CATHERINE. ity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of guise of playful raillery, and the countless other modesty which will arise in delicate nunds, when infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial they are conscious of possessing the same or the feeling. correspondent excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its despair of finding a "John Anderson, my jo, John," own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call to totter down the hill of life with. Goodness its Playfellow, and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged VIRTUE the caressing fondness that belongs to the INNOCENCE of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies as had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty. ELIZA. What a soothing-what an elevating idea! CATHERINE. If it be not only an idea. FRIEND. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife! A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbor, friend, housemate-in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment, save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this! Pride, coldness or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper-one or the other too often proves “the dead fly in the compost of spices," and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive by sucking the paws of its own selfimportance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of preserving the same but by negatives—that is, by not doing or saying any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical,-or (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most worthless object they could be employed in remembering. ELIZA (in answer to a whisper from CATHERINE). To a hair! He must have sate for it himself. Save me from such folks! But they are out of the question. FRIEND. FRIEND. Not so! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue. ELIZA. Surely, he who has described it so beautifully, must have possessed it? FRIEND. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment! (Then, after a pause of a few minutes). Yes, yes! that boon, life's richest treat, The fancy made him glad! But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain That boon, which but to have possess'd Doubts toss'd him to and fro; True! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too general insensibility to a very important truth; this, namely, that the MISERY of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily;-in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum Those sparkling colors, once his boast, total of the unhappiness of a man's life, are easily Fading, one by one away, counted, and distinctly remembered. The HAPPINESS Thin and hueless as a ghost, of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute frac- Poor Fancy on her sick-bed lay; tions-the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a Ill at distance, worse when near, smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the dis-Telling her dreams to jealous Fear! Where was it then, the sociable sprite It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow, O bliss of blissful hours! The boon of Heaven's decreeing, Dwelt the First Husband and his sinless Mate! THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO. Of late, in one of those most weary hours, The love, the joyaunce, and the gallantry! Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan Of manhood, musing what and whence is man And, like a gift from heaven, in lifeful glee, Thanks, gentle artist! now I can descry The brightness of the world, O thou once free, But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's dream, Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span, Gazed by an idle eye with silent might And Nature makes her happy home with man; See! Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees O all-enjoying and all-blending sage, Where, half conceal'd, the eye of fancy views of poetry, to observe, that in the attempt to adapt the Greek metres to the English language, we must begin by substituting quality of sound for quantity—that is, accentuated or comparatively emphasized syllables, for what, in the Greek and Latin verse, are named long, and of which the prosodial mark is ; and vice versa, unaccentuated syllables for short, marked . Now the hexameter verse consists of two sorts of feet, Fauns, nymphs, and winged saints, all gracious to thy the spondee, composed of two long syllables, and the muse! Still in thy garden let me watch their pranks, Of the trim vines, some maid that half believes MY BAPTISMAL BIRTH-DAY. LINES COMPOSED ON A SICK BED, UNDER SEVERE Bow unto God in CHRIST- in Christ, my ALL! The Heir of Heaven, henceforth I dread not Death, FRAGMENTS FROM THE WRECK OF MEMORY: OR PORTIONS OF POEMS COMPOSED IN EARLY MANHOOD. [NOTE.-It may not be without use or interest to youthful, and especially to intelligent female readers *Boccaccio claimed for himself the glory of having first in troduced the works of Homer to his countrymen. I know few more striking or more interesting proofs of the overwhelming influence which the study of the Greek and Roman classics exercised on the judgments, feelings, and imagi nations of the literati of Europe at the commencement of the restoration of literature, than the passage in the Filocopo of Boccaccio; where the sage instructor, Racheo, as soon as the young prince and the beautiful girl Biancafiore had learned their letters, sets them to study the Holy Book, Ovid's Art of Love. Incomincio Racheo a mettere il suo cfficio in essecu zione con intera sollecitudine. E loro, in breve tempo, inseg nato a conoscer le lettere, fece legere il santo libro d' Ovvidio, nel quale il sommo poeta mostra, come i santi fuochi di Venere si debbano ne freddi cuori occendere." dactyl, composed of one long syllable followed by two short. The following verse from the Psalms, is a rare instance of a perfect hexameter (i. e. line of six feet) in the English language: Gōd came up with a shōut: our | Lord with the sound of ā | trūmpēt. But so few are the truly spondaic words in our language, such as Egypt, uproar, turmoil, &c., that we are compelled to substitute, in most instances, the trochee, or ă, i. e. such words as mērry, lightly, &c. for the proper spondee. It need only be added, that in the hexameter the fifth foot must be a dactyl, and the sixth a spondee, or trochee. I will end this note with two hexameter lines, likewise from the Psalms. There is a river the | flowing where | ōf shall | gladden the city. Halle | lūjǎh the | city of | Gōd Jēhōvăh! hath | blest her.j I. HYMN TO THE EARTH. EARTH! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother, Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail! Blest be thou! and, blessing, I hymn thee! Forth, ye sweet sounds! from my harp, and my voice shall float on your surges Soar thou aloft, O my soul! and bear up my song on thy pinions. Travelling the vale with mine eyes-green meadows, and lake with green island, Dark in its basin of rock, and the bare stream flowing in brightness, Thrilled with thy beauty and love, in the wooded slope of the mountain, Here, Great Mother, I lie, thy child with its head on thy bosom! Playful the spirits of noon, that creep or rush through thy tresses: Green-haired Goddess! refresh me; and hark! as they hurry or linger, Fill the pause of my harp, or sustain it with musical 16 235 Guardian and friend of the Moon, O Earth, whom IV. THE OVIDIAN ELEGIAC METRE DESCRIBED Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thou- Beneath the moon in gentle weather sand-fold instincts, Filled, as a dream, the wide waters: the rivers sang But oh! the Sky, and all its forms, how quiet! The things that seek the Earth, how full of noise and riot! on their channels; Laughed on their shores the hoarse seas: the yearn ing ocean swelled upward: Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains, Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled in blossoming branches. LOVE'S GHOST AND RE-EVANITION. AN ALLEGORIC ROMANCE. Like a lone ARAB, old and blind, And now he cowers with low-hung head aslant, And listens for some human sound in vain : And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant, That once had made that heart so warm, And LovE stole in, in maiden form, Toward my arbor-seat! She bent and kissed her sister's lips, The Asps of the sand-deserts, anciently named Dipsads. LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS IN RHYME. Thus long accustomed on the twy-fork'd hill,* "I expect no sense, worth listening to, from the man who Nor common law, nor statute in my head; never dares talk nonsense."- Anon. I. THE REPROOF AND REPLY: "FIE, Mr. Coleridge!-and can this be you? Such sounds, of late, accusing fancy brought "Fair dame! a visionary wight, He deem'd himself, as it flow'd warbling on, Thus all conspired-each power of eye and ear, For my own proper smell, sight, fancy, feeling, II. IN ANSWER TO A FRIEND'S QUESTION. Her attachment may differ from yours in degree, Gives no accord to love, however refined. Love, that meets not with love, its true nature revealing, Grows ashamed of itself, and demurs: If you cannot lift hers up to your state of feeling, You must lower down your state to hers. III. LINES TO A COMIC AUTHOR, ON AN ABU. SIVE REVIEW. WHAT though the chilly wide-mouth'd quacking chorus From the rank swamps of murk Review-land croak: IV. AN EXPECTORATION. OR SPLENETIC EXTEMPORE, ON MY JOYFUL DEPARTURE FROM THE CITY OF COLOGNE. As I am Rhymer, And now at least a merry one, Mr. Mum's Rudesheimer t And the church of St. Geryon *The English Parnassus is remarkable for its two summits of unequal height, the lower denominated Hampstead, the higher Highgate. †The apotheosis of Rhenish wine. |