ii.
Down into hell that wretched soul she flung,
When lo! a mighty earthquake shook the ground;
The mountain reeled. The wind swept fierce around
The black and strangled body where it hung.
From Calvary at eve, the angels wending,
On slow, hushed wing, their holy vigil o'er,
Saw it afar, and swift their white wings, blending
With trembling fear, their pure eyes spread before.
Meanwhile fiends pluck the corse down in the gloom,
And on their burning shoulders, as a bier,
Convey the burden to its nameless doom.
Cursing and howling, downward thus they steer
Their hell-ward course, and in its depths restore
The wandering soul to its damned corse once more.
sonnet upon judas.
by gianni.
Spent with the struggles of his mad despair,
Judas hung gasping from the fatal tree;
Then swift the tempter-fiend sprang on him there,
Flapping his flame-red wings exultingly.
With griping claws he clutched the noose that bound
The traitor's throat, and hurled him down below,
Where hell's hot depths, incessant bubbling glow
His burning flesh and crackling bones around:
There, mid the gloomy shades, asunder riven
By storm and lurid flame, was Satan seen;
Relaxing his stern brow, with hideous grin.
Within his dusky arms the wretch he caught,
And with smutched lips, fuliginous and hot,
Repaid the kiss which he to Christ had given.
THE CHARACTER OF BURNS.
by ebenezer elliott.
Perhaps no falsehood has been more frequently repeated, than that men of genius are less fortunate and less virtuous than other men; but the obvious truth, that they who attempt little are less liable to failure than they who attempt much, will account for the proverbial good luck of fools. In our estimate of the sorrows and failings of literary men, we forget that sorrow is the common lot; we forget, too, that the misfortunes and the errors of men of genius are recorded; and that, although their virtues may be utterly forgotten, their minutest faults will be sure to find zealous historians. And this is as it should be. Let the dead instruct us. But slanderers blame, in individuals, what belongs to the species. "We women," says Clytemnestra in Eschylus, when meditating the murder of her husband, and in reply to an attendant who was praising the gentleness of the sex, "We women are—what we are." So is it with us all. Then let every fault of men of genius be known; but let not hypocrisy come with a sponge, and wipe away their virtues.
Of the misfortunes of Cowper we have all heard, and certainly he was unfortunate, for he was liable to fits of insanity. But it might be said of him, that he was tended through life by weeping angels. Warm-hearted friends watched and guarded him with intense and unwearied solicitude; the kindest hearted of the softer sex, the best of the best, seems to have been born only to anticipate his wants. A glance at the world, will show us that his fate, though sad, was not saddest; for how many madmen are there, and how many men still more unfortunate than madmen, who have no living-creature to aid, or soothe, or pity them! Think of Milton—"blind among enemies!"