land maidens that danced on the greenswards among the blooming heather on the mountains of Glenetive-who so fair as Flora, the only child to the Bard famous for his songs of Fai- Be in idiocy, or rolled about unobserving of all objects living or dead. To him all weather seemed the same, and if suffered, he would have lain down like a creature void of under-daughter of the King's Forester, and grandstanding, in rain or on snow, nor been able to find his way back for many paces from the hut. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had speech, all but a moaning as of pain or wo, which none but a mother could bear to hear without shuddering-but she heard it during night as well as day, and only sometimes lifted up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer was made to send him to a place where the afflicted were taken care of; but she beseeched charity for the first time for such alms as would enable her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to keep her son in the shieling; and the means were given her from many quarters to do so decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes observed, but of which the poor object himself was insensible and unconscious. Henceforth, it may almost be said, she never more saw the sun, nor heard the torrents roar. She went not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath where the paralytic lay-and there she sung the lonely psalm, and said the lonely prayer, unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits would have thought-but it was not so; for in two years there came a meaning to his eyes, and he found a few words of imperfect speech, among which was that of "Mother." Oh! how her heart burned within her, to know that her face was at last recognised! To feel that her kiss was returned, and to see the first tear that trickled from eyes that long had ceased to weep! Day after day, the darkness that covered his brain grew less and less deep-to her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of hope; for her son now knew that he had an immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly and feebly and erringly in prayer. For weeks afterwards he remembered only events and scenes long past and distant-and believed that his father, and all his brothers and sisters, were yet alive. He called upon them by their names to come and kiss him-on them, who had all long been buried in the dust. But his soul struggled itself into reason and remembrance and he at last said, "Mother! did some accident befall me yesterday at my work down the glen?-I feel weak, and about to die!" The shadows of death were indeed around him; but he lived to be told much of what had happened and rendered up a perfectly unclouded spirit into the mercy of his Saviour. His mother felt that all her prayers had been granted in that one boon-and, when the coffin was borne away from the shieling, she remained in it with a friend, assured that in this world there could for her be no more grief. And there in that same shieling, now that years have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often as she wishes by her poor neighbours-for to the poor sorrow is a sacred thing-who, by turns, send one of their daughters to stay with her, and cheer a life that cannot be long, but that, end when it may, will be laid down without one impious misgiving, and in the humility of a Christian's faith. The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the head of Glenetive. Who among all the High But years-a few years-long and lingering as they might seem to loving hearts separated by the roar of seas-yet all too, too short when 'tis thought how small a number lead from the cradle to the grave-brought Ranald and Flora once more into each other's arms. Alas! for the poor soldier! for never more was he to behold that face from which he kissed the trickling tears. Like many another gallant youth, he had lost his eyesight from the sharp burning sand-and was led to the shieling of his love like a wandering mendicant who obeys the hand of a child. Nor did his face bear that smile of resignation usually so affecting on the calm countenances of the blind. Seldom did he speak and his sighs were deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those which almost any sorrow ever wrings from the young. Could it be that he groaned in remorse over some secret crime? Happy-completely happy, would Flora have been to have tended him like a sister all his dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat beside the bed of one whose hair was getting fast gray, long before its time. Almost all her relations were dead, and almost all her friends away to other glens. But he had returned, and blindness, for which there was no hope, must bind his steps for ever within little room. But they had been betrothed almost from her childhood, and would she-if he desired itfear to become his wife now, shrouded as he was, now and for ever in the helpless dark? From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty required that the words should come; nor could she sometimes help wondering, in halfupbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in his great affliction to claim her for his wife. Poor were they to be sure-yet not so poor as to leave life without its comforts; and in every glen of her native Highlands, were there not worthy families far poorer than they? But weeks, months, passed on, and Ranald re mained in a neighbouring hut, shunning the sunshine, and moaning, it was said, when he thought none were near, both night and day. Sometimes he had been overheard muttering to himself lamentable words-and, blind as his eyes were to all the objects of the real world, it was rumoured up and down the glen, that he saw visions of woful events about to befall one whom he loved. same vision yawned before him-an open grave in the corner of the hill burial-ground without any kirk. Flora knew that his days were indeed numbered; for when had he ever been afraid of death-and could his spirit have quailed thus under a mere common dream? Soon was she to be all alone in this world; yet when Ranald should die, she felt that her own days would not be many, and there was sudden and strong comfort in the belief that they would be buried One midnight he found his way, unguided, like a man walking in his sleep-but although in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake-in one grave. to the hut where Flora dwelt, and called on her, in a dirge-like voice, to speak a few words with him ere he died. They sat down together among the heather, on the very spot where the farewell embrace had been given the morning he went away to the wars; and Flora's heart died within her, when he told her that the Curse under which his forefathers had suffered, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen his wraith pass by in a shroud, and heard a voice whisper the very day he was to die. And was it Ranald of the Red-Cliff, the bravest of the brave, that thus shuddered in the fear of death like a felon at the tolling of the great prison-bell? Ay, death is dreadful when foreseen by a ghastly superstition. He felt the shroud already bound round his limbs and body with gentle folds, beyond the power of a giant to burst; and day and night the Such were her words to the dying man; and all at once he took her in his arms, and asked her "If she had no fears of the narrow house?" His whole nature seemed to undergo a change under the calm voice of her reply; and he said, "Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to hear the words of doom?" "Blessed will they be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou too, my wife-for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in heaven-thou too, Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was a gentle and gracious summer nightso clear, that the shepherds on the hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there, at earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world. AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. Ours is a poetical age; but has it produced one Great Poem? Not one. Just look at them for a moment. There is the Pleasures of Memory-an elegant, graceful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does one's eyes good to gaze onone's ears good to listen to-one's very fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove paper. Never will the Pleasures of Memory be forgotten till the world is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem ? About as much so as an ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection-in the shape of a cone--and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a sky-piercer. You take it at a nop-and pursue your journey. Yet it endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs, and the sunshine, love the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and delightfully; you hardly know whether a work | of art or a work of nature. Then, there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. If so, then neither is human life. For of all our poets, he has most skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with the materials of human life-homespun indeed; but though often coarse, always strong-and though set plain patterns, yet not unfrequently exceed he is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay |--hold up the product of his loom between your eye and the light, and it glows and glimmers like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems to be but of the "hodden gray;" when sunbeam shadow smites it, and lo! it is burnished like the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger ever produce a Great Poem? You might as well ask if he built St. Paul's. ог Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No wonder that his old eyes are, still so lustrous; for they possess the sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past"--is the text we should choose were we about to preach on his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit now breathe over the still receding Past. But time-sanctified are all the shows that arise before his pensive imagination; and the common light of day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all been dying sunset or moonlight, or the newborn dawn. His human sensibilities are so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his Sonnets have been dear to poets--having in them "more than meets the ear"--spiritual reathings that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, too, have they been beloved by all natural hearts who, having not the "faculty | hymn-and now it dies away elegiac-like, as divine," have yet the "vision"-that is, the power of seeing and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, bringing them from afar out of the dust and dimness of evanishment. if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, dream-like, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. It ceases in the hush of night-and we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so?-In his youth Campbell lived where "distant isles could hear the loud Corbrechtan roar:" and sometimes his poetry is like that whirlpool-the sound as of the wheels of many chariots. Yes, happy was it for him that he had liberty to roam along the many-based, hollow-rumbling western coast of that unaccountable county Argyleshire. The sea-roar cultivated his naturally fine musical ear, and it sank too into his heart. Hence is his prime Poem bright with hope as is the sunny sea when sailor's sweethearts on the shore are looking out for ships; and from a foreign station down comes the fleet before the wind, and the very shells beneath their footsteps seem to sing for joy. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if she were our own only daughter-filling our life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through those giant woods! As for Lochiel's Warn the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the Highland glooms-the Lament wails no more, "That man may not hide what God would reveal!" Mr. Bowles has been a poet for good fifty years; and if his genius do not burn quite so bright as it did some lustres bygone-yet we do not say there is any abatement even of its brightness: it shines with a mellower and also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too pensive-too melancholy-too pathetic-too wo-begone-in too great bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sung with a thorn at his breast-from which one wondered the point had not been broken off by perpetual pressure. Yet, though rather monotonous, his strains were most musical as well as melancholy; feeling was often relieved by fancy; and one dreamed, in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands of dim-imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old Romance." A fine enthusiasm too was his-in those youthful years-inspired by the poetry of Greece and Rome; and in some of his hap-ing, there was heard the voice of the Last of piest inspirations there was a delightful and original union-to be found nowhere else that we can remember-of the spirit of that ancient song-the pure classical spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus with that of our own poetry, that like a noble Naiad dwells in the "clear well of English undefiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but his was no affected or pedantic scholarship-intrusive most when least required; but the growth of a consummate classical education, of which the career was not inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a pupil of the Wartons-Joe and TomGod bless their souls!—and his name may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs-and with Mason's, and Gray's, and Collins's-academics all; the works of them all showing a delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, enriching their own English nature. Bowles's muse is always loath to forget-wherever she roam or linger-Winchester and Oxford-the Itchin and the Isis. None educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them, who can read Homer and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, in the original; Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons are those alone who pursued their poetical studies-in translations. They never knew the nature of the true old Greek fire. But has Bowles written a Great Poem? If he has, publish it, and we shall make him a Bishop. What shall we say of the Pleasures of Hope? That the harp from which that music breathed, was an Eolian harp placed in the window of a high hall, to catch airs from heaven when heaven was glad, as well she might be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a magnificent aurora borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic march-now it swells into a holy The Navy owes much to "Ye mariners of England." Sheer hulks often seemed ships till that strain arose-but ever since in our imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we say, after that, that Campbell has never written a Great Poem? Yesin the face even of the Metropolitan ! It was said many long years ago in the Edinburgh Review, that none but maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed that James Montgomery was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner-and Christopher North a sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in his own belief, yet in ours. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are the most simpleminded, pure-hearted, and high-souled-and these qualities shine serenely in the Pelican Island. In earnestness and fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away; neither shall it moulder-not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a fair form laid asleep in immortality-its face wearing, day and night, summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly-a celestial smile. That is a true image; but is the Pelican Island a Great Poem? We pause not for a reply. Lyrical Poetry, we opine, hath many branches and one of them "beautiful exceedingly" with bud, blossom, and fruit of balm and bright ness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward when the air is cal'n, and ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, | What has been the result? Seven volumes it is uplifted in the sunshine, and glows wav- (oh! why not seven more?) of poetry, as ingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the loftiest beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and region of the Tree which is Amaranth. That of Apollo. The earth-the middle air-the sky is a fanciful, perhaps foolish form of expres--the heaven-the heart, mind, and soul of sion, employed at present to signify Song-writ-man-are "the haunt and main region of his ing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever song." In describing external nature as she is, warbled, or chanted, or sung, the best, in our no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworthestimation, is verily none other than Thomas not even Thomson; in embuing her and makMoore. True that Robert Burns has indited ing her pregnant with spiritualities, till the many songs that slip into the heart, just like mighty mother teems with "beauty far more light, no one knows how, filling its chambers beauteous" than she had ever rejoiced in till sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing such communion-he excels all the brothermore to desire for perfect contentment. Or hood. Therein lies his special glory, and let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like therein the immortal evidences of the might listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird of his creative imagination. All men at times in the brake, a laverock in the sky. They sing "muse on nature with a poet's eye," but in the fulness of their joy, as nature teaches Wordsworth ever-and his soul has grown them-and so did he; and the man, woman, or more and more religious from such worship. child, who is delighted not with such singing, Every rock is an altar-every grove a shrine. be their virtues what they may, must never We fear that there will be sectarians even in hope to be in Heaven. Gracious Providence this Natural Religion till the end of time. placed Burns in the midst of the sources of But he is the High Priest of Nature-or, to use Lyrical Poetry-when he was born a Scottish his own words, or nearly so, he is the High peasant. Now, Moore is an Irishman, and Priest "in the metropolitan temple built in the was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, heart of mighty poets." But has he-even he and translated-after a fashion-Anacreon.-ever written a Great Poem? If he has-it And Moore has lived much in towns and cities is not the Excursion. Nay, the Excursion is -and in that society whch will suffer none not a Poem. It is a Series of Poems, all else to be called good. Some advantages he swimming in the light of poetry; some of has enjoyed which Burns never did-but then them sweet and simple, some elegant and how many disadvantages has he undergone, graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some from which the Ayrshire Ploughman, in the of "strength and state," some majestic, some bondage of his poverty, was free! You see magnificent, some sublime. But though it all that at a single glance into their poetry. has an opening, it has no beginning; you can But all in humble life is not high-all in high discover the middle only by the numerals on life is not low; and there is as much to guard the page; and the most serious apprehensions against in hovel as in hall-in "auld clay- have been very generally entertained that it bigging" as in marble palace. Burns some- has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary times wrote like a mere boor-Moore has too breathe the vital air, may the Excursion, stop often written like a mere man of fashion. But where it will, be renewed; and as in its pretake them both at their best-and both are ini- sent shape it comprehends but a Three Days' mitable. Both are national poets-and who Walk, we have but to think of an Excursion hall say, that if Moore had been born and of three weeks, three months, or three years, bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland to have some idea of Eternity. Then the life had been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, of man is not always limited to the term of and religion as Scotland is-and surely, with- threescore and ten years. What a Journal out offence, we may say that it never was, and might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion never will be-though we love the Green till the land overflowed; but whether in one Island well-that with his fine fancy, warm volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, not a heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might not Great Poem-nay, not a Poem at all-nor ever have been as natural a lyrist as Burns; while, to be so esteemed, till the principles on which take him as he is, who can deny that in rich- Great Poets build the lofty rhyme are exploded, ness, in variety, in grace, and in the power of and the very names of Art and Science smothart, he is superior to the ploughman. Of Lal-ered and lost in the bosom of Nature from lah Rookh and the Loves of the Angels, we defy you to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a Great Poem? Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. He is the Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of Trinity. Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, moon and stars, but "To murmur by the living brooks which they arose. The Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he be alive and hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and suh jected for a few minutes to the ethereal influence of that wonderful man's monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. barren wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather feel to do so, under the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as the sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight with colours manifold, that the bees seek them, deluded by the show of flowers. The sun, you know, does not always show his orb even in the daytimeand people are often ignorant of his place in What a world would this be were all its inhabitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do every thing else in a style of equal perfection! But pray, how does a man write poetry with a pen upon paper, who thus is perpetually pouring it from his inspired lips? Read the Ancient Mariner, the Nightingale, and Genevieve. In the first, you shudder at the superstition of the sea-in the second, you thrill with the melodies of the woods--in the third, earth is like heaven ;-for you are made to feel that "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, And feed his sacred flame!" Has Coleridge, then, ever written a Great Poem? No; for besides the Regions of the Fair, the Wild, and the Wonderful, there is another up to which his wing might not soar; though the plumes are strong as soft. But why should he who loveth to take "the wings of a dove that he may flee away" to the bosom of beauty, though there never for a moment to be at rest--why should he, like an eagle, soar into the storms that roll above this visible diurnal sphere in peals of perpetual thunder? the firmament. But he keeps shining away at on "honey-dew," and by lips that have "breathhis leisure, as you would know were he to suf- ed the air of Paradise," and learned a seraphic fer eclipse. Perhaps he-the sun-is at no language, which, all the while that it is Engother time a more delightful luminary than lish, is as grand as Greek and as soft as when he is pleased to dispense his influence Italian. We only know this, that Coleridge is through a general haze, or mist-softening all the alchymist that in his crucible melts down the day till meridian is almost like the after-hours to moments-and lo! diamonds sprinkled moon, and the grove, anticipating gloaming, on a plate of gold. bursts into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too become him well-whether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all round about him castle-wise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is it reasonable to find fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, "he flames on the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on setting, has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resembles Coleridge. It is easy to talk-not very difficult to speechify-hard to speak; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mortal man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the world loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself Adam and Eve listening to the affable archangel Raphael in the Garden of Eden. You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for awhile, than you would a river that "imposes silence with a stilly sound." Whether you understand two consecutive sentences, we shall not stop too curiously to inquire; but you do something better, you feel the whole just like any other divine music. And 'tis your own fault if you do not "A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." Reason is said to be one faculty, and Imagination another-but there cannot be a grosser mistake; they are one and indivisible; only in most cases they live like cat and dog, in mutual worrying, or haply sue for a divorce; whereas in the case of Coleridge they are one spirit as well as one flesh, and keep billing and cooing in a perpetual honey-moon. Then his mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and Romans; and though we have heard simpletons say that he knows nothing of science, we have heard him on chemistry puzzle Sir Humphrey Davy-and prove to his own entire satisfaction, that Leibbitz and Newton, though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. Besides, he thinks nothing of inventing a new science, with a complete nomenclature, in a twinkling-and should you seem sluggish of apprehension, he endows you with an additional sense or two, over and above the usual seven, till you are no longer at a loss, be it even to scent the music of fragrance, or to hear the smell of a balmy piece of poetry. All the faculties, both of soul and sense, seem amicably to interchange their functions and their provinces; and you fear not that the dream may dissolve, persuaded that you are in a future state of permanent enjoyment. Nor are we now using any exaggeration; for if you will but think how unutterably dull are all the ordinary sayings and doings of this life, spent as it is with ordinary people, you may imagine how in sweet delirium you may be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that has fed since first it lisped Wordsworth, somewhere or other, remonstrates, rather angrily, with the Public, against her obstinate ignorance shown in persisting to put into one class, himself, Coleridge, and Southey, as birds of a feather, that not only flock together but warble the same sort of song. But he elsewhere tells us that he and Coleridge hold the same principles in the Art Poetical; and among his Lyrical Ballads he admitted the three finest compositions of his illustrious Compeer. The Public, therefore, is not to blame in taking him at his word, even if she had discerned no family likeness in their genius. Southey certainly resembles Wordsworth less than Coleridge does; but he lives at Keswick, which is but some dozen miles from Rydal, and perhaps with an unphi. losophical though pensive Public that link of connection should be allowed to be sufficient, even were there no other less patent and material than the Macadamized turnpike road. But true it is and of verity, that Southey, among our living Poets, stands aloof and "alone in his glory;" for he alone of them all has adventured to illustrate, in Poems of magnitude, the different characters, customs, and manners of nations. Joan of Arc is an English and French story-Thalaba, Arabian-Kehama, Indian--Madoc, Welsh and American-and Roderick, Spanish and Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was a very youthful work) in which of these noble Poems Mr. Southey has most successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any but the highest genius. In Ma |