* * * * *

NIOBE.

(For the Mirror.)

  Hush’d are the groans of death, heart-piercing sound,
  That mournful rose in peals on peals around;
  Child after child by heav’nly darts expires,
  And frequent corses feed the gloomy pyres. 
  Aghast she stands!—­now here in wild amaze—­
  Now there the mother casts her madd’ning gaze: 
  In fixedness of grief, in dumb despair,
  Her looks, her mien, her inmost soul declare: 
  Her looks, her mien, her deep-sunk anguish show
  With all the silent eloquence of woe.

  See! from her cheek the rosy lustre flies;
  How dim the beams that sparkled in her eyes. 
  No more so softly heaves the throbbing breast;
  The purple currents in their channels rest;—­
  No more the Zephyr’s balmy breath can wave
  The graceful locks which laughing Hebe gave;—­
  And fade those lips where fresh vermilion shone,
  Cold as the clay, or monumental stone;—­
  O’er all her limbs an icy numbness spreads,
  And marble death eternal quiet sheds.

[2]Great sculptor hail! whom Nature’s self design’d To trace the labyrinths of the human mind—­ To read the heart, and give with strong control, To stone the silent workings of the soul:  Thine all-creative hand, thy matchless skill Could what unbounded genius plann’d, fulfil.  Hence sprang that grief-wrung form—­the languid eye—­ The bloodless lip, and look of agony—­ That face, where mute contending passions play—­ That life of pain, of anguish, and dismay.

  To sink she seems beneath the afflictive weight
  Of gloomy cares portentous of her fate;—­
  Yet on her brow still soft Affection beams,
  Tho’ Desperation prompts her sombre dreams. 
  Parental feelings thrill her tortur’d breast,
  And all the frantic mother stands confest—­
  A very Niobe—­sad, hapless name! 
  In figure, features, and in all the same: 
  The same in all as Vengeance fierce pursued
  Far to a wild and cheerless solitude. 
  For Salmo’s bard has sung (by Heaven’s decrees)
  In awful pomp she mounted on the breeze—­
  Borne by the buoyant wind—­a ghostly form—­
  She sail’d along the region of the storm.

  So oft ’tis said in Lapland’s chill domain,
  Where dreary winter holds a lengthen’d reign,
  What time the Runic drum and magic spell
  Evoke the rapt soul from its fragile cell,
  Attendant spirits, won by charms and prayer,
  In gliding motion float upon the air.

Sydenham.

S.S.

    [2] Praxiteles.

* * * * *

THE RHINE.

(To the Editor.)