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The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that cry

Which made me look a thousand ways,
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen!

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget1

That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, fairy place;

That is fit home for thee !2

Wordsworth.

ADDRESS TO AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY.3

AND thou hast walked about-how strange a story !—
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago;
When the Memnonium1 was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

(1) Beget, &c.-recall, and as it were create anew, the scenes of boyhood. This faculty, which the mind possesses of reviving a train of scenes and circumstances, long past, on the recollection of some one of them, is usually called the association of ideas-the above poem is a pleasing illustration of the phenomenon. Akenside (in his "Pleasures of Imagination") thus refers to it:

"A song, a flower, a name, at once restore

Those long-connected scenes where first they moved

The attention."

(2) Fit home, &c.-the vision of the "golden time" so fills the mind, that the earth seems to change into a fairy place, well suited to the mysterious and unreal character fancifully attributed to the Cuckoo.

(3) "This poem has been deservedly admired for its picturesque vigour, combine 1 with richness and felicity of historical allusion."-Encyclopædia Britannica. (4) Memnonium-the name given to a temple now in ruins, supposed to have been dedicated to Memnon, an ancient king of Egypt.

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above ground, Mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon;

Not like thin ghosts, or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features.

Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect—

To whom should we assign the Sphinx's1 fame?
Was Cheops, or Cephrenes,2 architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey's pillar3 really a misnomer?
Had Thebes a hundred gates as sung by Homer?

Perhaps thou wert a mason,5 and forbidden
By oath to tell the mysteries of thy trade;
Then say what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest-if so, my struggles
Are vain-Egyptian priests ne'er owned their juggles.7
Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,

Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;

(1) Sphinx―an Egyptian monster, with a virgin's face and a quadruped's body; said to have proposed riddles, and destroyed those who could not solve them.

(2) Cheops, Cephrenes-two ancient kings of Egypt, to whom Herodotus attributes the building of the two largest pyramids.

(3) Pompey's pillar-the column at Alexandria, which is thus named, is supposed to have been erected long after Pompey's time-in the reign of Diocletian. The name it bears is, therefore, a misnomer.

(4) Thebes-in the Bible called No, or No Ammon-was situated in Upper Egypt. Homer (Iliad ix. 381, &c.) calls it "the city with a hundred gates," each of which, he says, sent out two hundred men, with horses and chariots.

(5) Mason-i.e. a freemason; one of a company or society of men calling themselves by that name, and professing to maintain, as a condition of membership, some awful secrets, which they are sworn never to divulge.

(6) Secret melody, &c.-It seems clear that at sunrise certain sounds did issue from a particular statue, called Memnon's head, but in what manner the Egyptian priests contrived this "juggle "-for such it doubtless was-is unknown.

(7) Juggle-probably from the Latin jocus, a joke or sport, whence joculor, joculator, and the old Anglo-Norman jogelour (used by Chaucer), one who plays tricks or makes sport.

(8) Hob-a-nob supposed to be the same as hab or nab, i.e. have or not have, formerly used in asking a person whether he would have a glass of wine or not, or, as above, applied to the fact of drinking together. Halliwell considers it " the act of touching glasses in pledging a health."

Or dropt a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed' thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled or knuckled,
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled!
Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after thy primeval race was run.

Thou couldst develop, if that withered tongue
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen,
How the world looked when it was fresh and young,
And the great Deluge still had left it green;
Or was it then so old, that History's pages
Contained no record of its early ages?

Still silent, incommunicative elf?

Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows;
But, prythee, tell us something of thyself,
Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house!

Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,
What hast thou seen, what strange adventures numbered?

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above-ground, seen some strange mutations;

The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen-we have lost old nations;
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother3 o'er thy head,
When the great Persian conqueror, Čambyses,

(1) Doff-to do off, or put off, as don, is to do on, or put on, and dout, to do out. or put out.

(2) Mauled-to maul is to beat with a mall or large hammer, or in a secondary sense, to beat severely, so as to occasion bruises.

(3) Pother-same as pudder or powder, dust, as raised by a horse running swiftly. Shakspere (in "Lear") writes:

"Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now."

Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,1

And shook the Pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:-

A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusty cheek have rolled;
Have children climbed those knees, and kissed that face?
What was thy name, and station, age, and race?

Statue of flesh2-Immortal of the dead!
Imperishable type of evanescence!

Posthumous man, who quitt'st thy narrow bed,

And standest undecayed within our presence!
Thou wilt hear nothing till the judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning!

Why should this worthless tenement endure,
If its undying guest be lost for ever?
Oh! let us keep the soul embalmed and pure
In living virtue; that, when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom!

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THE ALPS AT DAY-BREAK.

Horace Smith.

THE sun-beams streak the azure skies,
And line with light the mountain's brow:
With hounds and horns the hunters rise,
And chase the roebuck through the snow.

From rock to rock with giant-bound,
High on their iron poles they pass;
Mute,3 lest the air, convulsed by sound,

Rend from above the frozen mass.4

(1) Osiris, &c.-names of Egyptian divinities, worshipped under various forms. (2) Statue of flesh, &c.-this is a very striking passage. The opposition in the terms excites and interests the mind. Statue of what? Marble? No-flesh. Immortal-undying-of the dead. Imperishable-undecaying-type of decay. (3) Mute-i. e. at particular spots, where danger was to be apprehended. (4) Frozen mass-an avalanche or huge mass of snow.

The goats wind slow their wonted way,'
Up craggy steeps and ridges rude;
Marked by the wild wolf for his prey,
From desert cave or hanging wood.
And while the torrent thunders loud,
And as the echoing cliff's reply,
The huts peep o'er the mountain cloud,
Perched, like an eagle's nest, on high.

THE CALENDAR OF FLORA.2

Rogers.

FAIR rising from her icy couch,
Wan heralds of the floral year,

The snow-drop marks the Spring's approach,
Ere yet the primrose groups appear,

Or

peers the arum from its spotted veil,

Or odorous violets scent the cold capricious gale.

Then thickly strewn in woodland bowers,

Anemonies their stars unfold,

There spring the sorrel's veined flowers,
And rich in vegetable gold,

6

(1) Way-this line and that in the first stanza, "With hounds and horns the hunters rise,"-supply instances of what is called alliteration, or the frequent recurrence of the same initial letter. It is an artifice of composition which ought to be very judiciously employed to satisfy a cultivated taste- though its occasional introduction is pleasing. The poet Churchill has at once ingeniously ridiculed and exemplified it in the following line :

"And apt alliteration's artful aid.”

(2) In the "Calendar of Flora," the flowers, by their appearance at different parts of the year, serve as a sort of register, or calendar, of the seasons.

(3) Herald-synonymous with harbinger and messenger. All these words convey the idea of going before, but differ in the purpose.

A herald is one who goes before to declare something. A harbinger is one who goes before to procure a harbour or lodging for some important personage. A messenger is one who goes before to take a message.

(4) Arum maculatum-spotted arum, or cuckoo-pint.

(5) Anemonies-called also wind-flowers. The anemone nemorosa is here referred to.

(6) Vegetable gold-an expression borrowed from Milton (Paradise Lost, iv. 218), and somewhat affectedly employed here to denote the golden colour of the cowslips.

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