esponds in person and
character with Conrad; so that the remarks made on The Corsair apply,
in all respects, to Lara. The poem itself is perhaps, in elegance,
superior; but the descriptions are not so vivid, simply because they
are more indebted to imagination. There is one of them, however, in
which the lake and abbey of Newstead are dimly shadowed, equal in
sweetness and solemnity to anything the poet has ever written.

It was the night, and Lara's glassy stream
The stars are studding each with imaged beam:
So calm, the waters scarcely seem to stray,
And yet they glide, like happiness, away;
Reflecting far and fairy-like from high
The immortal lights that live along the sky;
Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree,
And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee:
Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove,
And innocence would offer to her love;
These deck the shore, the waves their channel make
In windings bright and mazy, like the snake.
All was so still, so soft in earth and air,
You scarce would start to meet a spirit there,
Secure that naught of evil could delight
To walk in such a scene, in such a night!
It was a moment only for the good:
So Lara deemed: nor longer there he stood;
But turn'd in silence to his castle-gate:
Such scene his soul no more could contemplate:
Such scene reminded him of other days,
Of skies more cloudless, moons of purer blaze;
Of nights more soft and frequent, hearts that now--
No, no! the storm may beat upon his brow
Unfelt, unsparing; but a night like this,
A night of beauty, mock'd such breast as his.

He turn'd within his solitary hall,
And his high shadow shot along the wall:
There were the painted forms of other times--
'Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes,
Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults
That hid their dust, their foibles, and their faults,
And half a column of the pompous page,
That speeds the spacious tale from age to age;
Where history's pen its praise or blame supplies
And lies like truth, and still most truly lies;
He wand'ring mused, and as the moonbeam shone
Through the dim lattice o'er the floor of stone,
And the high-fretted roof and saints that there
O'er Gothic windows knelt in pictured prayer;
Reflected in fantastic figures grew
Like life, but not like mortal life to view;
His bristling locks of sable, brow of gloom,
And the wide waving of his shaken plume
Glanced like a spectre's attributes, and gave
His aspect all that terror g