O weary heart! thou 'rt half-way home!
We stand on life's meridian height-
As far from childhood's morning come,
As to the grave's forgetful night.
Give Youth and Hope a parting tear-
Look onward with a placid brow—
Hope promised but to bring us here,
And Reason takes the guidance now-
One backward look-the last-the last!
One silent tear-for Youth is past!
Who goes with Hope and Passion back?
Who comes with me and Memory on?
Oh, lonely looks the downward track-
Joy's music hushed-Hope's roses gone!
To Pleasure and her giddy troop
Farewell, without a sigh or tear! But heart gives way, and spirits droop,
To think that Love may leave us here! Have we no charm when Youth is flown?— Midway to death left sad and lone!
Yet stay!-as 'twere a twilight star
That sends its thread across the wave, I see a brightening light, from far,
Steal down a path beyond the grave! And now-bless God!-its golden line
Comes o'er-and lights my shadowy way—
And shews the dear hand clasped in mine!
But, list what those sweet voices say:
'The better land 's in sight,
And, by its chastening light,
All love from life's midway is driven,
Then the proud tulip lights her beacon blaze,
Her clustering curls the hyacinth displays,
O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis
Like blue-eyed Pallas towers erect and free,
With yellower flames the lengthened sunshine glows,
And love lays bare the passion-breathing rose;
Queen of the lake, along its reedy verge
The rival lily hastens to emerge,
Her snowy shoulders glistening as she strips,
Till morn is sultan of her parted lips.
Then bursts the song from every leafy glade,
The yielding season's bridal serenade;
Then flash the wings returning Summer calls
Through the deep arches of her forest halls :
The blue-bird breathing from his azure plumes,
The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle blooms;
The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down,
Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown;
The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire,
Rent by the whirlwind from a blazing spire.
The robin jerking his spasmodic throat
Repeats, staccato, his peremptory note;
The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate
Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight.
Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings,
Feels the soft air, and spreads his idle wings.
Why dream I here within these caging walls,
Deaf to her voice while blooming Nature calls,
While from heaven's face the long-drawn shadows roll,
And all its sunshine floods my opening soul !
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, a distin
Save hers whose clasped hand will bring thee on to guished American author both in prose and verse, heaven!'
The American Spring.-By HOLMES.
Winter is past; the heart of Nature warms
Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms;
Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen,
The southern slopes are fringed with tender green;
On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves,
Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves,
Bright with the hues from wider pictures won,
White, azure, golden-drift, or sky, or sun:
The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast
The frozen trophy torn from Winter's crest;
The violet, gazing on the arch of blue
Till her own iris wears its deepened hue;
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould
Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.
Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high
Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky;
On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves
The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves ;
The housefly, stealing from his narrow grave,
Drugged with the opiate that November gave,
Beats with faint wing against the snowy pane,
Or crawls tenacious o'er its lucid plain;
From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls
In languid curves the gliding serpent crawls;
The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep,
Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap;
On floating rails that face the softening noons
The still shy turtles range their dark platoons,
Or toiling, aimless, o'er the mellowing fields,
Trail through the grass their tesselated shields.
At last young April, ever frail and fair,
Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair,
Chased to the margin of receding floods,
O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds,
In tears and blushes sighs herself away,
And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May.
was born in Portland, Maine, in 1807. Having
studied at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, the poet,
after three years' travelling and residence in
Europe, became Professor of Modern Languages
in his native college. This appointment he held
from 1829 to 1835, when he removed to the chair
of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard
University, Cambridge. While a youth at col-
lege, Mr Longfellow contributed poems and criti-
cisms to American periodicals. In 1833 he pub-
lished a translation of the Spanish verses called
Coplas de Manrique, accompanying the poem
with an essay on Spanish poetry.
In 1835
appeared his Outre-Mer, or Sketches from beyond
Sea, a series of prose descriptions and reflections
somewhat in the style of Washington Irving.
His next work was also in prose, Hyperion, a
Romance (1839), which instantly became popular
in America. In the same year he issued his first
collection of poems, entitled Voices of the Night.
In 1841 appeared Ballads, and other Poems; in
1842, Poems on Slavery; in 1843, The Spanish
Student, a tragedy; in 1845, The Poets and Poetry
of Europe; in 1846, The Belfry of Bruges; in 1847,
Evangeline, a poetical tale in hexameter verse;
in 1849, Kavanagh, a prose tale; and The Seaside
and the Fireside, a series of short poems; in 1851,
The Golden Legend, a medieval story in irregular
rhyme; and in 1855, The Song of Hiawatha, an
American-Indian tale, in a still more singular style
of versification, yet attractive from its novelty and
wild melody. Thus:
Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great rivers
Through their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their eyries;
Listen to these wild traditions,
To this Song of Hiawatha !
In 1858 appeared Miles Standish; in 1863, Tales of a Wayside Inn; in 1866, Flower de Luce; in 1867, a translation of Dante; in 1872, The Divine Tragedy, a sacred but not successful drama, embodying incidents in the lives of John the Baptist and Christ; and the same year, Three Books of Song; in 1875, The Masque of Pandora. Other poems and translations have appeared from the fertile pen of Mr Longfellow; and several collected editions of his Poems, some of them finely illustrated and carefully edited, have been published. He is now beyond all question the most popular of the American poets, and has also a wide circle of admirers in Europe. If none of his larger poems can be considered great, his smaller pieces are finished with taste, and all breathe a healthy moral feeling and fine tone of humanity. An American critic (Griswold) has said justly that of all their native poets he best deserves the title of artist.
The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath;
And like a silver clarion rung,
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!
'Try not the Pass!' the old man said;
'Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!'
And loud the clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
'O stay,' the maiden said, 'and rest Thy weary head upon this breast!' A tear stood in his bright blue eye, But still he answered, with a sigh, Excelsior!
'Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche !'
This was the peasant's last good-night.
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!
Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 'Life is but an empty dream!' For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest !
And the grave is not its goal;
'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife.
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act-act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Foot-prints on the sands of Time; Foot-prints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er Life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait.
The Ladder of St Augustine.
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
All common things, each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.
The low desire, the base design,
That makes another's virtues less;
The revel of the treacherous wine,
And all occasions of excess;
The longing for ignoble things;
The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth;
All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes
The action of the nobler will:
All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminent domain.
We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.
The mighty pyramids of stone
That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen and better known,
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.
The distant mountains, that uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern-unseen before-
A path to higher destinies.
Nor deem the irrevocable Past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just ;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.
God's-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
The seed that they had garnered in their hearts,
Their bread of life; alas! no more their own.
Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith that we shall rise again
At the great harvest, when the archangel's blast
Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain.
Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume
With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth.
With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow!
With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life's newness, and earth's garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.
There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillowed clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing; and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leafed,
Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside aweary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves. The purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel; whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings;
And merrily, with oft repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.
Oh, what a glory doth this world put on
For him who with a fervent heart goes forth,
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves,
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings;
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.
A Rainy Day.
A cold, uninterrupted rain,
That washed each southern window-pane,
And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane,
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by ;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen
As a faint pallor in the sky-
Thus cold and colourless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,
And all the guests that in it lay.
Full late they slept. They did not hear
The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,
Who on the empty threshing-floor,
Disdainful of the rain outside,
Was strutting with a martial stride,
As if upon his thigh he wore
The famous broadsword of the Squire,
And said, 'Behold me, and admire!'
Only the Poet seemed to hear
In drowse or dream, more near and near
Across the border-land of sleep
The blowing of a blithesome horn,
That laughed the dismal day to scorn;
A splash of hoofs and rush of wheels
Through sand and mire like stranding keels,
As from the road with sudden sweep
The mail drove up the little steep,
And stopped beside the tavern door;
A moment stopped, and then again,
With crack of whip and bark of dog,
Plunged forward through the sea of fog,
And all was silent as before-
All silent save the dripping rain.
A native of Manchester, and carrying on business there as an engraver, CHARLES SWAIN (18031874) became known as a poet in the pages of the Literary Gazette and other literary journals. His collected works are: Metrical Essays, 1827; The Mind and other Poems, 1831; Dramatic
The Death of the Warrior King.
Chapters, Poems, and Songs, 1847; English father's counting-house-contrived to write a draMelodies, 1849; Art and Fashion, 1863; and matic poem, The Roman, published in 1850. In Songs and Ballads, 1868. Some of Mr Swain's 1854 appeared Balder, Part the First; in 1855, songs and domestic poems-which are free from Sonnets on the War, written in conjunction with all mysticism and exaggerated sentiment-have Mr A. Smith; and in 1856, England in Time of been very popular both at home and abroad. War. A man of cultivated intellectual tastes and They have great sweetness, tenderness, and benevolence of character, Mr Dobell seems to melody. have taken up some false or exaggerated theories of poetry and philosophy, and to have wasted fine thoughts and conceptions on uncongenial themes. The great error of some of our recent poets is the want of simplicity and nature. They heap up images and sentiments, the ornaments of poetry, without aiming at order, consistency, and the natural development of passion or feeling. We have thus many beautiful and fanciful ideas, but few complete or correct poems. Part of this defect is no doubt to be attributed to the youth of the poets, for taste and judgment come slowly even where genius is abundant, but part also is due to neglect of the old masters of song. In Mr Dobell's first poem, however, are some passages of finished blank verse:
There are noble heads bowed down and pale,
Deep sounds of woe arise,
And tears flow fast around the couch
Where a wounded warrior lies;
The hue of death is gathering dark
Upon his lofty brow,
And the arm of might and valour falls,
Weak as an infant's now.
I saw him 'mid the battling hosts,
Like a bright and leading star,
Where banner, helm, and falchion gleamed,
And flew the bolts of war.
When, in his plenitude of power,
He trod the Holy Land,
I saw the routed Saracens
Flee from his blood-dark brand.
I saw him in the banquet hour
Forsake the festive throng,
To seek his favourite minstrel's haunt,
And give his soul to song;
For dearly as he loved renown,
He loved that spell-wrought strain
Which bade the brave of perished days
Light Conquest's torch again.
Then seemed the bard to cope with Time,
And triumph o'er his doom-
Another world in freshness burst
Oblivion's mighty tomb!
Again the hardy Britons rushed
Like lions to the fight,
While horse and foot-helm, shield, and lance,
Swept by his visioned sight!
But battle shout and waving plume,
The drum's heart-stirring beat,
The glittering pomp of prosperous war,
The rush of million feet,
The magic of the minstrel's song,
Which told of victories o'er,
Are sights and sounds the dying king
Shall see shall hear no more!
It was the hour of deep midnight,
In the dim and quiet sky,
When, with sable cloak and 'broidered pall,
A funeral train swept by ;
Dull and sad fell the torches' glare
On many a stately crest
They bore the noble warrior king
To his last dark home of rest.
SYDNEY DOBELL-ALEXANDER SMITH
Under the pseudonym of Sydney Yendys,' SYDNEY DOBELL (1824-1874) published several elaborate poetical works. He was born at Cranbrook, Kent, in 1824, but spent the greater part of his youth in the neighbourhood of Cheltenham, where his father was engaged in business as a winemerchant. In his intervals of leisure the young poet-whose regular employment was in his
The Italian Brothers.
I had a brother;
We were twin shoots from one dead stem.
Nearer the sun, and ripened into beauty;
And I, within the shadow of my thoughts,
Pined at his side and loved him. He was brave,
Gallant, and free. I was the silent slave
Of fancies; neither laughed, nor fought, nor played,
And loved not morn nor eve for very trembling
At their long wandering shades. In childhood's sports
He won for me, and I looked on aloof;
And when perchance I heard him called my brother,
Was proud and happy. So we grew together,
Within our dwelling by the desert plain,
Where the roe leaped,
And from his icy hills the frequent wolf
Gave chivalry to slaughter. Here and there
Rude heaps, that had been cities, clad the ground
With history. And far and near, where grass
Was greenest, and the unconscious goat browsed free,
The teeming soil was sown with desolations,
As though Time-striding o'er the field he reaped-
Warmed with the spoil, rich droppings for the
gleaners
Threw round his harvest way. Frieze, pedestal,
Pillars that bore through years the weight of glory,
And take their rest. Tombs, arches, monuments,
Vainly set up to save a name, as though
The eternal served the perishable; urns,
Which winds had emptied of their dust, but left
Full of their immortality. In shrouds
Of reverent leaves, rich works of wondrous beauty
Lay sleeping-like the Children in the Wood-
Fairer than they.
The Ruins of Ancient Rome.
Upstood
The hoar unconscious walls, bisson and bare,
Like an old man deaf, blind, and gray, in whom
The years of old stand in the sun, and murmur
Of childhood and the dead. From parapets
Where the sky rests, from broken niches-each
More than Olympus-for gods dwelt in them-
Below from senatorial haunts and seats
Imperial, where the ever-passing fates
Wore out the stone, strange hermit birds croaked forth
Sorrowful sounds, like watchers on the height
Crying the hours of ruin. When the clouds
Dressed every myrtle on the walls in mourning,
With calm prerogative the eternal pile
Impassive shone with the unearthly light
Of immortality. When conquering suns
Triumphed in jubilant earth, it stood out dark
With thoughts of ages: like some mighty captive
Upon his death-bed in a Christian land,
And lying, through the chant of psalm and creed,
Unshriven and stern, with peace upon his brow,
And on his lips strange gods.
Rank weeds and grasses, Careless and nodding, grew, and asked no leave, Where Romans trembled. Where the wreck was saddest,
Sweet pensive herbs, that had been gay elsewhere,
With conscious mien of place rose tall and still,
And bent with duty. Like some village children
Who found a dead king on a battle-field,
And with decorous care and reverent pity
Composed the lordly ruin, and sat down
Grave without tears. At length the giant lay,
And everywhere he was begirt with years,
And everywhere the torn and mouldering Past
Hung with the ivy. For Time, smit with honour
Of what he slew, cast his own mantle on him,
That none should mock the dead.
In 1871 Mr Dobell published a spirited political lyric, entitled England's Day.
The day has gone by when the public of this country could be justly charged with neglect of native genius. Any manifestation of original intellectual power bursting from obscurity is instantly recognised, fostered, and applauded. The ever-open periodical press is ready to welcome and proclaim the new comer, and there is no lack of critics animated by a tolerant and generous spirit. In 1853 appeared Poems by ALEXANDER SMITH (1830-1867), the principal piece in the collection being a series of thirteen dramatic scenes, entitled A Life Drama. The manuscript of this volume had been submitted to the Rev. George Gilfillan, and portions of it had been laid before the public by that enthusiastic critic, accompanied with a strong recommendation of the young author as a genuine poet of a high order. Mr Smith (born in Kilmarnock) had been employed as a designer of patterns in one of the Glasgow factories, but the publication of his poems marked him out for higher things, and he was elected to the office of Secretary to the Edinburgh University. Thus placed in a situation favourable for the cultivation of his talents, Mr Smith continued his literary pursuits, He joined with Mr Dobell, as already stated, in writing a series of War Sonnets; he contributed prose essays to some of the periodicals; and in 1857 he came forward with a second volume of verse, City Poems, similar in style to his first collection. In 1861 appeared Edwin of Deira. Nearly all Mr Smith's poetry bears the impress of youth -excessive imagery and ornament, a want of art and regularity. In one of Miss Mitford's letters we read: 'Mr Kingsley says that Alfred Tennyson says that Alexander Smith's poems shew fancy, but not imagination; and on my repeating this to Mrs Browning, she said it was exactly her impression.' The young poet had, however, a vein of fervid poetic feeling, attesting the genuineness of his inspiration, and a fertile fancy that could form brilliant pictures. With diligent study, simplicity, distinctness, and vigour might have been added, had the poet not been cut down in the very flower of his youth and genius. His prose works, Dreamthorp, A Book of Essays, A Summer in
Skye, and Alfred Hagart's Household, are admirably written. A Memoir of Smith, with some literary remains, was published in 1868, edited by P. P. Alexander.
The lark is singing in the blinding sky,
Hedges are white with May. The bridegroom sea
Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride,
And, in the fullness of his marriage joy,
He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a space to see how fair she looks,
Then proud, runs up to kiss her. All is fair-
All glad, from grass to sun! Yet more I love
Than this, the shrinking day, that sometimes comes
In Winter's front, so fair 'mong its dark peers,
It seems a straggler from the files of June,
Which in its wanderings had lost its wits,
And half its beauty; and, when it returned,
Finding its old companions gone away,
It joined November's troop, then marching past;
And so the frail thing comes, and greets the world
With a thin crazy smile, then bursts in tears,
And all the while it holds within its hand
A few half-withered flowers.
Unrest! unrest! The passion-panting sea
Watches the unveiled beauty of the stars
Like a great hungry soul. The unquiet clouds
Break and dissolve, then gather in a mass,
And float like mighty icebergs through the blue.
Summers, like blushes, sweep the face of earth;
Heaven yearns in stars. Down comes the frantic rain;
We hear the wail of the remorseful winds
In their strange penance.
And this wretched orb
Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,
Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.
O thou bright thing, fresh from the hand of God;
The motions of thy dancing limbs are swayed
By the unceasing music of thy being!
Nearer I seem to God when looking on thee.
'Tis ages since He made his youngest star,
His hand was on thee as 'twere yesterday.
Thou later revelation! Silver stream,
Breaking with laughter from the lake divine
Whence all things flow. O bright and singing babe,
What wilt thou be hereafter?
GERALD MASSEY, born at Tring, in Hertfordshire, in the year 1828, has fought his way to distinction in the face of severe difficulties. Up to his seventeenth or eighteenth year he was either a factory or an errand boy. He then tried periodical writing, and after some obscure efforts, produced in 1854 the Ballad of Babe Christabel, and other Poems, a volume that passed through several editions; in 1855, War Waits; in 1856, Craigcrook Castle, and other Poems. Mr Massey is author also of Havelock's March, 1861; Tale of Eternity, 1869; and of various other pieces in prose and verse. By these publications, and with occasional labours as a journalist and lecturer, he has honourably established himself in the literary profession. His poetry possesses both fire and tenderness, with a delicate lyrical fancy, but is often crude and irregular in style. It is remarkable that the diligence and perseverance which enabled the young poet to surmount his early troubles, should not have been employed to correct and harmonise his verse. Of all the self-taught English
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