A Poet's Prayer.

Almighty Father! let thy lowly child,
Strong in his love of truth, be wisely bold-
A patriot bard by sycophants reviled,
Let him live usefully, and not die old!
Let poor men's children, pleased to read his lays,
Love, for his sake, the scenes where he hath been.
And when he ends his pilgrimage of days,
Let him be buried where the grass is green,
Where daisies, blooming earliest, linger late
To hear the bee his busy note prolong;
There let him slumber, and in peace await
The dawning morn, far from the sensual throng,
Who scorn the wind-flower's blush, the red breast's
lonely song.

system; but they are more calculated to attract attention by their refined and happy diction, than to melt us by their feeling. Several of them, as The Soldier's Tear, She wore a Wreath of Roses; Oh, no, we never mention Her; and We met-'twas in a Crowd, attained to an extraordinary popularity. Of his livelier ditties, I'd be a Butterfly was the most felicitous: it expresses the Horatian philosophy in terms exceeding even Horace in gaiety.

What though you tell me each gay little rover

Shrinks from the breath of the first autumn day: Surely 'tis better, when summer is over,

To die when all fair things are fading away.
Some in life's winter may toil to discover
Means of procuring a weary delay-
I'd be a butterfly, living a rover,
Dying when fair things are fading away!

THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.

MR BAYLY was, next to Moore, the most successful song-writer of our age, and he composed a surprising number of light dramas, some of which shew a likelihood of maintaining their ground on the stage. He was born in 1797, the son of an eminent and wealthy solicitor, near Bath. Destined for the church, he studied for some time at Oxford, but could not settle to so sober a profession, and ultimately came to depend chiefly on literature for support. His latter years were marked by misfortunes, under the pressure of which he addressed some beautiful verses to his wife:

Oh! hadst thou never shared my fate,
More dark that fate would prove,
My heart were truly desolate
Without thy soothing love.

But thou hast suffered for my sake,
Whilst this relief I found,

Like fearless lips that strive to take
The poison from a wound.

My fond affection thou hast seen,
Then judge of my regret,

To think more happy thou hadst been
If we had never met!

And has that thought been shared by thee?

Ah, no! that smiling cheek

Proves more unchanging love for me
Than laboured words could speak.

But there are true hearts which the sight
Of sorrow summons forth;
Though known in days of past delight,
We knew not half their worth.

How unlike some who have professed
So much in friendship's name,
Yet calmly pause to think how best
They may evade her claim.

But ah! from them to thee I turn,
They'd make me loathe mankind,
Far better lessons I may learn
From thy more holy mind.

The love that gives a charm to home,
I feel they cannot take:
We'll pray for happier years to come,
For one another's sake.

This amiable poet died of jaundice in 1839. His songs contain the pathos of a section of our social

THE REV. JOHN KEBLE.

In 1827 appeared a volume of sacred poctry, entitled The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holidays Throughout the Year. The work had extraordinary success: the fifty-first edition (1857) is now before us. The object of the author was to bring the thoughts and feelings of his readers into more entire unison with those recommended and exemplified in the English Prayer-Book, and some of his little poems have great tenderness, beauty, and pure devotional feeling. Thus, on the text: So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city' (Genesis, xi. 8), we have this descriptive passage:

Since all that is not Heaven must fade,
Light be the hand of Ruin laid

Upon the home I love:
With lulling spell let soft Decay
Steal on, and spare the giant sway,

The crash of tower and grove.

Far opening down some woodland deep
In their own quiet glades should sleep
The relics dear to thought,

And wild-flower wreaths from side to side
Their waving tracery hang, to hide

What ruthless Time has wrought.

Another text (Proverbs, xiv. 10) suggests a train of touching sentiment:

Why should we faint and fear to live alone,

Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh?

Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe

Our hermit spirits dwell, and range apart, Our eyes see all around in gloom or glowHues of their own, fresh borrowed from the heart.

The following is one of the poems entire:

Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity.

The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.-Habakkuk, ii. 3.

The morning mist is cleared away,
Yet still the face of Heaven is gray,

Nor yet th' autumnal breeze has stirred the grove,
Faded yet full, a paler green

Skirts soberly the tranquil scene,

The redbreast warbles round this leafy cove.

Sweet messenger of 'calm decay,' Saluting sorrow as you may,

As one still bent to find or make the best,
In thee, and in this quiet mead,
The lesson of sweet peace I read,
Rather in all to be resigned than blest.

'Tis a low chant, according well With the soft solitary knell,

As homeward from some grave beloved we turn, Or by some holy death-bed dear,

Most welcome to the chastened ear

Of her whom Heaven is teaching how to mourn.

O cheerful tender strain! the heart That duly bears with you its part, Singing so thankful to the dreary blast, Though gone and spent its joyous prime, And on the world's autumnal time,

'Mid withered hues and sere, its lot be cast:

That is the heart for thoughtful seer,
Watching, in trance nor dark nor clear,*
Th' appalling Future as it nearer draws:
His spirit calmed the storm to meet,
Feeling the rock beneath his feet,
And tracing through the cloud th' eternal Cause.

That is the heart for watchmen true
Waiting to see what God will do,

As o'er the Church the gathering twilight falls :
No more he strains his wistful eye,
If chance the golden hours be nigh,
By youthful Hope seen beaming round her walls.

Forced from his shadowy paradise,

His thoughts to Heaven the steadier rise: There seek his answer when the world reproves : Contented in his darkling round,

If only he be faithful found,

When from the east th' eternal morning moves.

The author of The Christian Year is the REV. JOHN KEBLE, vicar of Hursley, near Winchester. He studied and took his degree of M.A. at Oriel College, and was some time Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. He is author also of Lyra Innocentium: Thoughts in Verse on the Ways of Providence towards Little Children; The Child's Christian Year; &c., published in 1846. He edited an edition of Hooker's works, Oxford, 1836.

NOEL THOMAS CARRINGTON.

A Devonshire poet, MR CARRINGTON (1777-1830), has celebrated some of the scenery and traditions of his native district in pleasing verse. His works have been collected into two volumes, and consist of The Banks of Tamar, 1820; Dartmoor (his best poem), 1826; My Native Village; and miscellaneous pieces.

The Pixies of Devon.

[The age of pixies, like that of chivalry, is gone. There is, perhaps, at present, scarcely a house which they are reputed to visit. Even the fields and lanes which they formerly frequented seem to be nearly forsaken. Their music is rarely heard; and they appear to have forgotten to attend their ancient midnight dance.-Drew's Cornwall.]

They are flown,

Beautiful fictions of our fathers, wove
In Superstition's web when Time was young,

And fondly loved and cherished: they are flown
Before the wand of Science! Hills and vales,
Mountains and moors of Devon, ye have lost
The enchantments, the delights, the visions all,
The elfin visions that so blessed the sight
In the old days romantic. Nought is heard,
Now, in the leafy world, but earthly strains-'
Voices, yet sweet, of breeze, and bird, and brook,
And water-fall; the day is silent else,

And night is strangely mute! the hymnings high-
The immortal music, men of ancient times
Heard ravished oft, are flown! O ye have lost,
Mountains, and moors, and meads, the radiant throngs
That dwelt in your green solitudes, and filled
The air, the fields, with beauty and with joy
Intense; with a rich mystery that awed
The mind, and flung around a thousand hearths
Divinest tales, that through the enchanted year
Found passionate listeners!

The very streams
Brightened with visitings of these so sweet
Ethereal creatures! They were seen to rise
From the charmed waters, which still brighter grew
As the pomp passed to land, until the eye
Scarce bore the unearthly glory. Where they trod,
Young flowers, but not of this world's growth, arose,
And fragrance, as of amaranthine bowers,
Floated upon the breeze. And mortal eyes
Looked on their revels all the luscious night;
And, unreproved, upon their ravishing forms
Gazed wistfully, as in the dance they moved,
Voluptuous to the thrilling touch of harp
Elysian !

And by gifted eyes were seen
Wonders in the still air; and beings bright
And beautiful, more beautiful than throng
Fancy's ecstatic regions, peopled now

The sunbeam, and now rode upon the gale
Of the sweet summer noon. Anon they touched
The earth's delighted bosom, and the glades
Seemed greener, fairer-and the enraptured woods
Gave a glad leafy murmur-and the rills
Leaped in the ray for joy; and all the birds
Threw into the intoxicating air their songs,
All soul. The very archings of the grove,
Clad in cathedral gloom from age to age,
Lightened with living splendours; and the flowers,
Tinged with new hues and lovelier, upsprung
By millions in the grass, that rustled now
To gales of Araby!

The seasons came

In bloom or blight, in glory or in shade;
The shower or sunbeam fell or glanced as pleased
These potent elves. They steered the giant cloud
Through heaven at will, and with the meteor flash
Came down in death or sport; ay, when the storm
Shook the old woods, they rode, on rainbow wings,
The tempest; and, anon, they reined its rage
In its fierce mid career.
But ye have flown,
Beautiful fictions of our fathers!-flown
Before the wand of Science, and the hearths
Of Devon, as lags the disenchanted year,
Are passionless and silent!

FITZGREENE HALLECK.

Without attempting, in our confined limits, to range over the fields of American literature, now rapidly extending, and cultivated with ardour and success, we have pleasure in including some eminent transatlantic names in our list of popular authors. MR HALLECK became generally known in this country in 1827 by the publication of a England. In this volume are some fine verses on

417

Praise to the bard! His words are driven
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,
Where'er beneath the sky of heaven

The birds of fame are flown!

Mr Halleck is a native of Guildford, Connecticut, born in 1795. He resided some time in New York, following mercantile pursuits. In 1821 he published Fanny, a satirical poem in the style of Don Juan. Next appeared his volume of poems, as already stated, to which additions were made in subsequent republications. His works are included in one volume, and it is to be regretted that his muse has not been more prolific.

Marco Bozzaris.

[The Epaminondas of modern Greece. He fell in a nightattack upon the Turkish camp at Laspi, the site of the ancient Platea, August 20, 1823, and expired in the moment of victory. His last words were: To die for liberty is a pleasure, and not a pain.']

At midnight, in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power;

In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of triumph heard,
Then wore his monarch's signet-ring,
Then pressed that monarch's throne-a King;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing

As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades,

Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,

True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drank their blood
On old Platea's day;

And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.

An hour passed on, the Turk awoke; That bright dream was his last;

He woke to hear his sentries shriek:
To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!'
He woke to die, 'midst flame and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
Like forest-pines before the blast,
Or lightnings from the mountain cloud;
And heard with voice as trumpet loud,

Bozzaris cheer his band:

'Strike, till the last armed foe expires,
Strike for your altars and your fires,
Strike for the green graves of your sires,
God, and your native land!'

They fought, like brave men, long and well, They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly as to a night's repose,

Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal-chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's when she feels
For the first time her firstborn's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
Which close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in Consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake's shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm,

With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;
And thou art terrible; the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know, or dream, or fear,
Of agony are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword

Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word, And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be. Come, when his task of fame is wrought; Come with her laurel-leaf blood-bought; Come in her crowning hour, and then Thy sunken eyes' unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men ;
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand

Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
Which told the Indian isles were nigh
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land-wind from woods of palm,
And orange-groves, and fields of balm,
Blew o'er the Haytien seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime;

She wore no funeral weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from Death's leafless tree In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb; But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone. For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, Her marble wrought, her music breathed; For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babe's first lisping tells;

For thine her evening-prayer is said
At palace couch and cottage bed.
Her soldier closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears;
And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,
The memory of her buried joys;
And even she who gave thee birth,
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,

Talk of thy doom without a sigh;

For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's;
One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die!

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT,

He was

This most popular of the American poets is a native of the state of Massachusetts, born in 1794. With a precocity, rivalled only by that of Chatterton, he published in his fourteenth year a political satire, The Embargo, which is represented as having been highly successful. From this perilous course of political versifying, the young author was removed by being placed at Williams College. admitted to the bar, and practised for several years with fair success, but in 1825 he removed to New York, and entered upon that literary life which he has ever since followed. In 1826 Mr Bryant became editor of the New York Evening Post, and his connection with that journal still subsists. His poetical works consist of Thanatopsis-an exquisite solemn strain of blank verse, first published in 1816; The Ages, a survey of the experience of mankind, 1821; and various pieces scattered through periodical works. Mr Washington Irving, struck with the beauty of Bryant's poetry, had it collected and published in London in 1832. The British public, he said, had expressed its delight at the graphic descriptions of American scenery and wild woodland characters contained in the works of Cooper. "The same keen eye and just feeling for nature,' he added, 'the same indigenous style of thinking and local peculiarity of imagery, which give such novelty and interest to the pages of that gifted writer, will be found to characterise this volume, condensed into a narrower compass, and sublimated into poetry.' From this opinion Professor Wilsonwho reviewed the volume in Blackwood's Magazine -dissented, believing that Cooper's pictures are infinitely richer in local peculiarity of imagery and thought. The chief charm of Bryant's genius,' he considered, 'consists in a tender pensiveness, a moral melancholy, breathing over all his contemplations, dreams, and reveries, even such as in the main are glad, and giving assurance of a pure spirit, benevolent to all living creatures, and habitually pious in the felt omnipresence of the Creator. His poetry overflows with natural religion-with what Wordsworth calls the religion of the woods.' This is strictly applicable to the Thanatopsis and Forest Hymn, but Washington Irving is so far right that Bryant's grand merit is his nationality and his power of painting the American landscape, especially in its wild, solitary, and magnificent forms. His diction is pure and lucid, with scarcely a flaw, and he is a master of blank verse.

[From Thanatopsis."]

Not to thy eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world-with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good-
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past-
All in one mighty sepulchre! The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun-the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between-
The venerable woods, rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste-
Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings; yet the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep-the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest. And what if thou shalt fall
Unheeded by the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men-

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man-
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed,
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

[The Wind-flower.]

Lodged in sunny cleft Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone The little wind-flower, whose just-opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at, Startling the loiterer in the naked groves With unexpected beauty, for the time Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar.

The Disinterred Warrior. Gather him to his grave again,

And solemnly and softly lay, Beneath the verdure of the plain,

The warrior's scattered bones away. Pay the deep reverence taught of old, The homage of man's heart to death; Nor dare to trifle with the mould Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath.

The soul hath quickened every part-
That remnant of a martial brow,
Those ribs that held the mighty heart,
That strong arm-strong no longer now.

And then to mark the lord of all,

The forest hero, trained to wars, Quivered and plumed, and lithe and tall, And seamed with glorious scars,

Walk forth, amid his train, to dare
The wolf, and grapple with the bear.

This bank, in which the dead were laid, Was sacred when its soil was ours; Hither the artless Indian maid

Brought wreaths of beads and flowers, And the gray chief and gifted seer Worshipped the God of thunders here.

But now the wheat is green and high
On clods that hid the warrior's breast,
And scattered in the furrows lie

The weapons of his rest;

And there in the loose sand is thrown
Of his large arm the mouldering bone.

Ah, little thought the strong and brave,

Who bore their lifeless chieftain forth, Or the young wife that weeping gave Her first-born to the earth,

That the pale race, who waste us now, Among their bones should guide the plough!

They waste us-ay, like April snow

In the warm noon we shrink away; And fast they follow as we go

Towards the setting day-
Till they shall fill the land, and we
Are driven into the western sea.

But I behold a fearful sign,

To which the white man's eyes are blind; Their race may vanish hence like mine, And leave no trace behindSave ruins o'er the region spread, And the white stones above the dead.

Before these fields were shorn and tilled, Full to the brim our rivers flowed; The melody of waters filled

The fresh and boundless wood;

And torrents dashed, and rivulets played, And fountains spouted in the shade.

Those grateful sounds are heard no more:
The springs are silent in the sun,
The rivers, by the blackened shore,
With lessening current run;

The realm our tribes are crushed to get,

May be a barren desert yet!

Some poet-translators of this period merit honourable mention.

ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.

The REV. FRANCIS WRANGHAM (1769-1843), rector of Hummanby, Yorkshire, and Archdeacon of Chester, in 1795 wrote a prize-poem on the Restoration of the Jews, and translations in verse. He was the author of four Seaton prize-poems on sacred subjects, several sermons, an edition of Langhorne's Plutarch, and dissertations on the British empire in the East, on the translation of the Scriptures into the Oriental languages, &c. His occasional translations from the Greek and Latin, and his macaronic verses, or sportive classical effusions among his friends, were marked by fine taste and felicitous adaptation. He continued his favourite studies to the close of his long life, and was the ornament and delight of the society in which he moved.

HENRY FRANCIS CARY.

The REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY (1772-1844), by his translation of Dante, has earned a high and lasting reputation. He was early distinguished as