Art thou stone, or art thou spirit, fearful Shadow weird and grey,

Daring mortals to advance beyond their precincts of the day?

All the cliffs are shrouded to the waist, or only loom

Head and shoulders through a death-mist, but where the rollers boom

Their feet are bare and stern: pale sand I discern Near their ruined grandeur; a chrysoprase pale green Narrow water isles it, with a restless flow;

The tidal heave advances: cormorants of swarthy mien

Squat on rocks about the cave, or dive in deeps below.

While sweet samphire, with tufted thrift, grows in clefts above,

Ever and anon a sound, with ominous power to move, Wanders from the wilderness, a very mournful spell: Through the wind and wave embroilment ever tolls a passing bell.

Whence the warning? what imports it? When I clamber, when I rest,

It seems to breathe foreboding in a fading air.

Is it from the sombre church in lonely glen deprest? There, by old cross and coffin-stone, on immemorial

chair

Of rude grey granite, hoary ghosts in dark conclave may brood:

Nay! but the tolling tolleth from the turbulent flood, Not from where the giants hewed them vasty seats

of solid rock,

Or Druid with poured human blood adored the Logan block:

Not from where the Cromlech ponderous, and hoary

cirque remain,

Though we know no more who reared them, Celt or Dane, or Athelstane;

Nor whose the mouldered dust in yonder urns of perished prime,

Bard's, or warrior's, who flared a moment in the hollow Night of Time!

-There on dreary moorland haunteth owl and raven;

There at moonrise hoots the rocky carn, to confound

the craven,

While fiends are hunting dark lost souls who are shut out from Heaven

The knell is knolled by wild white arms of surges ramping round

The fatal reef, where mariners are drifted to be drowned!

It is the Rundlestone! He knolls for passing human

souls:

It is the voice of Doom from forth profound Eternity! Weird dragon forms, roughened in storms, a foamy beryl rolls

Ever around you, dumb and blind stones, who confront the sky!

I feel that in your soul there slumbers a dim Deity. Were it not better to dissolve this chaos of the mind,

...

And in the twilight of your world long consolation find,

Restoring the proud Spirit to your elemental Powers, Dying into cliff, and cloud, and snowdrift of sea flowers?

Vanishes the storm-rack in the gleaming West:

A long wide chasm, glowing like a World of Rest,
O'er the dusk horizon opens, whereinto

Visionary domes arise, and towers of tender hue!
A holy realm of Silence, a city of deep Peace,
Where Death leads all poor prisoners who have
won release!

Long ranks of high surges, heaving dark against the bright

Heaven, fall illumined 'thwart iron crags, whose frown relents to Light.

N

BYRON'S GRAVE.

HON. RODEN NOEL.

[AY! Byron, nay! not under where we tread, Dumb weight of stone, lies thine imperial head! Into no vault lethargic, dark and dank,

The splendid strength of thy swift spirit sank:
No narrow church in precincts cold and grey
Confines the plume, that loved to breast the day:
Thy self-consuming, scathing heart of flame
Was quenched to feed no silent coffin's shame!
A fierce, glad fire in buoyant hearts art thou,
A radiance in auroral spirits now;

A stormy wind, an ever-sounding ocean,
A life, a power, a never-wearying motion !
Or deadly gloom, or terrible despair,

An earthquake mockery of strong Creeds that were
Assured possessions of calm earth and sky,

Where doom-distraught pale souls took sanctuary,
As in strong temples. The same blocks shall build,
Iconoclast! the edifice you spilled,

More durable, more fair: O scourge of God,

It was Himself who urged thee on thy road;

And thou, Don Juan, Harold, Manfred, Cain,
Song-crowned within the world's young heart shalt reign!
Whene'er we hear embroiled lashed ocean roar,
Or thunder echoing among heights all hoar,
Brother! thy mighty measure heightens theirs,
While Freedom on her rent red banner bears
The deathless names of many a victory won,

Inspired by thy death-shattering clarion!
In Love's immortal firmament are set
Twin stars of Romeo and Juliet,

And their companions young eyes discover
In Cycladean Haidee with her lover.

May all the devastating force be spent? Or all thy godlike energies lie shent ? Nay! thou art founded in the strength Divine ; The soul's immense eternity is thine! Profound Beneficence absorbs thy power, While Ages tend the long-maturing flower : Our Sun himself, one tempest of wild flame, For source of joy, and very life men claim In mellowing corn, in bird, and bloom of spring, In leaping lambs, and lovers dallying. Byron! the whirlwinds rended not in vain; Aloof behold they nourish and sustain ! In the far end we shall account them gain.