O! never more on me, Such dear illusions e'en in sleep can fall; Scared by the frown of stern reality The forms my yearning spirit would recall. The dead! the dead! The ne'er forgotten dead, In slumber's shadowy realm so vainly sought, Yet haunt my path, and hover round my bed, Unseen, unheard, but present still to thought. Breathe not their voices in the linnet's strain? Glow not their beauties in the opening flower? Fond fantasies of grief! alas! how vain, While cruel memory tells "they are no more." But this spangled roof is their mansion bright, Though the icy earth is their lowly tomb; And this mounting flame is their spirit's light, That seeks its native home. And that oak that frowns o'er the desolate waste, While its withered arms are tossing wide, As if to screen from the whirling blast The scattered wreck of its summer pride-- 'Tis I: thus left alone on earth, Thus fixed in my spirit's lonely mood, Mid the strifes of men, in the halls of mirth, Or the desart's solitude. For never can I stoop To bandy malice with the base and vile; And in the grave is quenched the cherished hope, Kindled and fed by Beauty's favoring smile. The grave! the grave! It will not restore The victims to its hunger given; And this weary spirit can rest no more, Till it sleep with them to wake in heaven. ALLITERATION. "Pierce Plowman's Vision," by William Langlande, in the reign of Edward III, is the longest specimen extant of alliterative poetry. It proceeds in this manner without rhyme, and with few pretensions to metre-- It befell on a Friday two friars I mette Maisters of the minours, men of great wytte. {381} READINGS WITH MY PENCIL. NO. IV. Legere sine calamo est dormire.--_Quintilian_. 26. "There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric: and pure invention is but the talent of a liar."--_Byron, by Moore_. This seems harsh judgment--but is it so, in reality? Ethically, as well as in a mere worldly view, I think it is. "There is nothing new under the sun," and he who tells what is not, lies--under a mistake, or otherwise. All fiction is woven on a web of fact, except the liar's fiction, which is all woof and no web, and so must soon fall to pieces from its own want of consistency. _Apropos!_ I saw a play advertised, within the week, which was announced by the author, as founded neither in fact, fancy, or imagination! 27. "The piety implanted in Byron's nature--as it is, deeply, in all poetic natures," &c.--_Moore's Byron_.