Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, Oh cease! must hate and death return? The world is weary of the past,— Oh might it die or rest at last! LINES. I. When the lamp is shattered The rainbow's glory is shed; II. As music and splendour No song when the spirit is mute :- Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman's knell (1822.) III. When hearts have once mingled, To endure what it once possessed. The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your ɔier? IV. Its passions will rock thee, As the storms rock the ravens on nigh; Like the sun from a wintry sky. Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter When leaves fall and cold winds come. TO JANE-THE RECOLLECTION. I. We wandered to the pine-forest That skirts the ocean's foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The whispering waves were half asleep, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of heaven lay; It seemed as if the hour were one Which scattered from above the sun (1827) II. We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude And soothed, by every azure breath Now all the tree-tops lay asleep Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean-woods may be. III. How calm it was!-The silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller with her sound The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less To the soft flower beneath our feet, A spirit interfused around, A thrilling silent life: To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature's strife. And still, I felt, the centre of The magic circle there Was one fair form that filled with ove The lifeless atmosphere. IV. We paused beside the pools that lie Each seemed as 't were a little sky A firmament of purple light Which in the dark earth lay, In which the lovely forests grew More perfect both in shape and hue There lay the glade, the neighbouring lawn, Sweet views which in our world above Were imaged by the water's love And all was interfused beneath An atmosphere without a breath, Like one beloved, the scene had lent To the dark water's breast Its every leaf and lineament With more than truth expressed; Until an envious wind crept by,- Which from the mind's too faithful eye Though thou art ever fair and kind, And forests ever green, Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind (February 2, 1822.) THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. [THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK was born at Weymouth, October 18, 1785. Ir 188 he was nade under-secretary to Sir Home Popham, and served at Flushing. In S20 he married the Welsh lady celebrated by Shelley as 'the Snowdonia. Antelope; he had made the acquaintance of that poet in 2. He became a clerk to the East India Company in 1819, from which post he retired in 1856. His first novel, Headlong Hall, appeared in 1816; his last, Gryll Grange, in 1861. Peacock died at Halliford. near Shepperton, on January 23, 1866. His poetical publications were Palmyra, 1806; The Genius of the Thames, 1810; Rhododaphne, 1818; Paper Money Lyrics, 1837.] The fame of Peacock as a prose humourist of incomparable vivacity has tended to overshadow and stunt his reputation as a poet. It is time, however, that his claims in verse should be vindicated, and a place demanded for him as an independent figure in the crowded Parnassus of his age,—a place a little below the highest, and somewhat isolated, at the extreme right of the composition. He has certain relations, not wholly accidental, with Shelley, who stands above him, and with such minor figures as Horace Smith and Thomas Haynes Bayly, who stand no less obviously below him; but in the main he is chiefly notable for his isolation. His ironical and caustic songs are unique in our literature, illuminated by too much fancy to be savage, but crackling with a kind of ghastly merriment that inspires quite as much terror as amusement. In parody he has produced at least one specimen, 'There is a fever of the spirit,' which does not possess its equal for combined sympathy and malice. When we pass to his serious and sentimental lyrics, our praise cannot be so unmeasured. Peacock possessed too much literary refinement, too iittle personal sensibility to write with passion or to risk a fall by flying; yet his consummate purity of style seldom fails to give a |