I see the rainbow in the sky,
The dew upon the grass;
I see them, and I ask not why
They glimmer or they pass.

With folded arms I linger not
To call them back-'twere vain :
In this, or in some other spot
I know they'll shine again.

CHILDREN PLAYING IN A CHURCHYARD.

Children, keep up that harmless play,
Your kindred angels plainly say
By God's authority ye may.

Be prompt his Holy word to hear,
It teaches you to banish fear;
The lesson lies on all sides near.

Ten summers hence the sprightliest lad
In Nature's face will look more sad,
And ask where are those smiles she had?

Ere many days the last will close.
Play on, play on, for then (who knows?)
Ye who play here may here repose.

Ah! what avails the sceptered race!
Ah! what the form divine !

What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.

ON SOUTHEY'S DEATH.

Friends, hear the words my wandering thoughts would say, And cast them into shape some other day;

Southey, my friend of forty years, is gone,

And, shattered by the fall, I stand alone.

An aged man who loved to doze away
An hour by daylight, for his eyes were dim,
And he had seen too many suns go down
And rise again, dreamt that he saw two forms
Of radiant beauty; he would clasp them both,
But both flew stealthily away. He cried
In his wild dream,

'I never thought, O youth, That thou, altho' so cherisht, would'st return,

But I did think that he who came with thee,

Love, who could swear more sweetly than birds sing,
Would never leave me comfortless and lone.'

A sigh broke through his slumber, not the last.

ON HIMSELF.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

FOR AN EPITAPH AT FIESOLE.

Lo! where the four mimosas blend their shade,
In calm repose at last is Landor laid;
For ere he slept he saw them planted here
By her his soul had ever held most dear,

And he had lived enough when he had dried her tear.

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER.

[BRYAN WALLER PROCTER was born in London Nov. 21, 1787. He was educated, with Byron, at Harrow; studied as a solicitor in the country; returned to London to live in 1807. His period of literary activity extended from 1815 to 1823. In 1832 he was made Metropolitan Commissioner of Lunacy, a post which he resigned in 1851. He died Oct. 4, 1874. His principal works, all published under the pseudonym of Barry Cornwall, are Dramatic Scenes, 1819; Marcian Colonna, 1820; A Sicilian Story, 1821; Mirandola, 1821; The Flood of Thessaly, 1823; English Songs, 1832.]

Barry Cornwall was a very fluent and accomplished artist in verse rather than what we usually understand by a poet. He had nothing bardic or prophetic in his nature, he was burdened with no special message to mankind, and he gave no sign of ever feeling very strongly on any particular point or occasion. The critic is curiously baffled in seeking for a poetical or personal individuality in his verse, for he never seems to be expressing anything in his own person. This negative quality forms the chief characteristic of his best work, his English Songs. All other known lyrists have either recorded in their songs their personal experiences in emotion, or they have so framed their verses as to seem to do so; Barry Cornwall alone has contrived to write songs of a purely and obviously impersonal and artificial kind, dealing dramatically with feelings which the poet does not himself pretend to experience. His fragments of drama are lyrical, his lyrics dramatic, and each class suffers somewhat from this intrusion into the domain of the other. We hardly do justice to the merit of verse which is so impartial as to become almost uninteresting, and Procter has suffered from his retiring modesty no less than other poets from their arrogance. His lyrics do not possess passion or real pathos or any very deep magic of melody, but he has written more songs

that deserve the comparative praise of good than any other modern writer except Shelley and Tennyson. There is a sort of literary insincerity about Barry Cornwall's verse that found no counterpart in the beautiful character of Mr. Procter. We wonder at rapturous addresses to the ocean,

'I'm on the Sea! I'm on the Sea!

I am where I would ever be,'

from the landsman who could never, in the course of a long life, venture on the voyage from Dover to Calais, and at bursts of vinous enthusiasm from the most temperate of valetudinarians; but the poet would have defended his practice by his own curious theory that 'those songs are most natural which do not proceed from the author in person.' Procter's verse has been much admired and much neglected, and will never, in all probability, gain the ear of the public again to any great extent. His merits are more than considerable, but the mild lustrous beauty of his verse is scarcely vivid enough to attract much attention. There would be more to say about his writings if they were less faultless and refined.

EDMUND W. GOSSE.

FOR MUSIC.

Now whilst he dreams, O Muses, wind him round!
Send down thy silver words, O murmuring Rain!
Haunt him, sweet Music! Fall, with gentlest sound,—
Like dew, like night, upon his weary brain!
Come, Odours of the rose and violet,-bear

Into his charmed sleep all visions fair!

So may the lost be found,

So may his thoughts by tender Love be crowned,
And Hope come shining like a vernal morn,

And with its beams adorn

The Future, till he breathes diviner air,

In some soft Heaven of joy, beyond the range of Care!

THE SEA.

The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions 'round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;

Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the Sea! I'm on the Sea!

I am where I would ever be;

With the blue above, and the blue below,

And silence wheresoe'er I go;

If a storm should come and awake the deep,

What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

1

I love (oh! how I love) to ride

On the fierce foaming bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the south-west blasts do blow.