(Alone.) How he sprang from me!

The room before the bath!

Sure he now hath reached

The bath-door creaks!

It hath creaked thus since he-since thou, O father!
Ever since thou didst loosen its strong valves,
Hither with all thy dying weight, or strength
Agonized with her stabs-

Our father she made thee the scorn of slaves;

Me (son of him who ruled this land and more)
She made an outcast-

Would I had been so

Oh that Zeus

For ever! ere such vengeance

Electra.

Had let thy arm fall sooner at thy side

Without those drops! list! they are audible—

For they are many-from the sword's point falling
And down from the mid blade!

Too rash Orestes!

Couldst thou not then have spared our wretched mother?

Orestes. The Gods could not.
Electra.

She was not theirs, Orestes!

"Twas I! 'twas I who did it!

Orestes. And didst not thou,-
Electra.

Of our unhappy house the most unhappy!
Under this roof, by every God accurst,
There is no grief, there is no guilt, but mine.
Orestes. Electra! no!

'Tis now my time to suffer

Mine be, with all its pangs, the righteous deed!

What a picture is that of Agamemnon and his boy,

"Tossing thee above

His joyous head, and calling thee his crown!"

Long may Mr. Landor conceive such pictures, and write such scenes!

The days are happily past when the paltry epithet of "Cockney Poets" could be bestowed upon Keats and Leigh Hunt: the world has outlived them. People would as soon think of applying such a word to Dr. Johnson. Happily, too, one of the delightful writers who were the objects of these unworthy attacks has outlived them also; has lived to attain a popularity of the most genial kind, and to diffuse, through a thousand pleasant channels, many of the finest parts of our finest writers. He has done good service to literature in another way, by enriching our language with some of the very best translations since Cowley. Who ever thought to see Tasso's famous passage in the "Amyntas" so rendered?

ODE TO THE GOLDEN AGE.

O lovely age of gold!

Not that the rivers rolled

With milk, or that the woods wept honey-dew;

Not that the reedy ground

Produced without a wound,

Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew;

Not that a cloudless blue

For ever was in sight;

Or that the heaven which burns,

And now is cold by turns,

Looked out in glad and everlasting light;

No, nor that even the insolent ships from far

Brought war to no new lands, nor riches worse than war.

Who, again, ever hoped to see such an English version of one of Petrarch's most characteristic poems, conceits and all?

PETRARCH'S CONTEMPLATIONS OF DEATH IN THE

BOWER OF LAURA.

Clear, fresh, and dulcet streams,

Which the fair shape who seems

To me sole woman, haunted at noontide;

Fair bough, so gently lit,

(I sigh to think of it)

Which lent a pillar to her lovely side;

And turf and flowers bright-eyed,

O'er which her folded gown

Flowed like an angel's down;

And you, O holy air and hushed,

Where first my heart at her sweet glances gushed,

Give ear, give ear, with one consenting,

To my last words, my last, and my lamenting.

If 'tis my fate below,

And heaven will have it so,

That love must close these dying eyes in tears,

May my poor dust be laid

In middle of your shade,

While my soul, naked, mounts to its own spheres.

The thought would calm my fears

When taking, out of breath,

The doubtful step of death;

For never could my spirit find

A stiller port after the stormy wind;

Nor in more calm abstracted bourne

Slip from my travelled flesh, and from my bones outworn.

Perhaps, some future hour,

To her accustomed bower

Might come the untamed, and yet gentle she;

And where she saw me first,

Might turn with eyes athirst

And kinder joy to look again for me;

Then, oh the charity!

Seeing amidst the stones

The earth that held my bones,

A sigh for very love at last

Might ask of heaven to pardon me the past;
And heaven itself could not say nay,

As with her gentle veil she wiped the tears away.

How well I call to mind,

When from those boughs the wind

Shook down upon her bosom flower on flower;
And there she sat meek-eyed,

In midst of all that pride,

Sprinkled and blushing through an amorous shower.

Some to her hair paid dower,

And seemed to dress the curls

Queenlike with gold and pearls ;

Some snowing on her drapery stopped,

Some on the earth, some on the water dropped;

While others, fluttering from above,

Seemed wheeling round in pomp and saying, "Here reigns

love."

How often then I said,

Inward, and filled with dread,

"Doubtless this creature came from paradise!"

For at her look the while,

Her voice, and her sweet smile

And heavenly air, truth parted from mine eyes;

So that, with long-drawn sighs,

I said, as far from men,

"How came I here, and when ?”

I had forgotten; and, alas!

Fancied myself in heaven, not where I was;

And from that time till this, I bear

Such love for the green bower, I cannot rest elsewhere.

In justice to Mr. Leigh Hunt, I add to these fine translations, of which every lover of Italian literature will perceive the merit, some extracts from his original poems. Except Chaucer himself, no painter of processions has excelled the entrance of Paulo to Ravenna, in the story of Rimini.

'Tis morn, and never did a lovelier day
Salute Ravenna from its leafy bay;

For a warm eve, and gentle rains at night,
Have left a sparkling welcome for the light;
And April, with his white hands wet with flowers,
Dazzles the bridemaids looking from the towers:
Green vineyards and fair orchards, far and near,
Glitter with drops; and heaven is sapphire clear,
And the lark rings it, and the pine-trees glow,
And odours from the citrons come and go;

And all the landscape-earth and sky and sea-
Breathes like a bright-eyed face that laughs out openly.

"Tis nature, full of spirits, waked and loved.
E'en sloth to-day goes quick and unreproved;
For where's the living soul, priest, minstrel, clown,
Merchant or lord, that speeds not to the town?
Hence happy faces, striking through the green
Of leafy roads, at every turn are seen;
And the far ships, lifting their sails of white
Like joyful hands, come up with scattered light;
Come gleaming up-true to the wished-for day—
And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the bay.

And well may all the world come crowding there,
If peace returning and processions rare,

And to crown all, a marriage in the spring,
Can set men's heart and fancies on the wing:
For on this beauteous day Ravenna's pride,
The daughter of their prince, becomes a bride;
A bride to ransom an exhausted land;
And he whose victories have obtained her hand
Has taken with the dawn, so flies report,
His promised journey to the expecting court,
With knightly pomp, and squires of high degree
The bold Giovanni, Lord of Rimini.

The road that way is lined with anxious eyes,
And false announcements and fresh laughters rise;
The horseman hastens through the jeering crowd,
And finds no horse within the gates allowed: