SOUTHEY. SUNRISE. I MARVEL not, O Sun! that unto thee In adoration man should bow the knee, And pour his prayers of mingled awe and love; For like a God thou art, and on thy way Of glory sheddest with benignant ray, Beauty, and life, and joyance from above. No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud,These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day; But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud And cheer the earth once more. The languid flowers Lie odourless, bent down with heavy rain, Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers! O lord of light! put forth thy beams again, His political opponents have tendered evidence to the estimable character of both his head and heart. One of the harshest arraigners of what he calls the inconsistency of Dr. Southey-as if that were inconsistency which induces to leave a path after it is known to be the wrong one-states, that "in all the relations and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just." He is one of the leading critics of the age; and, although there is abundant proof of his generous zeal in aiding young talent, there has never attached to him the suspicion of depressing it. The career of Southey is the best answer to the absurd, but too generally received opinion, that a critic is of necessity acrimonious or unjust. Of late years, the prose of Southey has been preferred to his poetry. It rarely happens that there is a preference without a disparagement. No Poet in the present or the past century, has written three such poems as Thalaba, Kehama, and Roderic. Others have more excelled in DELINEATING what they find before them in life; but none have given such proofs of extraordinary power in CREATING. He has been called diffuse, because there is a spaciousness and amplitude about his poetry—as if concentration was the highest quality of a writer. He lays all his thoughts before us; but they never rush forth tumultuously. He excels in unity of design and congruity of character; and never did Poet more adequately express heroic fortitude, and generous affections. He has not, however, limited his pen to grand paintings of epic character. Among his shorter productions will be found some light and graceful sketches, full of beauty and feeling, and not the less valuable because they invariably aim at promoting I MARVEL not, O Sun! that unto thee And pour his prayers of mingled awe and love; For like a God thou art, and on thy way Beauty, and life, and joyance from above. No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud,These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day; But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud And cheer the earth once more. The languid flowers Lie odourless, bent down with heavy rain, Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers! O lord of light! put forth thy beams again, REMEMBRANCE. MAN hath a weary pilgrimage With heaviness he casts his eye And still remembers with a sigh To school the little exile goes, From hard controul and tyrant rules, Youth comes; the toils and cares of life Torment the restless mind; Where shall the tired and harass'd heart Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells, Maturer Manhood now arrives, Cold calculating cares succeed, Back on the past he turns his eye; So reaches he the latter stage Yet Age remembers with a sigh HANNAH. PASSING across a green and lonely lane |