304 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



The garden foliage droop'd its tapestry, 

 Like virgin locks unbraided, o'er the throng 

 Sheltered, beneath their waving canopy, 

 Upon the fragrant sward, in noisy revelry. 



And here, besides the uncrisp'd mirror'd stream, 

 Strolled forth some bands of maidens like a string 

 Of Indian pearls dyed with the sunset gleam 

 To beauty listening the bright waters sing 

 Their evening hymns, as seraph's murmuring 

 Sounds in their slumber, of the heart's delight ; 

 Or, where the shadowy cedar-trees would spring, 

 Some bathed their fair limbs in the streams of light, 

 And others danced in groups, like spirits of the night. 



Here spurred a troop of warriors on their steeds ; 

 There cast the jav'lin, drew the gilded bow ; 

 While some, reclining, listened to the reeds 

 Burthen 'd with music from the waters' flow ; 

 Or gazed upon the cheek whose deepening glow 

 Revealed the secrets lips deny in vain ! 

 And, on the gentle evening's calmness, Oh ! 

 Full many a minstrel's harp's enrapturing strain 

 Poured forth its low wild notes of pathos o'er the plain ! 



The last line is really beautiful. 



Again : How the shadow of Sodom's destruction spread itself immediately 

 before the event is finely set forth : 



A dim, dark, undefined, and voiceless fear ! 

 An apprehension, and a solemn pause- 

 In which the heart beat louder, and the tear 

 Swam in the damsel's eye without a cause. 

 A sense of feeling that so closely draws 

 Man to his kindred, and the beast and bird 

 To house together one that overawes, 

 To speechlessness, the timid not referred 

 To outward danger nor a sign of ought occurred 



But rising like a mist-wreath from the main, 

 Over the spirit, clouding heart and eye ! 

 An hour when music's wildly breathing strain 

 Draws the unbidden tear and stifled sigh : 

 As if the shadow of some tempest nigh 

 Loaded the heavy air, until the breath 

 Is drawn at intervals most audibly, 

 A pause, as still and stirless, as when death, 

 Silently on the old his icy fingers layeth." 



Mr. Milton, whose lines these are, need not svffer, we think, on account of 

 his NAME; and, further, it has occurred to us, that, were his great original 

 now living, instead of endeavouring to drown the voice of Fame, which has 

 already sounded loud and long in this junior Milton's favour John Milton, 

 the Milton of Charles's time, would be the first to stretch out a powerful and 

 truly disinterested hand to help and defend the unpretending, but nevertheless 

 accomplished, author of the Songs of the Prophecies against the ungracious 

 and envious treatment of the book murderers of this book-jobbing age, which 

 Lord Byron called, with as much truth as justice, the Age of Bronze. Let 

 the "reading public" read the Songs of the Prophecies, we say. We shall 

 not take leave of our author without telling him that his work is not without 



