o'er thy baleful reign?
Grim darkness furls his leaden shroud,
Shrinking from her glance in vain.
Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above,
And lo! it visits man with beams of light and love.

[Footnote 1: Written in the year 1784.]

[Footnote 2: An allusion to the sacrifice of Iphigenia.]

[Footnote 3: Lucretius, I. 63.]

[Footnote 4: When we were ready to set out, our host muttered some
words in the ears of our cattle. See a Voyage to the North of Europe
in 1653.]

[Footnote 5: The Bramins expose their bodies to the intense heat of
the sun.]

[Footnote 6: Ridens moriar. The conclusion of an old Runic ode.]

[Footnote 7: In the Bedas, or sacred writings of the Hindoos, it is
written: "She, who dies with her husband, shall live for ever with
him in heaven."]

[Footnote 8: The Fates of the Northern Mythology. See MALLET'S
Antiquities.]

[Footnote 9: An allusion to the Second Sight.]

[Footnote 10: See that fine description of the sudden animation of
the Palladium in the second book of the AEneid.]

[Footnote 11: The bull, Apis.]

[Footnote 12: The Crocodile.]

[Footnote 13: So numerous were the Deities of Egypt, that, according
to an antient proverb, it was in that country less difficult to find
a god than a man.]

[Footnote 14: The Hieroglyphics].

[Footnote 15: The Catacombs, in which the bodies of the earliest
generations yet remain without corruption, by virtue of the gums that
embalmed them.]

[Footnote 16: "The Persians," says Herodotus, "reject the use of
temples, altars, and statues. The tops of the highest mountains are
the places chosen for sacrifices." I. 131. The elements, and more
particularly Fire, were the objects of their religious reverence.]

[Footnote 17: An imitation of some wonderful lines in the sixth
AEneid.]

[Footnote 18: See Tacitus, 1. xiv. c. 29.]

[Footnote 19: This remarkable event happened at the siege and sack of
Jerusalem, in the last year of the eleventh century. Hume, I.221.]

VERSES
WRITTEN TO BE SPOKEN BY
MRS. SIDDONS. [Footnote]

Yes, 'tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain!
I wake, I breathe, and am myself again.
Still in this nether world; no seraph yet!
Nor walks my spirit, when the sun is set,
With troubled step to haunt the fatal board,
Where I died last--by poison or the sword;
Blanching each honest cheek with deeds of night,
Done here so oft by dim and doubtful light.
--To drop all metaphor, that little bell
Call'd back