"SI JE TE PERDS, JE SUIS PERDU.
(IF I LOSE THEE, I'M LOST.)
"Shine on, thou bright beacon,
Unclouded and free,
From thy high place of calmness,
O'er life's troubled sea!
Its morning of promise,
Its smooth seas are gone,
And the billows rave wildly—
Then, bright one, shine on.
"The wings of the tempest
May rise o'er thy ray,
But tranquil thou smilest,
Undimmed by its sway;
High, high o'er the worlds
Where storms are unknown,
Thou dwellest, all beauteous,
All glorious, alone.
"From the deep womb of darkness
The lightning flash leaps,
O'er the bark of my fortune
Each mad billow sweeps;
From the port of her safety
By warring winds driven,
Had no light o'er her course
But you lone one of heaven.
"Yet fear not, thou frail one,
The hour may be near
When our own sunny headlands
Far off shall appear;
When the voice of the storm
Shall be silent and past,
In some island of heaven
We may anchor at last.
"But, bark of eternity,
Where art thou now?
The tempest wave shrieks
O'er each plunge of thy prow;
On the world's dreary ocean
Thus shattered and lost—
Then, lone one, shine on,
If I lose thee, I'm lost."
Of his dramas but one remains to us, Gisippus, and enough dramatic ability is displayed in that to make us regret that Griffin abandoned writing for the stage so early in life. We are inclined to imagine that a young man, scarcely twenty years of age, who was capable of managing so successfully a subject that required the highest powers of Boccaccio, could in his maturer years have effected even greater things. However, we must console ourselves with the reflection that what has been lost to the drama, we have gained in the excellent works before us; and as the drama is necessarily limited to the few, the world is also the gainer by the change.