site the Ailsa Craig, and as the waves have beaten loud and louder on the shore, and thrown their snowwhite foam aloft beneath the stirring wind, thou hast marked the deep, dark crimson colouring of the western sky, tinting the summit of Goat-fell with clouds of blood, and ever and anon casting over the wide hemisphere, and the boundless roll of waters, and the distant ship, and the far-off rock, and the screaming sea-gull, and the rising moon, and the pale vesper, its own hues of tremendous grandeur and dread magnificence: in these two, in the enchanting loveliness of the woodland scene, and in the ponderous glory of the heaving main, we have the characteristics of our poet's song. His love poems are exquisitely beautiful, uniting with a confiding tenderness and sweet simplicity a captivating melancholy. He has enshrined the passion in a radiance lovelier than the silver crescent: his "Genevieve" is inimitable: it is as enchanting as the sculptured Venus, or as Handel's delicious air, "Waft her, angels, to the skies:" it is chaste, elegant, melodious; it is the most delightful sketch of first-love we ever gazed upon; it has all its fine, delicate colouring; it is more thrilling than starlight. The calm eventide, the soft moonlight, the ruined tower, the statue of the armed knight, the minstrel and the harp, the romantic tale, the meek and gentle maiden, the blush of affection, the hopes and fears, the confiding artlessness and trusting love, all combine to form a picture of consummate beauty and consummate truth. And the poet's language is so exquisite-so like the music tones of heaven. But hearken: All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, Are all but ministers of love, Oft in my waking dreams do I The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, She leaned against the armed man, Few sorrows hath she of her own, I played a soft and doleful air, She listened with a flitting blush, With dowcast eyes and modest grace; I told her of the knight that wore I told her how he pined; and ha! She listened with a flitting blush, Too fondly on her face. But when I told the cruel scorn Which crazed this bold and lovely knight, And that he crossed the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night; But sometimes from the savage den, There came and looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright; And that he knew it was a fiend, This miserable knight! And that, unknowing what he did, He leaped amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death The lady of the land; And how she wept and clasped his knees, And how she tended him in vain And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain. And that she nursed him in a cave; His dying words-but when I reached All impulses of soul and sense Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve The music, and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve; And hopes and fears, that kindled hope, An undistinguishable throng; And gentle wishes long subdued, Subdued and cherished long! She wept with pity and delight, She blushed with love and virgin shame; And like the murmur of a dream I heard her breathe my name. Her bosom heaved, she stept aside; She half-enclosed me with her arms, 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, I calmed her fears; and she was calm, T. K. HERVEY. "Yet not into itself alone, or even within the circumscribed horizon of the present, does the mind retire from eternity; it takes refuge in past time, and recals, with fondness and entrancementunknown while they were in his power,-the sports of infancy, the raptures of boyhood, and the passionate pursuits of youth. But in the dream of memory, he forgets that while he was passing successively through these, the poetry of Hope was in each alluring him forward to the stage beyond; and even through the matter-offact period of maturity, continued to decoy him from the every-day business of life, till he arrived at that barrier where "desire faileth, because man goeth to his long home." It is from that barrier that he daily looks less and less onward, and more and more behind him, at the scenes which he is leaving for ever, and especially at the earliest, the most endeared, though the most familiar of the whole series. Ah! then, how naturally will some bright day, among the many clouded ones, recur to him in all its splendour, and be spent, like youth renewed,-spent over again in imagination, through all its hours, with an intensity of enjoyment which the reality never gave never could give, subject, as all present felicities must be, to inconveniences and annoyances, forgotten as soon as they are over; while the ethereal, or rather the ideal, of the scenes and the circumstances alone survives in remembrance." JAMES MONTGOMERY. THIS author has published but little poetry, but that little is marked by much grace and beauty-a melancholy grace—a melancholy beauty: he seems to hold the same views of human life so common to young poets after their first fond and brilliant and rainbow hopes are dashed to the ground: he deems the past sweeter than the present; he talks of the sunny joys of bood, and the sad realities of manhood. Friends |