LESSON LXXIV.

DREAM OF DARKNESS.

BYRON.

1. I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander, darkling, in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind, and blackening, in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went - and came, and brought n› day•
And men forgot their passions, in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watch-fires and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings- the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes,
To look once more into each other's face:
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch.

2. A fearful hope was all the world contained:
Forests were set on fire-but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash- and all was black
The brows of men, by the despairing light,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as, by fits,
The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down,
And hid their eyes, and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up,
With mad disquietude, on the dull sky,

The pull of a past world; and then again,

With curses, cast them down upon the dust,

And gnashed their teeth, and howled. The wild birds shrieked,
And terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes
Came tame, and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless- they were slain for food.
3. And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; a meal was bought
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought – and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and men

Died;
and their bones were tombless as their flesh :
The meager by the meager were devoured;
Even dogs assailed their masters — all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds, and beasts, and famished men, at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But, with a piteous, and perpetual moan,

And a quick, desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-

-he died.

4 The crowd was famished by degrees; but two

Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies; they met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things,

For an unholy usage; they raked up

And, shivering, scraped, with their cold, skeleton hands,

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame,

Which was a mockery; then they lifted
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek❜d, and died
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void;
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless;
A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay.

5. The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

--

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped
They slept on the abyss, without a surge:

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them She was the universe.

LESSON LXXV.

SPEECH IN DEFENSE OF ORR.

CURRAN.

1. "ALAS! nor wife, nor children more shall he behold, nor friends, nor sacred home!" No seraph mercy unbars his dungeon and leads him forth to light and life; but the minister of death hurries him to the scene of suffering and of shame; where, unmoved by the hostile array of artillery and armed men collected together, to secure, or to insult, or to disturb him, he dies

with a solemn declaration of his innocence, and utters his last breath in a prayer for the liberty of his country.

2. Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the public ear upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language would you have conveyed the feelings of horror and indignation? Would you have stooped to the meanness of qual ified complaint? Would you have been mean enough But I entreat your forgiveness, I do not think meanly of you; had I thought so meanly of you, I could not suffer my mind to commune with you as it has done.

3. Had I thought you that base and vile instrument, attune? by hope and by fear into discord and falsehood, from whose vulgar string no groan of suffering could vibrate, no voice of integrity or honor could speak, let me honestly tell you, I should have scorned to string my hand across it; I should have left it to a fitter minstrel. If I do not, therefore, grossly err in my opinion of you, I could use no language upon such a subject as this, that must not lag behind the rapidity of your feelings, and that would not disgrace those feelings if it attempted to describe them.

4. Upright and honest jurors, find a civil and obliging verdict against the printer! And when you have done so, march through the ranks of your fellow-citizens to your own homes, and bear their look as you pass along; retire to the bosom of your families and your children, and, when you are presiding over the morality of the parental board, tell those infants, who are to be the future men of Ireland, the history of this day. Form their young minds by your precepts, and confirm those precepts by your own example; teach them how discreetly allegiance may be perjured on the table, or loyalty be forsworn in the jurybox; and when you have done So, tell them the story of Orr; tell them of his captivity, of his children, of his crime, of his hopes, of his disappointments, of his courage, and of his death; and when you find your little hearers hanging upon your lips,

when you see their eyes overflow with sympathy and sorrow, and their young hearts bursting with the pangs of anticipated orphanage, tell them that you had the boldness and the justice to stig matize the monster who had dared to publish the transaction.

LESSON LXXVI.

VICTIM, BRIDE, AND MISER.

ANONYMOUS,

1. I SAW her in her summer bower, and oh! upon my sight, Methought there never beamed a form more beautiful and bright So young, so fair, she seemed like one of those ærial things, That dwell but in the poet's high and wild imaginings;

Or, like one of those forms we meet in dreams, from which wa wake and weep,

That earth has no creations, like the figments of our sleep. 2. Her father loved he not his child, above all earthly things! As traders love the merchandize from which their profit springs; Old age came by, with tottering step, and then for sordid gold, With which the dotard urged his suit, the maiden's peace was sold; And thus, (for oh! her sire's stern heart was steeled against her prayer,)

The hand he ne'er had gained from love, he won from her despair. 8. I saw them through the church-yard pass, and such a nuptial train, I would not, for the wealth of worlds, should greet my sight again; The bride-maids, each as beautiful, as Eve in Eden's bowers, Shed bitter tears upon the path they should have strown with flowers;

Who had not thought that white-robed band the funeral array
Of one an early doom had called, from life's gay scene away i

The priest beheld the bridal pair before the altar stand,
And sighed as he drew forth his book, with slow, reluctant hand
He saw the bride's flower-wreathed hair, he marked her stream

ing eyes,

And deemed it less a christian rite, than a pagan sacrifice;