The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

Miscellany.

[TRANSLATED FOR THE AMERICAN.]

From a French Poem, entitled "Meditations Poetiques." by Alphonse de la Martine, in which the author addressed an epistle to Lord Byron, to 'prove to him that there is a God."

LORD BYRON.

Oh! Byron, whate'er thy birth,

In wrath or mercy sent to earth,

I love to catch the strains of fire,

Which burst from thine impetuous lyre,

As oft I love to sit and hear,

The tempest in its wild career;

While winds and thunders rend the sky.

Mingling their awful voice on high,

And torrents rush, with furious sweep,

In foaming cataracts, down the steep.

Thou lov'st through midnight's awful gloom,

Through horrors dismal realms to roam:

Like thee, the eagle scorns the plain,

He seeks a wild and lone domain:

Rocks, bleached by wintry blasts from Heaven,

Or by the livid lightning riven:

The shores, with wrecks and ruin strew'd,

And fields with recent carnage dewed,

And while the bird, who sad and lone,

Breathes forth her sweet yet mournful tune,

Builds her slight nest in nature's bowers,

Near whispering stream and breathing flowers,'

He turns his fearless wing, to climb,

And mount to Athos' brow sublime,

He rears his princely aerie there,

Sole regent of those fields of air.

In solitary state, while around,

His mangled victims strew the ground,

He calmly sits, with listening ear,

Their last expiring groans to hear.

Yet 'fiercely now, the storm and cloud

Are warring round his dwelling proud.

The avenging bolt resistless flies,

And he, amid his triumph, dies.