There is then a choral hymn addressed to the sylvan deity, which appears to us to be full of beauty; and reminds us, in many places, of the finest strains of Sicilian-or of English poetry. A part of it is as follows:"O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang From jagged trunks; and overshadoweth Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death Of unseen flowers, in heavy peacefulness! Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress Their ruffled locks, where meeting hazels darken; And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and The dreary melody of bedded reeds- [hearken In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth.—

Is borrowed from these than the general con- | And see that oftentimes the reins would slip ception of their condition and relations; and Through his forgotten hands!"—pp. 11, 12. an original character and distinct individuality is then bestowed upon them, which has all the merit of invention, and all the grace and attraction of the fictions on which it is engrafted. The ancients, though they probably did not stand in any great awe of their deities, have yet abstained very much from any minute or dramatic representation of their feelings and affections. În Hesiod and Homer, they are broadly delineated by some of their actions and adventures, and introduced to us merely as the agents in those particular transactions; while in the Hymns, from those ascribed to Orpheus and Homer, down to those of Callimachus, we have little but pomp-O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet, turtles ous epithets and invocations, with a flattering Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, commemoration of their most famous exploits What time thou wanderest at eventide -and are never allowed to enter into their Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side bosoms, or follow out the train of their feel- Of thine enmossed realms: 0 thou, to whom ings, with the presumption of our human Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom sympathy. Except the love-song of the Cy- Their golden honeycombs; our village leas Their ripen'd fruitage; yellow girted bees clops to his Sea Nymph in Theocritus-the Their fairest blossom'd beans and poppied corn, Lamentation of Venus for Adonis in Moschus The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, -and the more recent Legend of Apuleius, To sing for thee; low creeping strawberries we scarcely recollect a passage in all the Their summer coolness; pent up butterflies writings of antiquity in which the passions of Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh budding year All its completions! be quickly near, an immortal are fairly disclosed to the scrutiny By every wind that nods the mountain pine, and observation of men. The author before O forester divine! us, however, and some of his contemporaries, have dealt differently with the subject;-and, sheltering the violence of the fiction under the ancient traditionary fable, have in reality created and imagined an entire new set of characters; and brought closely and minutely before us the loves and sorrows and perplexities of beings, with whose names and supernatural attributes we had long been familiar, without any sense or feeling of their personal character. We have more than doubts of the fitness of such personages to maintain a permanent interest with the modern public; but the way in which they are here managed certainly gives them the best chance that now remains for them; and, at all events, it cannot be denied that the effect is striking and graceful. But we must now proceed to

our extracts.

For willing service; whether to surprise
"Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit;
Or upward ragged precipices flit
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Bewilder'd shepherds to their path again;
Or by mysterious enticement draw
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
And gather up all fancifullest shells
For thee to tumble into Naiad's cells,
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping!
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
With silv'ry oak apples, and fir cones brown-
The while they pelt each other on the crown
By all the echoes that about thee ring!
Hear us, O satyr King!

Hearkener to the loud clapping shears, While ever and anon to his shorn peers A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn, When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn Anger our huntsmen! Breather round our farms, The first of the volumes before us is occu-To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: pied with the loves of Endymion and Diana Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, That come a swooning over hollow grounds, which it would not be very easy, and which And wither drearily on barren moors!'" we do not at all intend to analyse in detail. In the beginning of the poem, however, the Shepherd Prince is represented as having had strange visions and delirious interviews with an unknown and celestial beauty: Soon after which, he is called on to preside at a festival in honour of Pan; and his appearance in the procession is thus described:

"His youth was fully blown,
Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown;
And, for those simple times, his garments were
A chieftain king's: Beneath his breast, half bare,
Was hung a silver bugle; and between
His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen.
A smile was on his countenance: He seem'd.
To common lookers on, like one who dream'd
Of idleness in groves Elysian:

But there were some who feelingly could scan
A lurking trouble in his nether lip,

pp. 114-117.

The enamoured youth sinks into insensibility in the midst of the solemnity, and is borne apart and revived by the care of his sister; and, opening his heavy eyes in her arms, says—

"I feel this thine endearing love

All through my bosom! Thou art as a dove
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings
About me; and the pearliest dew not brings
Such morning incense from the fields of May,
As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray
From those kind eyes. Then think not thou
That, any longer, I will pass my days
Alone and sad. No! I will once more raise
My voice upon the mountain heights; once more
Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar!
Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll
Around the breathed boar: again I'll poll

KEATS' POEMS.

Old ditties sigh above their father's grave!
Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's feet!
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
Where long ago, a Giant battle was!
And from the turf a lullaby doth pass,
In every place where infant Orpheus slept!"

imitations; but we have no longer time for
such a task. Mr. Keats has followed his
original more closely, and has given a deep
pathos to several of his stanzas. The widow-
ed bride's discovery of the murdered body is
very strikingly given.

In the midst of all these enchantments he" Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon

has, we do not very well know how, another ravishing interview with his unknown goddess; and when she again melts away from him, he finds himself in a vast grotto, where he overhears the courtship of Alpheus and Arethusa; and as they elope together, discovers that the grotto has disappeared, and that he is at the bottom of the sea, under the transparent arches of its naked waters! The following is abundantly extravagant; but comes of no ignoble lineage-nor shames its high descent:

"Far had he roam'd,

With nothing save the hollow vast, that foam'd
Above, around, and at his feet; save things
More dead than Morpheus' imaginings!
Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large
Of gone sea-warriors; brazen beaks and targe;
Rudders that for a thousand years had lost
The sway of human hand; gold vase emboss'd
With long-forgotten story, and wherein
No reveller had ever dipp'd a chin

But those of Saturn's vintage; mould'ring scrolls,
Writ in the tongue of heaven, by those souls
Who first were on the earth; and sculptures rude
In pond'rous stone, developing the mood
Of ancient Nox ;-then skeletons of man,
Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan,
And elephant, and eagle-and huge jaw
Of nameless monster."
p. 111.

There he finds ancient Glaucus enchanted
by Circe-hears his wild story-and goes with
him to the deliverance and restoration of thou-
sands of drowned lovers, whose bodies were
piled and stowed away in a large submarine
palace. When this feat is happily performed,
he finds himself again on dry ground, with
woods and waters around him; and can-
not help falling desperately in love with a
beautiful damsel whom he finds there, pining
for some such consolation; and who tells a
long story of having come from India in the
train of Bacchus, and having strayed away
from him into that forest!-So they vow eter-
nal fidelity; and are wafted up to heaven on
flying horses; on which they sleep and dream
among the stars; and then the lady melts
away, and he is again alone upon the earth;
but soon rejoins his Indian love, and agrees
to give up his goddess, and live only for her:
But she refuses, and says she is resolved to
devote herself to the service of Diana: But,
when she goes to accomplish that dedication,
she turns out to be the goddess herself in a
new shape! and finally exalts her lover with
her to a blessed immortality!

We have left ourselves room to say but little of the second volume; which is of a more miscellaneous character. Lamia is a Greek antique story, in the measure and taste of Endymion. Isabella is a paraphrase of the same tale of Boccacio which Mr. Cornwall has also imitated, under the title of "A Sicilian Story." It would be worth while to compare the two

53

Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies!
She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone,

And put it in her bosom, where it dries.
Then 'gan she work again; nor stay'd her care,
But to throw back at times her veiling hair.
"That old nurse stood beside her, wondering,
Until her heart felt pity to the core,
At sight of such a dismal labouring;

And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,
And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:
Three hours they labour'd at this trivial sore;
At last they felt the kernel of the grave, &c.
"In anxious secrecy they took it home,

And then-the prize was all for Isabel!
She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb;
And all around each eye's sepulchral cell
Pointed cach fringed lash: The smeared loam

With tears, as chilly as a dripping well, [kep'
She drench'd away :-and still she comb'd, and
Sighing all day-and still she kiss'd, and wept
"Then in a silken scarf-sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully,-
She wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover'd it with mould; and o'er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.
"And she forgot the stars, the moon, the sun!
And she forgot the blue above the trees;
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze!
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she gaw not! But in pea
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moisten'd it with tears, unto the core !"
pp. 72-75.

The following lines from an ode to a Nightingale are equally distinguished for harmony and high poetic feeiing:-

"O for a beaker full of the warm South!

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And prrpie-stained mouth!
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.
Fade for away! dissolve-and quite forget
What Thou among the leaves hast never

known

The weariness, the fever, and the fret, [groan;
Here, where men sit and hear each other
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and

dies!

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs.
The voice I hear, this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown!
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for
home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn!
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam,
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."
pp. 108-111.

We know nothing at once so truly fresh, genuine, and English,-and, at the same

2

time, so full of poetical feeling, and Greek | chamber, and of all that passes in that sweet elegance and simplicity, as this address to

Those delicates he heap'd with glowing hand, On golden dishes, and in baskets bright Of wreathed silver; sumptuous they stand In the retired quiet of the night, Filling the chilly room with perfume light. But the glory and charm of the poem is in And now, my love! my Seraph fair! awake! the description of the fair maiden's antique | Ope thy sweet eyes! for dear St. Agnes' sake!''

It is difficult to break off in such a course of citation: But we must stop here; and shall close our extracts with the following lively lines:

O sweet Fancy! let her loose!
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the plough-boy's heavy shoon;
When the Night doth meet the Noon,
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.
-Thou shalt hear

Distant harvest carols clear;
Rustle of the reaped corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn;
And, in the same moment-hark!
'Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plum'd lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower

There is a fragment of a projected Epic, entitled "Hyperion," on the expulsion of Saturn and the Titanian deities by Jupiter and his younger adherents, of which we cannot advise the completion: For, though there are passages of some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious, from the specimen before us, that the subject is too far removed from all the sources of human interest, to be successfully treated by any modern author. Mr. Keats has unquestionably a very beautiful imagination, a perfect ear for harmony, and a great familiarity with the finest diction of English poetry; but he must learn not to misuse or misapply these advantages; and neither to waste the good gifts of nature and study on intractable themes, nor to luxuriate too recklessly on such as are more suitable.

(March, 1819.)

Human Life: a Poem. By SAMUEL ROGERS. 4to. pp. 94. London: 1819.

THESE are very sweet verses. They do not, indeed, stir the spirit like the strong lines of Byron, nor make our hearts dance within us, like the inspiring strains of Scott; but they come over us with a bewitching softness that, in certain moods, is still more delightful-and soothe the troubled spirits with a refreshing sense of truth, purity, and elegance. They are pensive rather than passionate; and more full of wisdom and tenderness than of high flights of fancy, or overwhelming bursts of emotion-while they are moulded into grace, at least as much by the effect of the Moral beauties they disclose, as by the taste and judgment with which they are constructed.

The theme is HUMAN LIFE!-not only "the subject of all verse"-but the great centre and source of all interest in the works of human beings to which both verse and prose invariably bring us back, when they succeed in rivetting our attention, or rousing our emotions and which turns every thing into poetry to which its sensibilities can be ascribed, or by which its vicissitudes can be suggested! Yet it is not by any means to that which, in ordinary language, is termed the poetry or the romance of human life, that the present work is directed. The life which it endeavours to set before us, is not life diversified

with strange adventures, embodied in extraordinary characters, or agitated with turbulent passions-not the life of warlike paladins, or desperate lovers, or sublime ruffians-or piping shepherds or sentimental savages, or bloody bigots or preaching pedlars-or conquerors, poets, or any other species of madmen-but the ordinary, practical, and amiable life of social, intelligent, and affectionate men in the upper ranks of society-such, in short, as multitudes may be seen living every day in this country-for the picture is entirely English-and though not perhaps in the choice of every one, yet open to the judg ment, and familiar to the sympathies, of all. It contains, of course, no story, and no individual characters. It is properly and peculiarly contemplative-and consists in a series of reflections on our mysterious nature and condition upon earth, and on the marvellous, though unnoticed changes which the or linary course of our existence is continually bringing about in our being. Its marking peculiarity in this respect is, that it is free from the least alloy of acrimony or harsh judgment, and deals not at all indeed in any species of satirical or sarcastic remark. The poet looks here on man, and teaches us to look on him, not merely with love, but with reverence; and, mingling a sort of considerate pity for the