and every heart is' joy.
Then comes Thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year;
And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,

By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales
Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined,

And spreads a common feast for all that lives.

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In winter awful Thou! with clouds and storms

Around Thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest rolled,
Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing,
Riding sublime, Thou bidst the world adore,

And humblest Nature with Thy northern blast.

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Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,

Deep felt, in these appear! a simple train,

Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined;

Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade;
And all so forming an harmonious whole,
That, as they still succeed, they ravish still,

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But wandering oft, with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not Thee, marks not the mighty hand,
That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres ;
Works in the secret deep; shoots, steaming, thence
The fair profusion that o'erspreads the Spring;
Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;

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1 Rule VI., Rem. 1.

Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth;
And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,
With transport touches all the springs of life.

Nature, attend! join, every living soul;
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
In adoration join; and, ardent, raise

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One general song! To Him, ye vocal gales,

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Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes;

Oh! talk of Him in solitary glooms!

Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine

Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.

And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,

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Who shake th' astonished world, lift high to heaven

Th' impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
And let me catch it as I muse along.

Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound;
Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself,
Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice
Or bids you roar or bids your roarings fall.
Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
In mingled clouds to Him; whose sun exalts,
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
Ye forests, bend; ye harvests, wave to Him;
Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep
Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,
Ye constellations, while your angels strike,
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,