enchanting, profuse, continuous, and alone,-small, but filling the heavens. One of the triumphs of poetry is to associate its remembrance with the beauties of nature. There are probably no lovers of Homer and Shakspeare, who, when looking at the moon, do not often call to mind. the descriptions in the eighth book of the Iliad and the fifth act of the Merchant of Venice. The nightingale (in England) may be said to have belonged exclusively to Milton (see page 230), till a dying young poet of our own day partook of the honour by the production of his exquisite ode and notwithstanding Shakspeare's lark singing "at heaven's gate," the longer effusion of Shelley will be identified with thoughts of the bird hereafter, in the minds of all who are susceptible of its beauty. What a pity he did not live to produce a hundred such! or to mingle briefer lyrics, as beautiful as Shakspeare's, with tragedies which Shakspeare himself might have welcomed! for assuredly, had he lived, he would have been the greatest dramatic writer since the days of Elizabeth, if indeed he has not abundantly proved himself such in his tragedy of the Cenci. Unfortunately, in his indignation against every conceivable form of oppression, he took a subject for that play too much resembling one which Shakspeare had taken in his youth, and still more unsuitable to the stage; otherwise, besides grandeur and terror, there are things in it lovely as heart can worship; and the author showed himself able to draw both men and women, whose names would have become "familiar in our mouths as household words." The utmost might- of gentleness, and of the sweet habitudes of domestic affection, was never more balmily impressed through the tears of the reader, than in the unique and divine close of that dreadful tragedy. Its loveliness, being that of the highest reason, is superior to the madness of all the crime that has preceded it, and leaves nature in a state of reconcilement with her ordinary course. The daughter, who is going forth with her mother to execution, utters these final words : Give yourself no unnecessary pain, My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie The force of simplicity and moral sweetness cannot go further than this. But in general, if Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at once the most ethereal and most gorgeous; the one who has clothed his thoughts in draperies of the most evanescent and most magnificent words and imagery. Not Milton himself is more learned in Grecisms, or nicer in etymological propriety; and nobody, throughout, has a style so Orphic and primæval. His poetry is as full of mountains, seas, and skies, of light, and darkness, and the seasons, and all the elements of our being, as if Nature herself had written it, with the creation and its hopes newly cast around her; not, it must be confessed, without too indiscriminate a mixture of great and small, and a want of sufficient shade,-a certain chaotic brilliancy, "dark with excess of light." Shelley (in the verses to a Lady with a Guitar) might well call himself Ariel. All the more enjoying part of his poetry is Ariël,— the "delicate" yet powerful "spirit," jealous of restraint, yet able to serve; living in the elements and the flowers; treading the "ooze of the salt deep," and running “on the sharp wind of the north;" feeling for creatures unlike himself; "flaming amazement" on them too, and singing exquisitest songs. Alas! and he suffered for years, as Ariel did in the cloven pine: but now he is out of it, and serving the purposes of Beneficence with a calmness befitting his knowledge and his love. TO A SKYLARK. I. Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. (') II. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire, The blue deep thou wingest, And singing, still dost soar; and soaring, ever singest. In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run ; Like an embodied joy, whose race has just begun. IV. The pale purple even In the broad daylight, Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, V. Keen as are the arrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air VI. With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd. VII. What thou art, we know not. What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a poet hidden VIII. In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. IX. Like a high-born maiden (2) Soul in secret hour Vith music sweet as love, which overflows her bouer. X. Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. XI. Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves. XII. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. XIII. 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, XIV. Or. triumphal chaunt, Match'd with thine would be all But an empty vaunt A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. |