THE SUICIDE.

AN ODE.

BENEATH the beech, whose branches bare,
Smit with the lightning's livid glare,

O’erhang the craggy road,
And whistle hollow as they wave;
Within a solitary grave,
A Slayer of himself holds his accurs'd abode.

Lower'd the grim morn, in murky dies
Damp mists involv'd the scowling skies,

And dimm’d the struggling day;
As by the brook, that ling'ring laves

Yon rush-grown moor with sable waves,
Full of the dark resolve he took his sullen way.

I mark'd his desultory pace,
His gestures strange, and varying face,

With many a mutter'd sound;
And ah! too late aghast I view'd

The reeking blade, the hand embru’d; He fell, and groaning grasp'd in agony the ground.

Full many a melancholy night
He watch'd the slow return of light;

And sought the powers of sleep,
To spread a momentary calm

O'er his sad couch, and in the balm ::. . Of bland oblivion's dews his burning eyes to steep.

VOL. VI.

M

Full oft, unknowing and unknown,
He wore his endless noons alone,

Amid th' autumnal wood:
Oft was he wont, in hasty fit,

Abrupt the social board to quit, And gaze with eager glance upon the tumbling flood.

Beckoning the wretch to torments new,
Despair, for ever in his view,

A spectre pale, appear’d;
While, as the shades of eve arose,

And brought the day's unwelcome close, More horrible and huge her giant-shape she rear'd.

“ Is this," mistaken Scorn will cry,
“ Is this the youth whose genius high

“ Could build the genuine rhyme ?
“ Whose bosom mild the favouring Muse

“ Had stor’d with all her ample views, “ Parent of fairest deeds, and purposes sublime.”

Ah! from the Muse that bosom mild
By treacherous magic was beguild,

To strike the deathful blow :
She fill'd his soft ingenuous mind

With many a feeling too refin'd,
And rous’d to livelier pangs his wakeful sense of woe.

Though doom'd hard penury to prove,
And the sharp stings of hopeless love ;

To griefs congenial prone,

More wounds than nature gave he knew,

While misery's form his fancy drew
In dark ideal hues, and horrors not its own.

Then wish not o'er his earthy tomb.
The baleful nightshade's lurid bloom

To drop its deadly dew: ,
Nor oh! forbid the twisted thorn,

That rudely binds his turf forlorn, With spring's green-swelling buds to veģetate ancw.

What though no marble-piled bust
Adorn his desolated dust,

With speaking sculpture wrought?
Pity shall woo the weeping Nine, i

To build a visionary shrine,
Hung with unfading flowers, from fairy regions

brought.

What though refus'd each chanted rite?
Here viewless, mourners shall delight

To touch the shadowy shell:
And Petrarch's harp, that wept the doom

Of Laura, lost in early bloom, ' .
In many a pepsive pause shall seem to ring his

knell.

To sooth a lone, unhallow'd shade,
This votive dirge sad duty paid,

Within an ivied nook:.

Sudden the half-sunk orb of day More radiant shot its parting ray, And thus a cherub-voice my charm’d attention took,

“ Forbear, fond bard, thy partial praise ; Nor thus for guilt in specious lays

The wreath of glory twine: In vain with hues of gorgeous glow Gay Fancy gives her vest to flow, Unless Truth's matron-hand the floating folds con

fine.

“ Just heaven, man's fortitude to prove,
Permits through life at large to rove

The tribes of hell-born Woe:
Yet the same power that wisely sends

Life's fiercest ills, indulgent lends
Religion's golden shield to break th' embattled foe.

“ Her aid divine had lull'd to rest
Yon foul self-murderer's throbbing breast,

And stay'd the rising storm :
Had bade the sun of hope appear

To gild his darken’d hemisphere,
And give the wonted bloom to nature's blasted

form.

“ Vain man! 'tis heaven's prerogative
To take, what first it deign’d to give,

Thy tributary breath :

In awful expectation plac'd,

Await thy doom, nor impious haste To pluck from God's right hand his instruments of

death.”

BOUND for holy Palestine,
Nimbly we brush'd the level brine,
All in azure steel array’d;
O’er the wave our weapons play'd,
And made the dancing billows glow;
High upon the trophied prow,
Many a warrior-minstrel swung
His sounding harp, and boldly sung:

“ Syrian virgins, wail and weep,
“ English Richard ploughs the deep!
“ Tremble, watchmen, as ye spy,
“ From distant towers, with anxious eye,
“ The radiant range of shield and lance
“ Down Damascus' hills advance. i.
“ From Sion's turrets as afar
“ Ye ken the march of Europe's war!
“ Saladin, thou paynim king,
“ From Albion's isle revenge we bring!
“On Açon's spiry citadel,
“ Though to the gale thy banners swell,