PART VIII.

The Autumn is a glory and a joy;
The pageantry of Nature passing by
In her last grand procession. Gorgeous days,
When, like twin Angels, time and life stand still;
When earth puts on her crown and richest robes
For feasting and for mirth and revelry,
Ere Death, the Shadow, enters at the door;
When wreathed with golden honours, the woods wear
Mantles of regal grandeur; when the eye
Looks to the azure where the mountainous clouds
Dwarf, as in mockery, the domes of earth,

PART VII.

Now robed in veils of shadow, twilight stole
Round that dim grot, dews floated on the air;
The breath of rose and jessamine infused
And steeped the senses in their quietude.
Repose reigned o'er the landscape like a god
Whose tabernacle was the central soul.
From the empyrean the brightest star
Looked through that still and leafy vestibule.
And there he stood alone within the grot.
Was it a vision or reality,
The form that had been there, and leaned on him?

PART VI.

They sate as one within the grot that rose
Crowning a grassy lawn which overruled
The paradise beneath them. She reclined
Upon the seat, Astrophel on the sward;
Her hand was gathered in his own; his eyes
Raised, as if in the mirror of that face
He saw a life revealed.
The Hebe she,
With the deep azure eyes and golden hair,
With lips half-opened, through their roses showing
The witchery of laughter as she smiled,
A thing of joy and of abounding life;
But in her mien the fine reserve that, veiled

PART V.

Day broke — the city's life was left behind;
That human cauldron where he had drawn breath,
Or, rather, life endured for its great end
Of being, without which existence, self
Were but a shadow; all the virtues pent
Within that chaos struggling into light
In forms that proved divinity; all vice
From which recoil the fiends incorporate
Created by the heart; all passions blind
In brute indulgence; all the apathy,
That petrifies until indifference looks
The resignation which is hopelessness,

PART IV.

A solitary grave retired, apart
From turfy mounds, and pale grey avenues
Of headstones lettered by faint records, telling
Or truth or lie, in a lone churchyard rose.
The congregation of the dead convened
In their dark chambers of unconsciousness;
Sun, life, and air, gay maskers, revelling
Above their mystery inscrutable.

That grey stone looked as if its tenant thus
Had dwelt apart from the great multitude,
And sought seclusion even in nothingness.

A tie less human than divine allies
The mother to her son. Nought compensates
In after-life that link of severed love
When the bird flits forth from the parent tree.
Friends claim inviolate ties, till Time reveals
That change was their own being; Love absorbs
And prostrates hearts before his altar-place,
Until they die exhausted by their fires;
Ambition rules until, the summit gained,
The storm is met that sleeps not; but that first,
Purest, and holiest of earthly loves,
Taintless of self, was sent to prove to man

Evening descended o'er the suburbs dim;
The unfolding mantle of the night obscured
Streets slowly threaded, as that stranger traced
His path through tortuous avenues of stone,
And labyrinthine maze of alleys joined.

God made the desert in its liberty
Open to sky and wind, its trackless paths,
Its boundless aisles and rocky altar-shrines,
Its wild caves cleft within the mountain's heart,
Sublimest holds where nobler creatures tread
Apart in inaccessible solitudes;
Patricians mingling not with the base herd,

PARTI .

The grey waste of a silent solitude,
A lone vast plain, erewhile the breathing-place
Of a great city, whose departed life
Left it an echoless and desert void,
Dry, and adust with summer's fiery heat;
The cracked and arid pores of feverish earth
Opened to slake its thirst and weariness.

Twilight fell o'er the scene. The mingled lights,
Folded in mists and vapours palpable,
Gathered o'er that huge cauldron of dim smoke,
Looked like the formless shapes of ghosts half seen.

LETTER XI.

FROM PATRICK MAGAN, ESQ., TO THE REV. RICHARD — .

Dear D ICK — just arrived at my own humble gite ,
I enclose you, post-haste, the account, all complete,
Just arrived, per express, of our late noble feat.

[ Extract from the " County Gazette. " ]

This place is getting gay and full again.
Last week was married, " in the Lord, "
The Reverend Mortimer O'Mulligan,
Preacher, in Irish , of the Word,

FROM LARRY O'BRANIGAN TO HIS WIFE JUDY .

A S it was but last week that I sint you a letther,
You 'll wondher, dear Judy, what this is about;
And, throth, it 's a letther myself would like betther,
Could I manage to lave the contints of it out;
For sure, if it makes even me onaisy,
Who takes things quiet, 't will dhrive you crazy.

Oh! Judy, that riverind Murthagh, bad scran to him!
That e'er I should come to 've been sarvant-man to him,
Or so far demane the O'Branigan blood,