As thou art here-here, in this writhing heart,
All sinful, wild and ruin’d as thou art!
By the remembrance of our once pure love,
Which, like a church-yard light, still burns above,
The grave of our lost souls-which guilt in thee
Cannot extinguish, nor despair in me!

I do conjure, implore thee to fly hence-
If thou hast yet one spark of innocence,
Fly with me from this place,'

p. 69.

She accedes to the proposal with nearly as much ardour as Azim had shewn in making it. Her words are even breathless, if you will believe Mr. Moore.-For example.

with thee! oh bliss!

'Tis worth whole years of torment to hear this.
What take the lost one with thee? let her rove
By thy dear side, as in those days of love,
When we were both so happy, both so pure-
Too heavenly dream! if there's on earth a cure
For the sunk heart, 'tis this,-day after day
To be the blest companion of thy way;-
To hear thy angel eloquence to see
Those virtuous eyes forever turn'd on me;
And in their light rechasten'd silently,
Like the stain'd web that whitens in the sun,
Grow pure by being purely shone upon. p. 70.

But Mokanna's voice is heard reminding her of her oath, which palsies her virtue at once, leaving her strength enough, however, to rush from her lover, after 'giving him a very particular account of her wedding in the charnel-house. This wedding is in fact the spice of almost all the dialogue in the poem.

The Caliph is at length startled by the impious pretensions of the impostor, and comes out to overwhelm him. We find ourselves at once in the heart of his camp, and it is full of splendour and life.

.

'Whose are the gilded tents that crowd the way,

Where all was waste and silent yesterday?

This city of war which, in a few short hours,
Hath sprung up here, as if the magic powers
Of Him who, in the twinkling of a star,
Built the high pillar'd halls of Chilminar,
Had conjur'd up, far as the eye can see,

This world of tents and domes and sun-bright armory!

Princely pavilions, screen'd by many a fold
Of crimson cloth, and topp'd with balls of gold;
Steeds, with their housings, of rich silver spun,
Their chains and poitrels glittering in the sun;
And camels, tufted o'er with Yemen's shells
Shaking in every breeze their light-ton'd bells!
But yester-eve, so motionless around,

So mute was this wide plain, that not a sound
But the far torrent, or the locust-bird

Hunting among the thickets, could be heard;
Yet hark! what discords now of every kind,
Shouts, laughs, and screams are revelling in the wind!
The neigh of cavalry; the tinkling throngs
Of laden camels and their drivers' songs;
Ringing of arms, and flapping in the breeze
Of streamers from ten thousand canopies;
War-music, bursting out from time to time
With gong and tymbalon's tremendous chime;
Or, in the pause, when harsher sounds are mute,
The mellow breathings of some horn or flute;
That far off, broken by the eagle note

Of th' Abyssinian trumpet, swell and float.' p. 74.

The battle inclines at first to the side of the prophet, when Azim suddenly appears in the ranks of the caliph, and sweeps before him the hosts of the unfaithful. There is grandeur in Mokanna's unmoveableness during the rout of his army.

In vain Mokanna, midst the general flight,
Stands, like the red moon, on some stormy night
Among the fugitive clouds that, hurrying by,
Leave only her unshaken in the sky!' p. 81.

His ferocity is as terrible and as strongly given.

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the sole joy his baffled spirit knows

In this forc'd flight, is-murdering as he goes!
As a grim tiger, whom the torrent's might,
Surprises in some parch'd ravine at night,
Turns, e'en in drowning, on the wretched flocks
Swept with him in that snow-flood from the rocks,
And, to the last, devouring on his way,

Bloodies the stream he hath not power to stay! p. 82.

The prophet is compelled to shut himself up in a walled city, and there, after practising several impostures upon his

surviving adherents, to keep up their faith and zeal, he invites them to a feast, where he promises to unfold his miraculous face, and then turn it upon the foe, to smite him like a sunstroke of the desert.' He prudently poisons them all before unveiling, and laughs at them in their agonies. Zelica, whose only charm now is, that she is his victim, is summoned by a dying messenger, to witness the spectacle, and partake of the beverage.'

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By the glimmering light,

Of the pale dawn, mix'd with the flare of brands
That round lay burning, dropp'd from lifeless hands,
She saw the board in splendid mockery spread,
Rich censers breathing-garlands overhead-
The urns, the cups, from which they late had quaff'd,
All gold and gems, but what had been the draught?
Oh! who need ask, that saw those livid guests,

With their swoll'n heads sunk black'ning on their breasts,
Or looking pale to heaven, with glassy glare.' &c. p. 97.

The prophet continues anxious about his personal attractions to the last, and that the enemy may not have a sight of him, dead or alive, he plunges into a cistern of burning drugs, which utterly consume him. Zelica, not having drunk quite enough poison, is left the only living thing in the city. She puts on the prophet's veil, and approaches the enemy to invite a death wound. This she receives from Azim-upon which a suitable explanation follows, and the matter is ended.-For Mr. Moore's sake, we hope this story is founded in fact. Human nature is much better able than he to bear the weight of its absurdity. This is, we believe, his first attempt at the violent and awful in poetry, and if it is a fair specimen of his talent that way, he cannot hurry back too fast to his marvellous ballads, where it is no sin to turn the terrible into the ridiculous. We need not try to soften this, by adding that the puem has powerful passages we wish it had more, and that its materials, which are often fine, had been better wrought.

We have next a short, unpretending, delicate poem, ، Paradise and the Peri,' in which Mr. Moore is quite at his ease, as the matter itself is light, and the strong heroick verse, which tried him so sorely before, is here given up for the gay and varied measure in which he has rejoiced all Vol. VI. No. 1.

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his life. He acquaints us here with the travels of some aerial creature, which lives upon perfumes, in search of a gift that might propitiate heaven, and regain for her the blissful seat which her race had forfeited. She carries first the blood of a patriot, but in vain-the farewell sigh of selfsacrificing love, and still fails-but the tear of repentance, the offering of a broken and contrite heart, is accepted and with it the enraptured Peri. We must pass this over, not because it wants beauty or invention, nor, as our readers may begin to think, because it has nothing for us to find fault with but we must spare a little room for a few extracts from Mr. Moore's finest work.

The story of the Fire-worshippers is perfectly simple and direct, with few characters and incidents, and almost every thing in it conspiring to exhibit the stern and melancholy patriotism of a Persian hero, and the unfortunate loves of himself and an Arabian beauty. The Fire-worshippers were those original natives of Iran or Persia, who adhered to their ancient faith, the religion of Zoroaster.' The poem gives us one of their fruitless struggles against their Arab masters. Al Hassan, the Arabian leader, is accompanied by his daughter, and for safety had placed her in a bower of freshness,' upon a rough and bold steep. She is, however, discovered there by Hafed, the chieftain of the enemy, and as difficulties are only love's incentives in the ages of rapture, he soon finds his way to her bower and heart. Hinda is ignorant that her lover is a Fire-worshipper, the foe of her father and faith. She comes slowly to the knowledge of this, and betrays so much alarm when she thinks of his danger, that her father determines to send her back to Arabia. Hafed encounters the bark on its way, and carries Hinda to his fastness in the mountains, where she informs him that his retreat would be invaded that night by her father, who had learnt its approaches from a traitor. He sends her out of the reach of danger-the battle follows, and Hafed, the last survivor, kindles the funeral pyre, which he had raised near the shrine of the sun, and throws himself into the flame. Hinda witnesses this from the bark to which she had been conveyed, and plunges into the wave.

The description of Hafed's retreat on the mountain is novel and distinct. Mr. Moore rarely gives a picture that has so much of truth and originality, and takes such entire

possession of the imagination. It may be well to connect with this description, the conveyance of Hinda to her lover's retreat.

"There stood-but one short league away
From old Harmozia's sultry bay-

A rocky mountain o'er the sea
Of Oman beetling awfully.
A last and solitary link

Of those stupendous chains that reach
From the broad Caspian's reedy brink
Down winding to the Green-Sea beach.
Around its base the bare rocks stood,
Like naked giants, in the flood,

As if to guard the gulf across;
While, on its peak that brav'd the sky,
A ruin'd temple tower'd, so high
That oft the sleeping albatross
Struck the wild ruins with her wing,
And from her cloud-rock'd slumbering
Started-to find man's dwelling there
In her own silent fields of air!
Beneath, terrifick caverns gave
Dark welcome to each stormy wave
That dash'd, like midnight revellers, in ;
And such the strange, mysterious din
At times throughout those caverns roll❜d,
And such the fearful wonders told
Of restless sprites imprison'd there,
That bold were Moslem, who would dare,
At twilight hour, to steer his skiff
Beneath the Gheber's lonely cliff.

On the land side, those towers sublime,
That seem'd above the grasp of time,
Were sever'd from the haunts of men
By a wide, deep and wizard glen,
So fathomless, so full of gloom,

No eye could pierce the void between ;
It seem'd a place where Gholes might come
With their foul banquets from the tomb,
And in its caverns feed unseen.
Like distant thunder, from below,
The sound of many torrents came;

Too deep for eye or ear to know
If 'twere the sea's imprison'd flow,

Or floods of ever-restless flame. p. 177, 178.