The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-16 00:00:00

asures in a pyramid ;
knowledge then was mystery,
captive under lock and key,
By Priests and Princes held in thrall,
Of little use, or none ar all;
Till the redoubted Alphabet
Free their own great deliverer set,
At whose command, by simplest spells,
They work their mental miracles.

What is the Press? 'Tis what the pen
Was thrice ten centuries to men,
When sybil leaves lend wings to words,
Or, caged in books, they sang like birds
But slow the pen, and frail the page—
To write twelve folios ask'd an age ;
And a pet babe, in sport, might spoil
The fruits of twenty authors' toil.

A power was wanting to insure
Life to works worthy to endure----
A power the race to multiply
Of intellectual polypi:
It came, all hardships to redress;
And Truth and Virtue hail'd the Press !

What am I, then? lam a power
Years cannot waste, nor flames devour,
Nor waters drown, nor tyrants bind ;
I am the mirror of man's mind,
In whose serene, impassive face,
What cannot die on earth you trace—
Not phantom shapes that come and fly,
But like the concave of the sky,
In wbich the stars, by night and day,
Seen or unseen, hold on their way.

Myself withdrawn from mortal sight,
I am invisible as light—

Light which, revealing all beside,
Itself within itself can hide ;

The things of darkness I make bare,
And, nowhere seen, I'm everywhere,
AU that philosophy has sought,

Science aiscovei'd, genius wrought ;
All that reflective memory stores,
Or rich imagination pours ;
All that the wit of man conceives ;
All that he wishes, hopes, believes ;
All that he loves, or fears, or hates ;
All that to heaven and earth relates
These are the lessons that I teach
By speaking silence—silent speech.

Ah ! who like me can bless or curse ?
What can be better, what be worse,
Than language framed for Paradise,
Or sold to infamy and vice?
Blest be the man by whom I bless ;
Accursed he who wrongs the Press ;
The reprobate in prose and song,
Who wields the power of right for wrong—
Wrong, to out-last his laurell'd tomb,
And haunt the earth till crack of doom !

LITERARY NOTICE.

Eglinton Park Meeting.

We noticed in our paper the week before last the poetica
abilities of Mr. John Ramsay, Kilmarnock, as displayed in
the above work, and promised on a future occasion to give a
short extract. We have since perused the book, and feel de-
lighted with the many very beautifully descriptive scenes,
so true to nature's self, which the poets of past ages might
in reality have been proud of; while his other styles of com-
position lack nothing. The following is an extract :

In radiant majesty the source of light
Arose, and walked the chambers of the east,
And bade the seas and rivers sparkle bright,
And cheered afar the lonely monntains' breast,
Whose shaggy top was veiled in vapours white-
-Where soared, sublime, the eagle o'er her nest,
.—th' unconscious lamb and ewe
ed , 'moug red heath, wild thyme, and harebell bin

By dreary cairn
Graz

And on a rack, coeval with the earth,
Where time had toiled till with his toil turned grey,
The shepherd sat, and eyed, in all her mirth,
ILT

along life's flowery way—
From blossomed thorn the mavis warbled forth,
The linnet from the broom and birchen spray,
The cm•hat mourned, and as the bass to all,
Loud thundered o'er the rock the mighty waterfall

Diatore rejo

Descending then along the misty plain,
On rapid wing, the raptured muse surveyed,
Rich lawns, extending even to the main,
And groves and vales in summer's pomp arrayed ;
And waving woods, now lost, and now again
The broad bright river in his strength displayed,
Proud aristocracy's bedazzling bower,
The lone sad remnants of the fendal tower.

Far other features showed the city's face,
Buildings on buildings piled unto the sky,
The vagrant curs about the market-place,
The high slow-moving wain, the driver's cry,
The bawling sweep, the tippler on the chase,
Of stunted form, pale cheek, and heavy eye ;
Toils various tribes unto their tasks repair,
The drunkard to his den of frenzy despair.

0, Heaven ! what means this vortex we behold
Of human passions, human joys and woes,
Of vast extremes, and much that is untold
In life's retreats ? For ever onward flows
Time's tide, in which we rise but to be rolled
As wrecks, with all our transports and our throes
Down to that deep impenetrable gloom
That hangs o'er all that lies beyond the tomb.