ALLEGORIC VISION. A FEELING of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is wont to take possession of me alike in spring and in autumn. But in spring it is the melancholy of hope; in autumn it is the melancholy of resignation. As I was journeying on foot through the Apennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the spring and the autumn and the melancholy of both seemed to have combined. In his discourse there were the freshness and the colors of April: Qual ramicel a ramo, Tal da pensier pensiero But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I bethought me of the not unlovely decays, both of age and of the late season, in the stately elm, after the clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines, and the vines are as bands of dried withies around its trunk and branches. Even so there was a memory on his smooth and ample forehead, which blended with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still looked-I know not, whether upward, or far onward, or rather to the line of meeting where the sky rests upon the distance. But how may I express that dimness of abstraction which lay on the lustre of the pilgrim's eyes like the flitting tarnish from the breath of a sigh on a silver mirror! and which accorded with their slow and reluctant movement, whenever he turned them to any object on the right hand or on the left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. And if I plucked each flower that sweetest blows,— COLOGNE. N Köhln, a town of monks and bones, IN And pavements fanged with murderous stones, And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches; I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, Doth wash your city of Cologne: But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine JOYFUL ON MY JOYFUL DEPARTURE FROM THE SAME CITY. S I am a rhymer, As And now at least a merry one, Mr. Mum's Rhudesheimer And the church of St. Geryon Are the two things alone That deserve to be known In the body and soul-stinking town of Cologne. WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM. PARRY seeks the polar ridge; Author of works, whereof-tho' not in Dutch- TO THE AUTHOR OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. YOUR poem must eternal be, Dear Sir! it cannot fail! For 'tis incomprehensible, It was at once the melancholy of hope and of resignation. We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sudden tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek protection in the vaulted door-way of a lone chapelry; and we sate face to face each on the stone bench along-side the low, weather-stained wall, and as close as possible to the massy door. After a pause of silence: Even thus, said he, like two strangers that have fled to the same shelter from the same storm, not seldom do Despair and Hope meet for the first time in the porch of Death! All extremes meet, I answered; but yours was a strange and visionary thought. The better then doth it beseem both the place and me, he replied. From a Visionary wilt thou hear a Vision? Mark that vivid flash through this torrent of rain! Even here thy adage holds true, and its truth is the moral of my Vision. I entreated him to proceed. Sloping his face toward the arch, and yet averting his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words till listening to the wind that echoed within the hollow edifice, and to the rain without, Fire and water. Which stole on his thoughts with its twofold sound, he gradually sank away, alike from me and from his own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm, and in the duskiness of that place, he sate like an emblem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a mourner on the sodded grave of an only one-an aged mourner, who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth not. Starting at length from his brief trance of abstraction, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renewed his discourse, and commenced his parable. During one of those short furloughs from the service of the body, which the soul may sometimes obtain even in this its militant state, I found myself in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to be the Valley of Life. It possessed an astonishing diversity of soils; here was a sunny spot and there a dark one, forming just such a mixture of sunshine and shade, as we may have observed on the mountains' side in an April day, when the thin broken clouds are scattered over heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the valley stood a large and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained to enter. Every part of the building was crowded with tawdry ornaments and fantastic deformity. On every window was portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colors, some horrible tale, or preternatural incident, so that not a ray of light could enter, untinged by the medium through which it passed. The body of the building was full of people, some of them dancing, in and out, in unintelligible figures, with strange ceremonies and antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. Intermingled with these I observed a number of men clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared now to marshal the various groups, and to direct their movements; and now with menacing countenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed, which formed at the same time an immense cage, and the shape of a human Colossus. I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things might mean; when lo! one of the directors |