The Sun.
London, England, 1829-08-31 00:00:00

As the rock hehind hint, and looks out upon
The wreck of the elements as if he were
Their lord, not sacrifice.
Luarn.
- Even so he is.
cArrt (not heeding him).
He is not alone I Ah, stretched out at his feet
In naked beauty lu e a form that moves not—
Alas ! dead—for her hair spreads round his feet,
Her arms are stretched in stony lifelessness !
Ah, happier she than him ! she bath escaped
The last wild partings, and left him the agonies
Of a desolated heart!

LUCIFER.

Yet is mind there
Superior : mark the unshaken firmness
Of his unbending form, that swells as with
The greatness of the spirit within—
CAIN.

His eye
Is raised towards the cloud which blackens o'er him
As if he dared and mocked its wrath, as if
His soul's love, source of all his hopes and joys
Crushed at his feet, nothing could move him further.

LUCIFER.
Behold the atom opposed to the mighty Whole—
How little in himself and nature, how
Sublime in his resistance and fixed will !
What a true majesty, a lonely greatness,
Doth dwell round him in his abandonment !
No crown is on his brow but th:tt of virtue :
And yet what king bath ever looked like him?
His thro'ne, earth's wreck, lord of himself and thoughts.
And fate and the elements his subjects ! Why
The infinite holds nought so grand as he !
Spirits, as worlds, pursue their marked-out path,
Which they must make, and dare not swerve, but he
Rising o'er self, the hardest enemy,
Doth form his own, and sinks a conqueror
Amid a sinking world !"

The grand moral power of virtue was never
before so worthily developed as in the above
passage. None; but 'tbe very highest order of
minds could have produced so impressive a ho-
mily. Of a far different nature, yet equally
beautiful in its way, is the description of the
spirit Heilel

" She stands alone in her purity, like that star
Which she doth gaze on, as if her spirit drank
Feeling from its rich urn! A very light,
Veil-like, is floating round her, haloing
From the common airs : she looks as one to whom
All knees should bow, and yet as light and graceful
As the fleece cloud in heaven. Her eyes are raised
To that deep sky, mysterious as herself,
Watching that shrine, as if she listed for
An answer, or hoped one from it to descend
Bright as herself, or had dreamed of such, which waking
She dared not hope.
Her lips are parted, and move like rose leaves opening
To the invisible airs. Her hair how lightly
Doth its pale golden wreaths in tangled
Luxuriance cluster down that neck ; and rest
On her white bosom, where the violet vein
sheds a dim lustre ! down even to her knee,
Veiling yet hiding not the rounded shape
Of those limits swelling with voluptuous fulness,
/Ad glowing through them as the softened Moon
Through the depths of shadowing leaves !"

What a cluster of rich luxuriant images is here!
What a lavish outpouring of simple, yet splen-
did fancy ! What a Crcesus-like wealth of lan-
guage ! Yet every page of this noble drama
abounds in such. The passage, for instance,
wherein Eve advocates the deep feelings of a
mother, is in itself quite enough to set up a
dozen " annual" bardlings for life :

" Oh, no ! you cannot share with me
The feelings of a mother ! She was not
Part of yoar being as mine ; you never watched
From its first struggling into life the picture
Of ber unfolding flower ! so helplessly
Lying, so all-unconscious between life
And Math, dependant on a mother's love !
You never felt her joy in seeing her own
Lineaments germing forth, her voice and features,
Nay, actions imitated, and her smile
Reflected in the light from its raised eyes !
And•growing up, you cannot know the fond
And anxious watching of each new development;
The pride in seeing them realised, in feeling
Youth's hopes and fears and innocent joys again
All—all revived in them !"

Profuse as have already been our extracts, we
cannot refrain from giving one more. It is of a
touching and solemn character, and is supposed
to be spoken by Adam over the corpse of Cain:—
" Let me look on his face—how changed ! Can this
Be he? Lo, how the stamp of darkest passion
Is scathed upon that wrinkled brow, that stiffening
In death, yet holds a warning silently
That speaks to the living ! The cheeks, how wan and hollow
And eyes sunk in with very misery !
And his hair all white, but not with years : and still
A smile methinks doth dwell on those thin lips,
As if the rest he sought were found at last.
Take him where Ada rests ; guilt should not sleep
By the guiltless, but she prayed to us when dying,
That he should lay down near her whom, with all
His crimes and wayward errings she still loved.
Such was her latest prayer, and be it sacred!
Take him from hence, my Enoch !
And let them rest together ! little joy
Have either known ; he was begotten in
Sorrow and sin, and perchance took elements
Which, free to choose himself, he bad rejected.
She was all purity and light ! from earliest
Youth her heart turned to him with an unshaken
Love, that clung closer to him in his crimes,
To share his griefs, because she could not heal them!
Beautiful Ada! thou risest even now
On these old eyes, which worn with tears o'erflow,
For methinks I hear thy sweet voice in my ears,
Pleading for him who left thee but to die."

There are numerous other passages in this, as
well as in the minor poems, to which, notwith-
standing their extraordinary poetic excellence, we
have neither space nor time to revert. Enough,
however, have already been given to satisfy our
readers that the author of " Cain," if not the
first, is yet among the first of modern bards.
Thought, feeling, energy, and passion, abound in
his pages, and over all is spread the rich, warm,
purple light of imagination, dreamy and mellow
in its expression, like one of Claude's Italian sun
sets. The author in short possesses an intellect
of the very loftiest temper. He is familiar with
the most elevated forms of thought, and can-
vasses the abstrusest topics with all the easy
consciousness of greatness. There is nothing
stilted in his language, or cumbrous in his
fancy ; he does not strive to conceal a sterility
of ideas beneath a glittering drapery of words,
or to puff up the dwarf to the dimensions of the
giant ; lie is at home in sublimity, and so per-
fectly, yet justifiably self-assured in his highest
aspirations, that his very ease betrays him at
times into the most reprehensible negligences of
thought and expression. These, however, are
but as motes in the sun-beam ; and as we in-
tend shortly to revert to his minor poems, we shall
reserve what we have further to say in the way of
criticism till then. With regard to the moral of
the author's drama, it is, like his genius, of the
noblest quality, and tends to prove that intellect,
feeling, and enthusiasm, no matter how trans,
cendant be their temper, must infallibly, if un-
accompanied by the counteracting powers of
judgment, discretion, and a sound religious
frame of mind, entail the most disastrous conse-
quences on their possessor.

Mr. Secretary PEEL arrived in town from the
Royal Lodge, Windsor Pork, yesterday afternoon.