succeeded, was in the verses which I am about to place before the reader.
It is a common property of poetry, however imperfectly the gift be
possessed, to speak to the hearts of others in proportion as the
sentiments it would express are felt in our own; and I subjoin the lines
which bear the date of that evening, in the hope that, more than many
pages, they will show the morbid yet original character of the writer,
and the particular sources of feeling from which they took the bitterness
that pervades them.


KNOWLEDGE.

Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat
Semper, et in curis consumit inanibus aevum.--Lucret.

'Tis midnight! Round the lamp which o'er
My chamber sheds its lonely beam,
Is wisely spread the varied lore
Which feeds in youth our feverish dream

The dream--the thirst--the wild desire,
Delirious yet divine-to know;
Around to roam--above aspire
And drink the breath of Heaven below!

From Ocean-Earth-the Stars-the Sky
To lift mysterious Nature's pall;
And bare before the kindling eye
In MAN the darkest mist of all--