That in my vanity I seemed to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beatitude. Each failing sense,
As with a momentary flash of light,

Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw
The smallest grain that dappled the dark earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air.

The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagined depth
And harmony of planet-girded suns

And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arched the wan sapphire. Nay-the hum of men

Or other things talking in unknown tongues,

And notes of busy life in distant worlds

Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.

A marvellous description of mental doubt and perplexity follows, and then the poet tells how his vision was cleared and his thought uplifted until he felt "unutterable buoyancy and strength" to penetrate "the trackless fields of undefined existence far and free." The mists passed away, and in the clear light of a new morn he saw the enchanted city of Timbuctoo.

Then first within the South methought I saw

A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile

Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement

On battlement, and the Imperial height
Of canopy o'ercanopied.

Behind

In diamond light up spring the dazzling peaks

Of Pyramids, as far surpassing earth's

As heaven than earth is fairer. Each aloft

Upon his narrowed eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss

Of radiance. But the glory of the place
Stood out a pillared front of burnished gold,
Interminably high, if gold it were

Or metal more ethereal, and beneath

Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan,

Through length of porch and valve and boundless hall,
Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom

The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitude of multitudes

That ministered around it--if I saw

These things distinctly, for my human brain
Staggered beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

What the Seraph said to him when he had raised him up is told in a luxury of language which afterwards was found perfected in the Idylls of the King. The Spirit had been sent to sway the heart of man and teach him to attain, by shadowing forth the Unattainable." It was he who with every changing season played about the human heart, visited man's eyes with visions, "and his ears With harmonies of wind and wave and wood."

And few there be

So gross of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see: they with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lo I have given thee

To understand my presence, and to feel

My fullness: I have filled thy lips with power.

I have raised thee nigher to the spheres of heaven,

Man's first, last home: and thou with ravished sense
Listenest the lordly music flowing from

The illimitable years.

The Seraph, too, was the permeating life coursing through the labyrinthine veins of fable, and with beautiful impressiveness he told the mortal by his side the doom of all things glorious and fair.

Child of man,

Seest thou yon river, whose translucent wave
Forth issuing from the darkness, windeth through

The argent streets o' the city, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous domes,
Her gardens frequent with the stately palm,
Her pagods hung with music of sweet bells,
Her obelisks of rangéd chrysolite,

Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,
And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring

To carry through the world those waves, which bore
The reflex of my city in their depths.

Oh city oh latest throne! where I was raised
To be a mystery of loveliness

Unto all eyes, the time is well-nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-walled, barbarian settlements.
How changed from this fair city!

The poem, good as it is, must chiefly be regarded as an omen. It was the true gold of morning-the opening of a long and cloudless day. We could have wished that the poet had seen fit to include Timbuctoo in his collected works, but perhaps the incongruity of the subject made him decide upon its exclusion rather than the defects of treatment. Hallam and Milnes were among the first to congratulate their friend upon his triumph, and John Sterling or Frederic Maurice-it is not certain whichhailed the dawning genius in the pages of the Athenæum. After quoting a long passage the critic asked, " How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?" The poem was printed for the first and last time with the author's consent in the College Magazine; but in the Ode to Memory ("written very early in life," but first published in 1830) two of the lines have been preserved

Listening the lordly music flowing from

The illimitable years.

The Prize Poem was not to escape the cruel fate of burlesque, and Thackeray's was the hand to inflict the

blow. In The Snob an anonymous letter appeared with an enclosure of verses, and the whole is so amusing and good-natured that I cannot refrain from reproducing a portion of the skit.

66
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SNOB."

Sir,-Though your name be " Snob," I trust you will not refuse this tiny Poem of a Gownsman, which was unluckily not finished on the day appointed for the delivery of the several copies of verses on Timbuctoo. I thought, sir, it would be a pity that such a poem should be lost to the world; and, conceiving The Snob to be the most widelycirculated periodical in Europe, I have taken the liberty of submitting it for insertion or approbation.—I am, Sir, yours, &c.

TIMBUCTOO.

THE SITUATION.

In Africa (a quarter of the world),

Men's skins are black, their hair is crisp and curl'd,
And somewhere there, unknown to public view,

A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.

THE NATURAL HISTORY.

There stalks the tiger-there the lion roars
Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors;
All that he leaves of them the monster throws
To jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites, and crows;
His hunger thus the forest monster gluts,

And then lies down 'neath trees called cocoa nuts.

THE LION HUNT.

Quick issue out, with musket, torch, and brand!
The sturdy blackamoors, a dusky band!

The beast is found-pop go the musketoons—
The lion falls covered with horrid wounds.

THEIR LIVES AT HOME.

At home their lives in pleasure always flow,
But many have a different lot to know.

ABROAD.

They're often caught, and sold as slaves, alas!

REFLECTIONS ON THE FOREGOING.

Thus men from highest joys to sorrow pass.
Yet though thy monarchs and thy nobles boil

Rice and molasses in Jamaica's isle ;
Desolate Afric! thou art lovely yet!!

One heart yet beats that ne'er thee shall forget.
What though thy maidens are a blackish brown,
Does virtue dwell in whiter breasts alone?

Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!

It shall not, must not, cannot, e'er be so.

The day shall come when Albion's self shall feel
Stern Afric's wrath, and writhe 'neath Afric's steel.

I see her tribes the hill of glory mount,

And sell their sugars on their own account;

While round her throne the prostrate nations come,
Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum.

In one portion of his Timbuctoo Tennyson had supplied an explanatory footnote—a habit to which he was greatly addicted in his youth. Thackeray, not to be behind, supplied voluminous explanations, such as: "Line I-The site of Timbuctoo is doubtful; the author has neatly expressed this in the poem, at the same time giving us some slight hints relative to its situation." "Lines 15 and 18-—A concise but affecting description is here given of the domestic habits of the people. . . . The author trusts the reader will perceive the aptness with which he has changed his style. When he narrated facts he was calm; when he enters on prophecy he is fervid."

Tennyson had the greatest objection to ridicule of this sort, and it is not improbable that he resented Thackeray's playfulness, though, happily, there was no break in their friendly relations. As a proof of the poet's sensitiveness it may be related that at a college symposium he read to his assembled friends the lines on the Kraken, with the fine conclusion that the monster will not emerge from the seadepths "until the latter fire shall heat the deep"

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

As the poet finished reading, one of the friends, more ribald than the rest, exclaimed, “That will be a pretty kettle of fish!" Tennyson glared at the speaker in silence, and left