And listening, as you glide along,
  To lays from TASSO, by that moon
    Whose beams, alas! he felt too strong,
  And of whose mad’ning philters all,
  Who feel the Muse’s genuine call,
  Are doom’d, at times, to drink as deep,
  As did Endymion in his sleep!

  Still by your fire-sides sit, and think
  Of palaces, along the brink
  Of ocean-floods,—­whose shadows there
  Look like the ruins, grand and fair,
  Of some lost ATALANTIS, seen
  Beneath the wave, when heaven’s serene. 
  People those palaces with forms
    Lovely as TITIAN ever drew—­
  Bright creatures, whom the sunbeam warms
    With that ethereal gas, all through. 
  Which finds a vent at lips and eyes,
  And lights up in a lover’s sighs. 
  Fancy these young Venetian maids
  Listening, at night, to serenades
  From amorous lutes, where Music, such
    As southern skies alone afford,
  Echoes to every burning touch,
    And thrills in each impassion’d chord.

  All this imagine, and still more,—­
  For whither may not Fancy soar,
  If Truth do not, alas! too soon,
  Puncture her brilliant air-balloon—­
  But go not to the spot, I pray;
  O do not, do not, some fine day. 
  Order, like STERNE, your travelling breeches;—­
  All’s lost, if once upon your way,
  The passport of Lord ——­
    Is death to Fancy—­like his speeches.

  If you would save some dreams of youth
  From the torpedo touch of Truth,
  Go not to VENICE—­do not blight
  Your early fancies with the sight
  Of her true, real, dismal state—­
  Her mansions, foul and desolate,—­
  Her close canals, exhaling wide
    Such fetid airs as—­with those domes
  Of silent grandeur, by their side,
    Where step of life ne’er goes or comes,
  And those black barges plying round
  With melancholy, plashing sound,—­
  Seem like a city, where the Pest
    Is holding her last visitation,
  And all, ere long, will be at rest,
    The dead, sure rest of desolation.

  So look’d, at night-fall, oft to me
  That ruin’d City of the Sea;
  And, as the gloomy fancy grew
  Still darker with night’s darkening hue,
  All round me seem’d by Death o’ercast,—­
  Each footstep in those halls the last;
  And the dim boats, as slow they pass’d,
  All burial-barks, with each its load
  Of livid corpses, feebly row’d
  By fading hands, to find a bed
  In waters less choked up with dead.—­Metropolitan.

* * * * *

ON THE DEATH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

By the Author of “Eugene Aram."