Horæ quidem cedunt, et dies, et menses, et anni: nec præteritum tempus unquam revertitur; nec, quid sequatur, sciri potest.

CICERO.

THE SPIRIT OF TIME.

ANOTHER Year, methought a Spirit cried,

Another Year is dead! Still rolls the world
Magnificent as ever; bright the Sun,

And beautiful his native heaven; the Earth

Around, looks fresh as on her birth-day morn; And Man, as gay as if no knell had rung,

No heart been broken, and no tears been shed!Where, then, the hist'ry of the buried Year,

Of weal and woe, of glory and of shame?

ETERNAL! not a minute fleets away

That doth not waft a record to Thy throne:

Time cannot die; the dim departed years

Again will rise, and cited ages come
Like thoughts,-creations of the mind.

A Year hath perish'd!—who can tell his tale?
Ye Thunders! kings of cloudy wrath sublime
With herald lightnings to announce your power,
Say, from your sleep shall ye be summon'd forth,
And tell your havoc; in the blaze of noon,
And in the night-wing'd tempest darkly made?
Or shall I bid th' unbosom'd ocean yield

Her dead, or let the unfrequented graves
Expand, and shew their ghastly inmates there?—

There is no moral loud enough, and deep, To hush the laugh of Life, above the tomb; Time, accident, and change,-they melt forgot, Like clouds of feeling ;-not the dread alarm

Of Nature can arouse the world to think.—

There was an earthquake in a far-off isle ;

The heavens were blacken'd, and the grim waves

yell'd,

While Ocean, heaving like a human breast

agony, groan'd wildly from her depths!

All earth seem'd fear-struck; on their bowing trees

The leaves hung shudd'ring, through the heated air

The dull wind mutter'd with a spirit-tone,

And fitfully the island-cities rock'd!

At midnight came the Earthquake in his ire

And gloom, and made the world's foundation reel!

Temples and domes were shatter'd; shrieks and

prayers

Rang in wild tumult through the rended skies,

And crash'd to dust, a thousand corpses lay

Gulph'd in the ground, and sepulchred by night!

Cold morning came ;—a sadness cloak'd each brow: Yet none could dream of Judgment in their doom, And in the earthquake hear the voice of Heaven!

A Year hath vanish'd,-and how many eyes Are film'd, how many lovely cheeks are cold! What lips, that let out music from the soul,

Are death-seal'd now! Bend, human Pride! and see

The desolation and the curse of Time:

Monarch of millions! at whose royal feet

The treasures of the ransack'd earth were laid,

And on whose brow the pride of Ages sat,

Where slumber'st thou ?-the sleep of death is thine,

And worms will revel on thy ashy form

As on the meanest of forgotten dust!

What hast thou lost, unheedful World? Thy

great