:

6

Count's “ Der Felsen strom"_" The ing thus, we think we have acted Cataract"_subjoining the original in rightly. For why should a man, who a note* forthe benefit of unbelievers :- has been more highly gifted than his Unperishing youth!

fellows, be therefore held less amenThou streamest from forth

able than they to the laws which Out of the rock-clift;

ought to bind all human beings, and Never mortal saw

regulate their relations and their dealThe cradle of the strong one;

ings with one another ? It is high Never ear heard

time that genius should cease to be The babbling of the noble one in his spray, pleaded as an excuse for deviations scattering well.

from the plain path of rectitude, or be The sun clothes thee

held up as a precedent which the leadIn rays of glory;

ing men of future generations may He paints with the colours of the heaven

avail themselves of, should they be ly bow

inclined to depart from the strict The wavering clouds of the dust-flood.”

standards of propriety and truth. Having alluded to the Quarterly That Coleridge was tempted into Review, we shall here take the liberty this course by vanity, by the paltry of extracting part of a sentence, from desire of applause, or by any direct that very able work, touching another intention to defraud others of their due, of Coleridge's coincidences : - We we do not believe: this never was cannot” (says the Quarterly, vol. lii. believed, and never will be believed. p. 21)—“ we cannot miss this oppor. But still he was seduced into it-God tunity of mentioning the curious fact, knows how : he did defraud others of that, long before Goethe's Faust had their due, and therefore we have appeared in a complete state-indeed considered it necessary to expose his before Mr Coleridge had ever seen proceedings, and to vindicate the rights any part of it—he had planned a work of his victims. Perhaps we might have upon the same, or what he takes to be dwelt more than we have done upon the same, idea.” This is certainly a what many may consider the extenuacurious fact; but we do not think our ting circumstances of his case-we readers will consider it so very curious, mean his moral and intellectual con. now that a good deal of light has formation, originally very peculiar, and been thrown upon the nature of his further modified by the effects of immoother " coincidences.".

derate opium-taking. But this would We have now done with our sub- only take us out of one painful subject ject. We have set forth and argued into another still more distressing. We the case of Coleridge's plagiarisms, therefore say no more.

Our purpose precisely as we should have done that will have been answered, should any of any other person who had carried future author who may covet his them on to the same extent. By this neighbour's Pegasus or prose-nag, and we mean to say, that we have accorded conceive that the high authority of to him—on the plea of peculiar ha. Coleridge may, to a certain extent, bits, or peculiar intellectual confor. justify him in making free with them, mation—no privilege, or immunity, be deterred from doing so by the exor indulgence, which we would not ample we have now put forth in ter.. equally have accorded to any plagiar- rorem. Let all men know and conist of the most methodical ways and of sider that plagiarism, like murder, the most common clay. And in act- sooner or later will out.

“ Unsterblicher Jüngling!

Dich kleidet die Sonne
Du strömest hervor

In Strahlen des Ruhmes !
Aus der Felsenkluft.

Sie mahlet mit Farben des himmlis-
Kein Sterblicher sah

chen Bogens Die Wiege des Starken:

Die schwebenden Wolken der staü-
Es hörte kein Ohr,

denden Fluth.”
Das Lallen des Edlen im sprudelnden
Quell.

- Vide Vol. I., p. 104, Gesammelte Werke der Bruder Christian

und Fred. Leopold Grafen zu Stolberg. Hamburg: 1820.

ODE

ON THE MARRIAGE OF THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND,

BY

B. SIMMONS.

I

Lift up your heads, ye glorious gates !

Ye doors, by kings uprear'd, give way!
Th' Imperial Isles' assembled States,
By Counsel led-where Valour waits,
And white-stoled Pomp predominates-

Before your thresholds pause to-day,
Presenting to a Power divine
The Daughter of their Monarch-line,
Of laurel'd chiefs and leaders sage,
Wide Ocean's lords from age to age,
Since first the Norman's brilliant mail
Flash'd through fierce Hastings' battle hail,
To her great Sire whose Captain died
What time the galleys of his war
Heaved, victory-rock'd, upon thy tide,

Tremendous Trafalgar:
For evermore their red-cross reign
Without a rival on the main !
Nor must the Sea-Kings' branch decrease,
'Nor from their hands the sceptre cease :
To-day proud Albion's peerless child,

Girt by the gallants of her land-
Earth's mightiest Queen, a maiden mild-

Shall at the altar stand,
- And meekly pledge her spousal faith,
And wear her hope-woven bridal wreath,
While round the Nations-gladness-fillid
The trident-arm’d and thunder-hill'd,

Raise the rejoicing hand.
Hark to the bursting trumpet's bray,

As slow the gorgeous ranks unfold
Above whose far-resplendent way,
Guarding his banner's floating day,

The Lion leaps in gold !

II.

Lift up your heads, ye glorious gates!

And you, majestic doors, unclose! The solemn pomp no longer waits,

But on in bright succession flows, No need to ask before whose train

The stately pursuivants advance,
Where ring gold spur and knightly chain,

And tabards gaily glance.
We pass thee not ungreeted by,
Thou graceful youth, with pensive eye,

1840.]

301

Ode on the Marriage of the Queen of England.
And forehead not by thought untraced,
– Thou, with the kingly garter graced ;
(And if, as courtly babblers say,
Thou'st won and worn the poet's bay,
Perchance thy collar's jewels shine

To thee with one soft ray the more,
At thought that He, the bard divine,
Who couch'd his lance for GERALDINE,

That badge unsullied bore.)
Pass on-a people's blessings now
Press like the air upon thy brow,
And hope prays out that thou may'st be
Undazzled by thy destiny-
For when, since empire's game began,
Did lot so brilliant circle man ?

III.

Again that regal trumpet pealing!

And lo, yon radiant pathway down-
Her handmaids Love and Vestal Feeling,

And paged by old Renown-
Soft-gleaming through that rosy cloud,
Where youth, and grace, and beauty crowd,
Shines forth conspicuous from afar,
The white-cliff*d Island's MORNING STAR !
And now she lights the purple gloom

Within the saintly chapel shed,
Where starry chief, and woman's bloom,

And wisdom's reverend head,
From vaulted gallery to the ground
In throng compact are ranged around,

IV.

And well might some amid that throng
Claim portion of the minstrel's song
But to his eager vision fast
Far other shapes are crowding past :
Yet there is ONE--and who shall raise
The strain, unmindful of his praise ?
The wise in council as in war,

Who shiver'd Gaul's imperial shield,
Still fancy sees each thunder-scar

Of that stern Flemish field
Upon his front, as when he hurl'd
The last red bolt that saved the world.
Long may a grateful country own
His aid to temple and to throne !

v.

That festal trump has ceased to peal

From arch and portal richly dim-
Before the mitred priests they kneel ;

And now the nuptial hymn,
While its full tide the organ pours,
With many a solemn close, in choral grandeur soars.
Far from the minstrel's vision fly

Attendant dame and sworded peer,
What shapes of mightier port are nigh?

What coldly beauteous eyes are here ?

Bend from your clouds, ye kingly dead !

And, crown'd, ye softer shadows bend !
Deep-echoing swell the blessing said
Upon the young anointed head
Of her, in whom-as yet unwed-

Your thousand years of glory end !
See, 'mid your pale and awful ring,
She bends, a fragile blooming thing!
Like to some fair and kneeling saint

Surrounded by cathedral glooms,
Whom marble shadows, vast and faint,

Are watching from the tombs.
Stretch forth, dark Cressy's Victor-Lord,
O'er her thy realm-protecting sword !
And, Warrior Woman! at the sweep

Of whose resistless hand
Castile's proud navies from the deep

Were drifted like the sand,
On her thy reign's bright years bestow,
And all thy fortune-save its woe!
Still round they press: that mournful Bride

Who left, reluctant, book and bower

To share the momentary power
And pomp for which she died.
The Monarch-Boy with aspect pale,
Is there, a kindred brow to hail.
And She who, at the moment Hope
Prepared her glory's page to ope,
Uncrown'd, resign'd life's gladness brief,
And left the Isles to night and grief;
For her, the favour'd, long through years

On years, shall Pity wake and Woe,
While flow the bard's melodious tears,

While Byron's strains immortal flow.
See, leaning near, her Sire, (in form

Like to the Greek's Olympian God,)
Before whom Pleasure's

rosy

charm
Was spread where'er he trode;
Who lived to drain the bitterest sup
That lurks in Joy's exhausted cup-
Who died, and with his latest breath
Left one dread moral, “ This is Death," *
To yon meek Maid, if handed down,
Worth half the brilliants in her crown.

VI.

But lo! each Shape of kingly mould

Each circling Form, august, has fled !
Before the bard again unfold

The pageant's numbers bright and bold,
And, from the batteried cannon roll'd,
That volley's thunder-crash has told

The Island Queen is wed!

* His last words to the only page in attendance at the moment. of the period.

LEIGH HUNT'S LEGEND OF FLORENCE.

We are

her now,

man

Leigh Hunt is now a successful that this one is peculiarly so, is proved dramatist, and we rejoice in his suc- by the play being throughout most incess as cordially as his best friends teresting, and the pathos towards the can do-for he deserves it.

close profound. There needs no other about to praise, but not to flatter him; proof of the fitness of the story for traand, when we think we see occasion, gedy, than that it here affects us with shall be free in our strictures, knowing terror and pity--but pity predominates, that he has an independent spirit, and that other passion is here transient ; that, like all men ofrealgenius, he would while there is no end to our tears but prefer from a disinterested critic his “ in thouglıts that lie too deep" for sincere opinion, formed in a genial spi- such effusion, and that finally settle rit, to more extravagantencomiums not down into assured peace. bearing the unequivocal impress of the How beautiful a picture ! love of truth. Nor with the congra- Colonna. I heard, as I came in, one who tulatory acclamations of sympathizing bad seen her gods and men yet ringing in his ears, Laid on the bier, say that she looks most will he be regardless of a voice from heavenly. far-off Scotland. We seldom go to Da Riva. I saw her lately, as you'll see the theatre now-a-days ; but when Murray brings out on the Edinburgh Lying but newly dead, her blind sweet looks stage The Legend of Florence, Chris- Border'd with lilies, which hier pretty maiden, topher North will be in No. Three, 'Twixt tears and kisses, put about her hair right-hand side, with his court-crutch To show her spotless life, and that wrong -crimson velvet and gold-and the house, at each soul-stirring or soul

Dared not forbid, for very piteous truth ; subduing hit, will time its thunders to And as she lay thus, not more unresisting the beck of The BALD-HEAD.

Than all her life, I pitied even him, “ A word,” says Mr Hunt, in his To think, that let him weep or ask her pleasant preface, "respecting the story

pardon of my play. When I resided near Fló Never so much, she would not answer more. rence, some years ago, I was in the lia- As she was buried, so did she arise. bit of going through a streetin that city But let us begin at the beginning, called the Street of Death,' (Via della and not at the end. The play opens Morte,)—a name given it from the well with a lively and spirited collocircumstance of a lady's having passed quy between Fulvio da Riva, a poet, through it at night-time in her grave. and Cæsare Colonna, an officer of the clothes, who had been buried during Pope-(his Holiness being on his way a trance. The story, which in its to visit his native city)—who meet on mortal particulars resembles several the high-road from Florence to Rome. of the like sort that are popular in From it we get an insight into the other countries, and which indeed are character of Agolanti, a noble Flo. no less probable than romantic, has rentine, who has been for some four been variously told by Italian authors, years married to Ginevra-and who, and I have taken my own liberties it is happily said, with it accordingly." No less pro

" Is as celestial out of his own house bable than romantic? What! being As he is devil within it.' buried alive, and undergoing resurrection ! Even so. For in that coun

So says Da Riva, and Colonna takes try the corpse is not coffined—we up the word. forget that dreadful word-and there is

Col. The devil it is! (Looking after' room for re-awakening life to breathe

him.) Methinks he casts a blackness freely in the vault of death. But is

Around him as he walks, and blights the such a strange event a fit story for a vineyards. play? Yes, every popular legend is And all is true then, is it, which they tell so, with hardly any exception ; and

me ?

a