RECOLLECTIONS OF A POETIC CHILDHOOD.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PASSION OF LOVE AS MODIFIED BY THE POETICAL IMAGINATION.

Παντα yag του 'κει και του θείου ορέγεται, κακείνου ενέκα πραττει όσα κατα φυσιν garru.-Aristot. De Animâ, ii. 4.

Couched in the twilight bower of Memory,

Ere yet her last faint vesper beam expires,
The heart, once passion-tranced, now coldly free,
Dreams back the fervour of its noontide fires.
Thoughts in their first wild semblance profitless!
Yea, oft a dark and desecrated theme;

Where fools still hear, and babblers still confess,
Their record of some low licentious dream:
But to whom, rarely fraught, the secret's given,
Theme deep as Ocean's depths, holy and high as Heaven!

For here-here chief-for millions here alone

Gleam the veil'd glories of our deathless dower ;

Here sound, though strange and dim their undertone,
The genuine echoes of immortal power.

Here first the Nurseling of Eternity

Lisps the weird language of his birthright, sighs

That murmur infinite longings, tones that be

Music strayed earthward from the spherèd skies.

Infant of Hope, the Heir of heavenly joys

Moulds his young heaven below, and sports among its toys!

This Power, the Promise through the Pang still seeing,

To paint the sunbow on the sunless storm;

This power to make our Hope our present Being,

Flesh with the life of Spirit to inform ;

This high, heaven-framing instinct of the Heart,
Prolific of new Edens,-bright Unrest,

August disquietude, whose ceaseless art

Time with Eternal hues can still invest,

This, this, through Sense's earthlier tissue wove,

Passion's dread mystery makes,—the high Sublime of Love!

And hence, if now, quickening long-buried thought,

Your Dreamer phantoms of dead joy present,

Err not, as though some lower aim he sought,

Nor basely deem of this high argument!
Love is the yearning of the heart for Heaven,
That wearied falters on its heaven-ward way,
The impulse unto God, itself God-given,
That, dazzled, errs, and divinizes clay.
Hail, then, the Shadow of that better Light,
Dawn of the infinite Love for Beauty infinite!

For round this delicate Dream of tranced youth
Charms, the wild creatures of ecstatic Soul
Are poured, enchanting aye the brow of Truth
With blossoms from ideal gardens stole.

See the Number for October, 1841.

Even as the cloud-born Iris, on whose form
If earthly substance, a celestial dye

Sinks mantling, till the Fondling of the Storm,
Pillowed on earth claims kindred with the sky.
Earth and etherial hues at last combined,

Expands the Formed not Found, the Venus of the Mind!

We feel the freshening dew of eve, and think,
For then such thoughts the best and fairest be,
As wandering by the crisp stream's grassy brink,
Grief dares forget herself to reverie,-

We think or dream-that Dew of starry growth,
A rain of angel tears, a something born
Of spirit-worlds; and our fond hearts are loth
To spurn the fancy graver hours would scorn,
And give these gathered mists their name.
Earth's purest mould is charmed to purer Heaven by us!

Oh, thus,

Nay more this sky-born instinct too hath made
Yearn for the paradise of solitude,

The wildering cataract, the sequester'd shade,
Those whose deep tenderness, ill understood,
Hath turned to quench its still consuming thought
In Nature's infinite embrace, and sate
The famine of its longings overwrought

On banquets sad and dim and desolate.

The Heart, if not to Heaven or mortal clay,

Must cling to very dreams, with them abide-decay.

And some there be to whom a happier star

Hath given to make their passionate breathings heard,
Hath called one answering Spirit from afar

To own the Silent Wanderer the preferred.
Lo, in his breast a fair creation lives;
Mysterious image is it hers? Alas,

A brain-born phantom! Yet the Dreamer gives
One name to all the glory-groups that pass

In cloudy colouring o'er his eye, and bends

To clasp the Form to which unconscious Fancy lends

A vesture of the air! To Love like this
Our Earth but ministers a Subject, such
As the strong spirit of creative bliss
May mould to glory with transforming touch.
The rest is Heaven! the eternal impulse wrought
Through souls undying shrined in dying frames,
That fires, still fires, the heaven-ascending thought,
And still forestalls the blissful heaven it claims.
Formed for one central Beauty mortal eyes
Shroud all in their own light-the light of Paradise!

Hence rose the old world's lovely madness-hence
The Nymphs who haunted groves and brawling brooks,
Eternal Beauty shadowed to the sense,

To rapture wanderers by celestial looks

Startling like summer lightnings! Hence the train

Of wondrous Shapes, half mortal half divine,

Whose breathing marbles filled each storied fane,
The Painter's group, the Poet's subtler line.
They sought in Love, in Poetry, in Art,

A dream-born Heaven to still the hunger of the Heart!

And thus the Dream-Child loved! Thus thy young breast,
Soul of his dreams! learned its first tenderness

For one who formed the angel he caress'd,
And robed thee in a veil as shadowless
As moonlight on a silent sea-a veil
Of all his sweetest fantasies, that grew

Round Thee, as blossoms 'neath a western gale
Unclose their timid eyes of crimson hue,

To shrine their parent tree in verdurous bowers,

And garb its form with wreaths of its own spring-born flowers!

That bright Ideal, moulded of fond thought,

The fair Presiding Shape that haunts the heart,
A type of inexistent beauty, wrought
From every lovely model's loveliest part,

As rose that Sculptor's Wonder which combined
In one the gathered charms of all; yea more
The Form that still o'erpasses them, which mind
And Mind alone can frame, frames to adore,*
Methought had glided into sight, as stole

Like sundawn on the waves, this magic o'er my soul.

I saw in it the witching dream that wooed
My tranced brain, slow waking up to life,
Bodied to visible Nature; and a mood
Artless while passionate, and ever rife
With worshipp'd shadows, joyously received
Its own bright Phantom in the world of sense!
Yes I could love it more when I believed
My heart's own energies had called it thence ;
Had quickened with some new Promethean fire
Its Hope to living truth, the might of deep desire!

We walked in love beside the waters wild,
We bound our loves to all that Nature hath,
Her shaggy gloom of woods, her crags o'erpiled,
The grass and flowers that sparkled in our path.
We loved amidst the lovely! and these views
Ceaseless of solemn Nature coloured all
Our hopes and joys with their eternal hues-
Hues awful, shadowy, still-like those that fall

O'er the hushed earth, when thunderous cloud-drifts lour
Dark o'er the pulseless rest of Summer's noontide hour!

Such is the mystic bond of lifeless forms

To living feeling in our passionate days;

Flushed by the kindred common glow that warms
Breathing and breathless in one happy blaze;

Diffusing soul o'er Nature, and from her

Borrowing those deathless beauties for each thought

Of the bright dreams she witness'd, which confer

Eternity on Memory! They have caught

Immortal Nature's glow; these blessed dreams

Return, and with them woods, and wilds, and wandering streams!

• The two rival theories of the Beautiful. A. W. von Schlegel (among others)

has clearly and eloquently enforced the inadequacy of the former,

Thus in the ancient forest-fane our minds
Were wed in heavenly union! Olden trees
With green locks waving in the air, and winds
That whispered round us with a softer breeze,
And laughing waters, and upspringing flowers
Beheld our innocence with happier face ;-
And we were happy; and the fleeting hours
Rested their troubled pinions on the place
In our joy joying :-boyish bliss yet strong

With the deep mournful power that marks the Child of Song!

Children-dream-haunted Children! Yet we mused
Of Love impictured upon old Romance,

Much marvelling, doubting-nay, even now confused
With the first glow the spirit of that trance

Shed on the young heart of each wondering child,
Love's pupil, while but dreaming o'er his page!
Already wrought his spell enchantment wild,

Strange hopes, sweet wants, such as that gentle age
May vaguely feel, but ill as yet imparts;

But years were fleet; we grew; and with us grew our hearts!

And meet was she to be my Spirit's Bride,

That ladye of the passionate breast, whose thought

Was inexpressive beauty! Side by side

With One whose soul was prison'd lightning, sought
Her steps each bare and wild acclivity
Pathless to all save us and straggling flocks
Untended, and imbibed the energy

Of my strong visions, as amid the rocks
High-piled, and barren peak, and tufted wood,
O'erlooking wide domains, we gloried as we stood!

And I was wont to gaze upon those eyes
Kindling through tears, and tell the artless maid
They stole their colour from the noontide skies
Of cloudless Summer, when a deeper shade
Suffuses the clear heaven, while, tranced, the earth
Lies slumbering in the silent light!-'twas then
The maiden blush first sprung to roseate birth
Hovering on her averted cheek; and when
We next read tales of hearts that passion broke,
Her smile was like a sigh, she trembled as we spoke !

But the fine spirit from human passion drawn ;
I would not dim with shadows stern and bleak
The heaven-wrought glory of its golden dawn.
The rest let Memory mutely weep.
Alas!

What marvel if, enwrapt in gorgeous forms

Of fancied bliss, men's hearts still prone to pass
From temperate Pity to the torrid storms

Of Passion's clime of tempests, fail to deem

Misfortune's hand can weave the texture of such dream!

Hast thou beheld the pallid Felon wake
At Morn-he knows it by the sallow light
That creeps along his dungeon wall to make

Its cold damp misery vex his sickening sight,→→

2 r

VOL. XX. No. 119.

1830.

Hast thou beheld him start with scream of joy,
A relic of the dream that saw him free
In his loved cot; the wife-the prattling boy-
Hang on the husband, climb the father's knee,
And he is blest. 'Tis past! those shuddering eyes
Wake but to agony,-this day the Felon dies!

Know this, and thou hast known what human souls
Feel in that hour of fondness and of fears,
When Youth's enchanted morning first unrols

Its cloud of fancies to dissolve in tears.

What then? the pang in mercy still is given,

To wrench eternal hopes from Sense and Time;
Infinite hearts, the property of Heaven,

Must madden in earth's suffocating clime.

All else is mockery that men pursue,

GOD, and God's inbreath'd Life-the Sour, alone are true!

B.

THE HUSBAND-LOVER.

A TRUE STORY.

CHAPTER I.

"On celui qui me flatte m'aime trop ou il ne m'estime assez."
"A friend!--fetch me my cloak; for though the night be raw,
I'll see him too!-the first I ever saw!"-COWPER.

"ELLEN LEARY! Ellen Leary!" ex-
claimed Judith Malony, as she ran
into the small but neat-looking cabin
of the Widow Leary, "isn't it your-
self that's the droll girl, to be sitting
there, hanging over that bit of a cap,
when it isn't in your skin at all at all
you should be with the dint of joy.
Why, girl a cree stig, I was full sure
that I'd find you as merry as a bee;
but instead of that, by my own song!
you're as sober and settled as if you
was ninety! Why my ould grand-
mother herself had more life in her
the week before she was coffined than
you have."

"What do you mean, Judy?" said Ellen Leary, quietly laying aside her work, and evidently rather astonished at her visitor's not particularly ceremonious address: "won't you take a chair by the fire and warm yourself, for you must be wet from the shower."

The speaker was a tall, finely formed

young woman, with brilliant black eyes, and rich but not coarse complexion, which was heightened not a little by the unexpected appearance of her guest. Her glossy black hair was simply drawn back from a forehead of unusual whiteness, and fastened at the back in the style almost universal among the female peasantry of the south of Ireland. Seated on a low stool not far from the clean hearth, on which a few bright embers were blazing, she was busily engaged in plying her needle at the moment of her companion's entrance-a perfect picture of quiet industry and home content. The expression of her countenance was modest, thoughtful, and intelligent; but a close observer might have detected a slight compression of the lips, and a certain expression about the well-formed mouth, indicative of firmness, if not of obstinacy of disposition. The appearance of her