SINCE BACON, no man has exhibited so wonderful a combination of the highest powers of science with the faculties of the poet, as Sir HUMPHRY Davy. COLERIDGE said to Mr. POOLE, "Had not DAVY been the first chemist, he probably would have been the first poet of his age;" and the "Consolations in Travel," and the notes and poems recently given to the world by his brother, Dr. JOHN DAVY, are sufficient to prove that that opinion was not extravagant. "Who that has read his sublime quatrains on the doctrine of SPINOZA," says LOCKHART, the soundest critic of our times, "can doubt that he might have united, if he had pleased, in some great didactic poem, the vigorous ratiocination of DRYDEN and the moral majesty of WORDSWORTH?" Even taking his effusions as we find them, it would not be difficult to vindicate their superiority to a vast deal of the most popular poetry of the age.

The life and scientific career of Sir HUмPHRY are so fully before the world in the biographies of Dr. PARIS and Dr. Davy, that it is unnecessary here to do more than refer to a few dates. He was born at Penzance, on the shore of Mount's Bay, in Cornwall, the 17th December, 1778. His faculties were developed very early: he made rhymes and displayed a fondness for drawing when scarcely five years old. In 1798, Dr. BEDDOES Conferred upon him the situation of superintendent of the Pneumatic Institution at Clifton, and he accordingly removed to that place. In 1802, he was appointed professor of chemistry in the Royal Institution, London. From this post he retired upon his marriage, in 1812, with Mrs. APREECE. In the following year he went abroad, and remained there till 1815. In 1818, he made a second visit to the continent. Two

THE TEMPEST.

THE tempest has darken'd the face of the skies, The winds whistle wildly across the waste plain, The fiends of the whirlwind terrific arise, [main.

And mingle the clouds with the white foaming All dark is the night and all gloomy the shore,

Save when the red lightnings the ether divide; Then follows the thunder with loud sounding roar, And echoes in concert the billowy tide.

years after, on the death of Sir JOSEPH BANKS, he was elected President of the Royal Society. Towards the close of 1826, he experienced an attack of paralysis; but so far recovered as to be able to undertake a journey to the continent early in the next year. He died at Geneva, 29th May, 1829. His remains were deposited in the burying-ground of that city.

The poetry now printed is a selection from the pieces published by his brother. It was written at various periods. Some of his poems appeared in 1799, in the Annual Anthology, an interesting miscellany, of which two of the volumes were edited by SOUTHEY, and the third by TOBIN. One of these poems, "The Tempest," is printed below; it bears the date 1796. The poem alluded to by Mr. LockHART, is that entitled Written after Recovery from a dangerous Illness."

There is a remark in one of Sir HUMPHRY DAVY's memorandum-books, exhibiting so singular a coincidence, in feeling and perception, with one of Mr. WORDSWORTH'S admired passages, that it will probably interest the reader to see it extracted." To-day, for the first time in my life, I have had a distinct sympathy with nature. I was lying on the top of a rock to leeward; the wind was high, and every thing in motion; the branches of an oak tree were waving and murmuring to the breeze; yellow clouds, deepened by gray at the base, were rapidly floating over the western hills; the whole sky was in motion; the yellow stream below was agitated by the breeze; every thing was alive, and myself part of the series of visible impressions; I should have felt pain in tearing a leaf from one of the trees." The poem entitled " Nutting" will occur to every reader of WORDsworth.

But tho' now all is murky and shaded with gloom, Hope, the soother, soft whispers the tempest shall

cease:

Then nature again in her beauty shall bloom, And enamour'd embrace the fair, sweet-smiling

peace.

For the bright blushing morning, all rosy with light,

Shall convey on her wings the creator of day; He shall drive all the tempest and terrors of night, And nature, enliven'd, again shall be gay.

Then the warblers of spring shall attune the soft lay, And again the bright floweret shall blush in the vale;

On the breast of the ocean the zephyr shall play, And the sunbeam shall sleep on the hill and the dale.

If the tempest of nature so soon sink to rest;
If her once faded beauties so soon glow again;
Shall man be for ever by tempest oppress'd,-

By the tempest of passion, of sorrow, and pain? Ah, no! for his passions and sorrows shall cease, When the troublesome fever of life shall be o'er: In the night of the grave he shall slumber in peace, And passion and sorrow shall vex him no more.

And shall not this night, and its long dismal gloom, Like the night of the tempest again pass away? Yes! the dust of the earth in bright beauty shall bloom,

And rise to the morning of heavenly day.

FONTAINEBLEAU.

THE mists disperse,-and where a sullen cloud Hung on the mountain's verge, the sun bursts forth In all its majesty of purple light.

It is a winter's evening, and the year

Is fast departing; yet the hues of heaven
Are bright as in the summer's warmest month.
It is the season of the sleep of things;
But nature in her sleep is lovely still!
The trees display no green, no forms of life;
And yet a magic foliage clothes them round,-
And purest crystals of pellucid ice,
All purple in the sunset. Midst the wood
Fantastically rise the towering cliffs,
That in another season had been white,
But now, contrasted with the brilliant ice,
Shine in aerial tints of purest blue!
The varied outline has a thousand charms;
Here rises high a venerable wood,

Where oaks are seen with massy ice girt round,
And birches pendent with their glittering arms,
And graceful beeches clinging to the soil;
There, massy forms exist of rocks alone,-
Rising as if the work of human art,
The pride of some great Paladin of old,
In awful ruins. Nearer I behold
The palace of a race of mighty kings;
But now another tenants. On these walls,
Where erst the silver lily spread her leaves-
The graceful symbol of a brilliant court-
The golden eagle shines, the bird of prey,-
Emblem of rapine and of lawless power:
Such is the fitful change of human things:
An empire rises, like a cloud in heaven,
Red in the morning sun, spreading its tints
Of golden hue along the feverish sky,
And filling the horizon;-soon its tints
Are darken'd, and it brings the thunder-storm,-
Lightning, and hail, and desolation comes;
But in destroying it dissolves, and talls
Never to rise!

WRITTEN AFTER RECOVERY FROM A DANGEROUS ILLNESS.

Lo! o'er the earth the kindling spirits pour
The flames of life that bounteous nature gives;
The limpid dew becomes the rosy flower,
The insensate dust awakes, and moves, and lives.
All speaks of change: the renovated forms
Of long-forgotten things arise again;
The light of suns, the breath of angry storms,
The everlasting motions of the main-
These are but engines of the Eternal will,
The One Intelligence, whose potent sway
Has ever acted, and is acting still,

Whilst stars, and worlds, and systems all obey;
Without whose power, the whole of mortal things
Were dull, inert, an unharmonious band,
Silent as are the harp's untuned strings
Without the touches of the poet's hand

A sacred spark created by His breath,
The immortal mind of man His image bears;
A spirit living 'midst the forms of death,
Oppress'd but not subdued by mortal cares;
A germ, preparing in the winter's frost

To rise, and bud, and blossom in the spring;
An unfledged eagle by the tempest toss'd,

Unconscious of his future strength of wing;
The child of trial, to mortality

And all its changeful influences given;
On the green earth decreed to move and die,
And yet by such a fate prepared for heaven.
Soon as it breathes, to feel the mother's form

Of orbed beauty through its organs thrill,
To press the limbs of life with rapture warm,
And drink instinctive of a living rill;

To view the skies with morning radiance bright,
Majestic mingling with the ocean blue,
Or bounded by green hills, or mountains white,
Or peopled plains of rich and varied hue;
The nobler charms astonish'd to behold,

Of living loveliness,-to see it move,
Cast in expression's rich and varied mould,
Awakening sympathy, compelling love;
The heavenly balm of mutual hope to taste,
Soother of life, affection's bliss to share;
Sweet as the stream amidst the desert waste,
As the first blush of arctic daylight fair;

To mingle with its kindred, to descry

The path of power; in public life to shine; To gain the voice of popularity,

The idol of to-day, the man divine;

To govern others by an influence strong [main, As that high law which moves the murmuring Raising and carrying all its waves along,

Beneath the full-orb'd moon's meridian reign; To scan how transient is the breath of praise, A winter's zephyr trembling on the snow, Chill'd as it moves; or, as the northern rays, First fading in the centre, whence they flow.

To live in forests mingled with the whole Of natural forms, whose generations rise, In lovely change, in happy order roll,

On land, in ocean, in the glittering skies;

Their harmony to trace; the Eternal cause
To know in love, in reverence to adore;
To bend beneath the inevitable laws,

Sinking in death, its human strength no more!

Then, as awakening from a dream of pain,
With joy its mortal feelings to resign;
Yet all its living essence to retain,

The undying energy of strength divine!

To quit the burdens of its earthly days,

To give to nature all her borrow'd powers,Ethereal fire to feed the solar rays,

Ethereal dew to glad the earth with showers.

ON THE DEATH OF LORD BYRON.

COMPOSED AT WESTHILL, IN THE GREAT STORM, 1824.

GONE is the bard, who, like a powerful spirit,
A beautiful and fallen child of light,
Of fiery seraph the aspiring peer,
Seem fitted by his nature to inherit
A wilder state than in the genial strife
Of mighty elements is given our sphere,
Fix'd in a stated round its course to run,
A chained slave, around the master sun!

Of some great comet he might well have been
The habitant, that through the mighty space
Of kindling ether rolls; now visiting
Our glorious sun, by wondering myriads seen
Of planetary beings; then in race
Vying with light in swiftness, like a king
Of void and chaos, rising up on high
Above the stars in awful majesty.

Now passing near those high and bless'd abodes,
Where beings of a nobler nature move
In fields of purest light, where brightest rays
Of glory shine-in power allied to gods,
Whose minds in hope and in fruition prove
That unconsuming and ethereal blaze
Flowing from, returning to, eternal love.

And such may be his fate! And if to bring
His memory back, an earthly type were given,
And I possess'd the artist's powerful hand,
A genius with an eagle's powerful wing
Should press the earth recumbent, looking on heaven
With wistful eye; a broken lamp should stand
Beside him, on the ground its naphtha flowing
In the bright flame, o'er earthly ashes glowing.

It was during a storm that he expired. Mr. Gordon, in his admirable History of the Greek Revolution, records it: "At six o'clock in the afternoon of Easter Monday, (April 19,) at the instant of an awful thunderstorm, Byron expired."

MONT BLANC.

WITH joy I view thee, bathed in purple light,
Whilst all around is dark; with joy I see
Thee rising from thy sea of pitchy clouds
Into the middle heaven,-

As if a temple to the Eternal raised
By all the earth, framed of the pillar'd rock,
And canopied with everlasting snow!-
That lovely river, rolling at my feet

Its bright green waves, and winding 'midst the rocks,
Brown in their winter's foliage, gain'd from thee
Its flood of waters; through a devious course,
Though it has laved the fertile plains, and wash'd
The cities' walls, and mingled with the streams
Of lowland origin, yet still preserves

Its native character of mountain strength,-
Its colour, and its motion. Such are those
Amongst the generations of mankind
[heaven,
To whom the stream of thought descends from
With all the force of reason and the power
Of sacred genius. Through the world they pass
Still uncorrupted, and on what they take
From social life bestow a character
Of dignity. Greater they become,
But never lose their native purity.

THE SYBIL'S TEMPLE.*

Tur faith, O Roman! was a natural faith,
Well suited to an age in which the light
Ineffable gleam'd through obscuring clouds
Of objects sensible,-not yet revealed

In noontide brightness on the Syrian mount.
For thee, the Eternal Majesty of heaven

In all things lived and moved,-and to its power
And attributes poetic fancy gave

The forms of human beauty, strength, and grace.
The Naiad murmur'd in the silver stream,
The Dryad whisper'd in the nodding wood,
(Her voice the music of the zephyr's breath ;)
On the blue wave the sportive Nereid moved,
Or blew her conch amidst the echoing rocks.
I wonder not, that, moved by such a faith,
Thou raisedst the Sybil's temple in this vale,
For such a scene was suited well to raise
The mind to high devotion,-to create
Those thoughts indefinite which seem above
Our sense and reason, and the hallowed dream
Prophetic. In the sympathy sublime,
With natural forms and sounds, the mind forgets
Its present being,-images arise

Which seem not earthly.-midst the awful rocks
And caverns bursting with the living stream,-
In force descending from the precipice,-
Sparkling in sunshine, nurturing with dews
A thousand odorous plants and fragrant flowers.
In the sweet music of the vernal woods,
From winged minstrels, and the louder sounds
Of mountain storms, and thundering cataracts,
The voice of inspiration well might come!

Tivoli.