In the winter they're silent-the wind is so strong; 'I love my Love, and my Love loves me!" COLERIDGE. Wordsworth holds, and with a deep philosophy, that the language of birds is the expression of pleasure. Let those whose hearts are attuned to peace, in listening to this language, not forget the poet's moral: "I heard a thousand blended notes, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, And 'tis my faith that every flower The birds around me hopped and played; The budding twigs spread out their fan, And I must think, do all I can, From Heaven if this belief be sent, What man has made of man?" WORDSWORTH. We may fitly conclude this selection with Shelley's exquisite ode to theSky-Lark:" "Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher, From the earth thou springest The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad day-light, Thou art unseen, but, yet, I hear thy shrill delight. Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 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 In the light of thought, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. 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. Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, 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 us, 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 chaunt, 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 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 Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 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 joys we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 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.' SHELLEY. 59.-GIFFORD'S ACCOUNT OF HIS EARLY DAYS. [THE history of men who have overleaped "poverty's unconquerable bar" is always interesting. It is most interesting when they are their own historians. William Gifford, a friendless orphan, a shoemaker's ill-used apprentice, who came to be looked up to by the learned and the great as a scholar and a critic, has told his own tale with a manly frankness that does the highest honour to his character. Perhaps this little piece of autobiography, which was prefixed to his translation of Juvenal in 1802, will probably be the most enduring thing he has written. He was a decided political partizan, and as the editor of the Quarterly Review,' was too apt to forget that there are higher and better things than the power of satirizing and defaming writers of opposite politics. Those who now look back upon the pages of that celebrated periodical work will have many examples of the utter incompetence of criticism, not founded upon honesty, to fix the opinions of the world. Mr. Gifford was born in 1757; died in 1826.] I was not quite thirteen when this happened (the death of his widowed mother); my little brother was hardly two; and we had not a relation nor a friend in the world. Every thing that was left was seized by a person of the name of Carlile, for money advanced to my mother. It may be supposed that I could not dispute the justice of his claims; and, as no one else interfered, he was suffered to do as he liked. My little brother was sent to the alms-house, whither his nurse followed him out of pure affection; and I was taken to the house of the person I have just mentioned, who was also my godfather. Respect for the opinion of the town (which, whether correct or not, was that he had amply repaid himself by the sale of my mother's effects) induced him to send me again to school, where I was more diligent than before, and more successful. I grew fond of arithmetic, and my master began to distinguish me; but these golden days were over in less than three months. Carlile sickened at the expense; and, as the people were now indifferent to my fate, he looked round for an opportunity of ridding himself of a useless charge. He had previously attempted to engage me in the drudgery of husbandry. I drove the plough for one day to gratify him; but I left it with the resolution to VOL. I. D D |