Like a high-born maiden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower?? Like a glow-worm golden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach me, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want, What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Langour cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. THE SKYLARK. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near, Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!" 281 Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 1. "Shelley chose the measure of this poem with great felicity. The earnest hurry of the four short lines, followed by the long effusiveness of the Alexandrine, expresses the eagerness and continuity of the lark."-Leigh Hunt. "Shelley's Skylark is perfectly buoyant with the very music it commemorates."-Tuckerman. "The ode to the Skylark is the very warbling of the triumphant bird."Shaw. 2. "The music of the whole stanza is of the loveliest sweetness; of energy in the midst of softness; of dulcitude and variety. Not a sound of a vowel in the quatrain resembles that of another, except in the rhymes; while the very SHELLEY. sameness or repetition of the sounds in the Alexandrine intimates the revolvement and continuity of the music which the lady is playing, observe, for instance, (for nothing is too minute to dwell upon in such beauty), the contrast of the i and o in high-born'; the difference of the a in maiden' from that in palace' the strong opposition of maiden to tower (making the rhyme more vigorous in proportion to the general softness); then the new differences in soothing, love-laden, soul, and secret, all diverse from one another, and from the whole strain; and finally, the strain itself, winding up in the Alexandrine with a cadence of particular repetitions, which constitutes nevertheless a new difference on that account The music is carried on into the first two lines of the next stanza : Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew; A melody as happy in its alliteration as in what may be termed its counterpoint. And the colouring of this stanza is as beautiful as the music."-Leigh Hunt. 3. "A most noble and emphatic close of the stanza. Not that the lark, in any vulgar sense of the word, scorns' the ground, for he dwells upon it; but that, like the poet, nobody can take leave of common-places with more heavenly triumph."-Leigh Hunt. XV. THE SOLDIER'S DREAM. "IF ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal, and bear the stamp of heaven. The man of high descent may love the halls and lands of his inheritance as a part of himself, as trophies of his birth and power; the poor man's attachment to the tenement he holds, which strangers have held before, and may to-morrow occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a purer soil. His household gods are of flesh and blood, with no alloy of silver, gold, or precious stones; he has no property but in the affections of his own heart; and when they endear bare floors and walls, despite of rags and toil, and scanty meals, that man has his love of home from God, and his rude hut becomes a golemn place."—Dickens. OUR bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lowered, When reposing that night on my pallet of straw, And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again. I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore And my wife sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart. NIGHT. Stay, stay with us,-rest, thou art weary and worn ; 283 CAMPBELL. XVI. NIGHT. "IF the relation of sleep to-night, and, in some instances, its converse, be real, we cannot reflect without amazement upon the extent to which it carries us. Day and night are things close to us; the change applies immediately to our sensations; of all the phenomena of nature, it is the most obvious and the most familiar to our experience; but, in its cause, it belongs to the great motions which are passing in the heavens. Whilst the earth glides round her axle, she ministers to the alternate necessities of the animals dwelling upon her surface, at the same time that she obeys the influence of those attractions which regulate the order of many thousand worlds. The relation, therefore, of sleep to-night, is the relation of the inhabitants of the earth to the rotation of their globe; probably it is more; it is a relation to the system of which that globe is a part; and, still farther, to the congregation of systems of which theirs is only one. If this account be true, it connects the meanest individual with the universe itself; a chicken roosting upon its perch, with the spheres revolving in the firmament."-Paley. - NIGHT is the time for rest ;- To gather round an aching breast The curtain of repose, Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head Down on our own delightful bed! Night is the time for dreams; The gay romance of life, When truth that is, and truth that seems Mix in fantastic strife; Ah! visions less beguiling far Than waking dreams by daylight are! Night is the time for toil ;- Night is the time to weep ; To wet with unseen tears Those graves of memory, where sleep Hopes that were angels at their birth, Night is the time to watch; Night is the time for care; Like Brutus midst his slumbering host, Night is the time to think;- Takes flight, and on the utmost brink Discerns beyond the abyss of night The dawn of uncreated light. Night is the time to pray; Our Saviour oft withdrew To desert mountains far away; So will his followers do, Steal from the throug to haunts untrod, And commune there alone with God. Night is the time for death ; When all around is peace, Calmly to yield the weary breath, From sin and suffering cease, Think of heaven's bliss, and give the sign To parting friends;-that death be mine. JAMES MONTGOMERY, |