Will leave him never till he parts with life.

What though to thee he breathed no kind farewell,
When he went forth to meet his country's foes;
Deem him not faithless; he of thee will bear
The sweet remembrance wheresoe'er he goes.

Too well he loved, that last sad word to say:
The patriot fire had died within his breast,
Had those blue eyes in tears but met his gaze,
Quenching the soldier's hopes, while they the lover blest.

Nay, do not doubt him! he must win a name,
And lay his dear-bought laurels at thy feet;
Ambition prompts-he must not trust his heart,
But to the field, glory or death to meet.
Into the casement pours the moonlight pale,
But, to thy sad and doubting heart, appears
As darkness only, while thy drooping lids
Are richly freighted with their unshed tears;
Had he but given thee one parting glance,
Had he but said one little parting word,
Thou couldst have plumed for him the soldier's crest,
Thou couldst have buckled on his glittering sword;
"Ah! no; he does not love me, faithless one !"
Such are the thoughts that fill that loving heart,
And from the festive scene thou steal'st away.
To none thy doubts or fears canst thou impart.
"If he prove faithless, whom may woman trust!"

Without his love thy heaven is dark and drear;
Yet-thou canst pray for him, and thou wilt kneel,
Though every word should cost a life-drop dear.

Alas, for youth, when its first grief doth fall-
A grief it may not tell-upon the soul!
Alas for woman, when the first doubt springs,
Of that affection deep, without control,
Which hath been hers! not as the changing tide
Of ocean's breast in ceaseless ebb and flow;
But, like a changeless sea, whose deepest depths
Prison the sunlight, and retain its glow.
A little cloud on her horizon lowers,
Deeper and deeper grows the murky sky,
Till from its breast the pealing thunders roll,
And the forked lightning glimmers far on high;
Pierced by the bolt, she sinks, nor seeks to rise;
The broken heart retains the image dear,

And to the loved ideal clingeth still,

Though doubt become sad truth-truth all too clear.

Nay, as a shattered mirror multiplies

The object when reflected on its breast,

Each fragment of her broken, bleeding heart,

Gives back the image in its wild unrest:

At every turn one only face she sees,

The voice she still must love yet trembles on the breeze.

But hark, a shout, the hour of conflict's past,
And victory wreathes the hero's pluméd crest;
The flush of triumph glows upon his brow,
And warms the life blood in his patriot breast.
He comes to lay his laurels at thy feet,

And claim the hand he hath so nobly won;

Where now thy doubts? As mists of morning flown
Before the advancing chariot of the sun.

Thy conflict too is past-thy struggle o'er-
Love's deathless crown is thine, for evermore.

SHAKSPEARE'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS OWN GREATNESS.

BY THE LATE WILLIAM GODWIN, ESQ., JUNIOR.

F all the popular fallacies that are rife in the world of letters, in my opinion there is not one so fallacious as that which asserts that Shakspeare was ignorant of his own greatness; and yet, like other errors that I could name, it is now enwrapped in the venerable gaberdine of antiquity, on the rusty reputation of which it passes from mouth to mouth unquestioned and unresisted. It may on this account be perhaps thought presumptuous in me to venture for a moment to attempt to overturn the dictum: but in fighting this battle, I take Shakspeare himself for my Ithuriel spear, and Nature for my Palladian shield; and, like an errant of old, trust that the weakness of my arm may be more than counterbalanced by the potent magic that has been expended on my panoply.

Truth is mighty, and will prevail. I am sure that the assertion of our Poet's unconsciousness is contrary to analogy and to reason: I believe that it is contrary to the

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facts that remain to us of his life. If I can prove these two positions, the field will be won.

The great, and indeed the only argument urged in support of the sophism I have to combat, is the fact that Shakspeare published no edition of his plays, but risked them to the care of chance and of posterity. The logic that has been built upon this datum is, that if the poet had been conscious of the ineffable splendor with which he has illumined his dramas, it was in the course of things impossible, that he could be content to let them pass down the stream of time without tending their outset under the guardianship of his own paternal eye.

This argument I admit to be plausible on the first glance; but when we come to examine it, we shall find that it omits a world of facts, and that it is adverse to the laws of nature and of truth.

In the first place, it is a matter of record that Shakspeare re-wrote many of his plays-amongst which may more particularly be mentioned, Hamlet and the Merry Wives of Windsor. That is not the act of a man who writes merely for profit, and with a view to supply the popular demand of the day. It rather betokens a painstaking examination of the original document; a consciousness that the full energy of the mind has not been lavished on its formation; and a resolution "to lay on load" and forward it to that pitch of excellence which lies germinating within the brain of the author.