Yet if when sleep the body chains
    In sweet oblivion of its pains,
  Thou bid’st imagination active wake,
    Oh, Morpheus! banish from my bed
    Each form of grief, each form of dread,
  And all that can the soul with horror shake: 
  Let not the ghastly fiends admission find,
  Which conscience forms to haunt the guilty mind—­
  Oh! let not forms like these my peaceful slumbers break!

    But bring before my raptured sight
    Each pleasing image of delight,
  Of love, of friendship, and of social joy;
    And chiefly, on thy magic wing
    My ever blooming Mary bring,
  (Whose beauties all my waking thoughts employ,)
  Glowing with rosy health and every charm
  That knows to fill my breast with soft alarm,
  Oh, bring the gentle maiden to my fancy’s eye!

    Not such, as oft my jealous fear
    Hath bid the lovely girl appear,
  Deaf to my vows, by my complaints unmov’d,
    Whilst to my happier rival’s prayer,
    Smiling, she turns a willing ear,
  And gives the bliss supreme to be belov’d: 
  Oh, sleep dispensing power! such thoughts restrain,
  Nor e’en in dreams inflict the bitter pain,
  To know my vows are scorn’d—­my rivals are approv’d!

    Ah, no! let fancy’s hand supply
    The blushing cheek, the melting eye,
  The heaving breast which glows with genial fire;
    Then let me clasp her in my arms,
    And, basking in her sweetest charms,
  Lose every grief in that triumphant hour. 
  If Morpheus, thus thou’lt cheat the gloomy night,
  For thy embrace I’ll fly day’s garish light,
  Nor ever wish to wake while dreams like this inspire!

HUGH DELMORE.

* * * * *

ON IDLENESS.

(For the Mirror.)

It has been somewhere asserted, that “no one is idle who can do any thing.  It is conscious inability, or the sense of repeated failures, that prevents us from undertaking, or deters us from the prosecution of any work.”  In answer to this it may be said, that men of very great natural genius are in general exempt from a love of idleness, because, being pushed forward, as it were, and excited to action by that vis vivida, which is continually stirring within them, the first effort, the original impetus, proceeds not altogether from their own voluntary exertion, and because the pleasure which they, above all others, experience in the exercise of their faculties, is an ample compensation for the labour which that exercise requires.  Accordingly, we find that the best writers of every age have generally, though not always, been the most voluminous.  Not to mention a host of ancients, I might instance many of our own country as illustrious examples of this assertion, and no example more illustrious than that of the immortal Shakspeare.  In our times the