THE PHANTOM LIGHT
What phantom light from yonder lonely tower,
Glimmers yet paler than the pale moon beam;—
Breaking the darkness of the midnight hour,—
What bodes its dismal, melancholy gleam?
’Tis not the brightness of that glorious light,
That bursts in splendour from the hoary north;
’Tis not the pharos of the dangerous night,
Mid storms and winds benignly shining forth.
Still are the waves that wash this desert shore,
No breath is there to fill the fisher’s sail;
Yet round yon isle is heard the distant roar
Of billows writhing in a tempest’s gale.
Doomed are the mariners that rashly seek
To land in safety on that dreadful shore;
For once engulfed in the forbidden creek,
Their fate is sealed—they’re never heard of more.
For spirits there exert unholy sway—
When favoured by the night’s portentous gloom—
Seduce the sailor from his trackless way,
And lure the wretch to an untimely doom.
A demon tenant’s yonder lonely tower,
A dreadful compound of hell, earth, and air;
To-night he visits not his favourite bower,
So pale the light that faintly glimmers there.
In storms he seeks that solitary haunt,
And, with their lord, a grim unearthly crew;
Who, while they join in wild discordant chant,
The mystic revels of their race pursue.
But when the fiends have gained their horrid lair,
The light then bursts forth with a blood-red glare;
And phantom forms will flit along the wave
Whose corses long had tenanted the grave.
A GROVE
The Formation of one with a View to the Picturesque.
The prevailing character of a grove is beauty; fine trees are lovely objects; a grove is an assemblage of them; in which every individual retains much of its own peculiar elegance; and whatever it loses is transferred to the superior beauty of the whole. To a grove, therefore, which admits of endless variety in the disposition of the trees, differences in their shapes and their greens are seldom very important, and sometimes they are detrimental. Strong contrasts scatter trees which are thinly planted, and which have not the connection of underwood; they no longer form one plantation; they are a number of single trees. A thick grove is not indeed exposed to this mischief, and certain situations may recommend different shapes and different greens for their effects upon the surface; but in the outline they are seldom much regarded. The eye attracted into the depth of the grove passes by little circumstances at the entrance; even varieties in the form of the line do not always engage the attention: they are not so apparent as in a continued thicket, and are scarcely seen, if they are not considerable.
But the surface and the outline are not the only circumstances to be attended to. Though a grove be beautiful as an object, it is besides delightful as a spot to walk or to sit in; and the choice and the disposition of the trees for effects within are therefore a principal consideration. Mere irregularity alone will not please: strict order is there more agreeable than absolute confusion; and some meaning better than none. A regular plantation has a degree of beauty; but it gives no satisfaction, because we know that the same number of trees might be more beautifully arranged. A disposition, however, in which the lines only are broken, without varying the distances, is less natural than any; for though we cannot find straight lines in a forest, we are habituated to them in the hedge-rows of fields; but neither in wild nor in cultivated nature do we ever see trees equidistant from each other: that regularity belongs to art alone. The distances therefore should be strikingly different; the trees should gather into groups, or stand in various irregular lines, and describe several figures: the intervals between them should be contrasted both in shape and in dimensions: a large space should in some places be quite open; in others the trees should be so close together, as hardly to leave a passage between them; and in others as far apart as the connection will allow. In the forms and the varieties of these groups, these lines, and these openings, principally consists the interior beauty of a grove.
The consequence of variety in the disposition, is variety in the light and shade of the grove; which may be improved by the choice of the trees. Some are impenetrable to the fiercest sunbeam; others let in here and there a ray between the large masses of their foliage; and others, thin both of boughs and of leaves, only checker the ground. Every degree of light and shade, from a glare to obscurity, may be managed, partly by the number, and partly by the texture of the trees. Differences only in the manner of their growths have also corresponding effects; there is a closeness under those whose branches descend low and spread wide, a space and liberty where the arch above is high, and frequent transitions from the one to the other are very pleasing. These still are not all the varieties of which the interior of a grove is capable; trees, indeed, whose branches nearly reach the ground, being each a sort of thicket, are inconsistent with an open plantation; but though some of the characteristic distinctions are thereby excluded, other varieties more minute succeed in their place; for the freedom of passage throughout brings every tree in its turn near to the eye, and subjects even differences in foliage to observation. These, slight as they may seem, are agreeable when they occur; it is true they are not regretted when wanting, but a defect of ornament is not necessarily a blemish.
For the Table Book.