For life and love, were fettered 'neath the strings,

And poured his passionate soul upon the air.
Anon it clangs with wild, exultant swell,

Till the full pæan peals triumphantly through hell.”

In the verses to Queen Victoria on her way to Guildhall, we noticed that yearning after the glitter of the old despotism which is so marked a feature in the upper classes of American society. Turkey carpets, brilliant furniture, and crowded balls, insensibly undermine that republican independence so indispensable to the welfare of the American people.

Sometimes she endeavors to mix up instruction with song, as in "Laborare est Orare," but she is not successful in these attempts.

"Labor is worship,'-the robin is singing:
'Labor is worship,'-the wild bee is singing:

Listen that eloquent whisper upspringing,

Speaks to thy soul from out nature's great heart."

The greatest attempt Mrs. Osgood has made is in her "Fragments of an Unfinished Story." Here we have a poem of nearly four hundred lines in blank verse, which we have been told by the authoresses themselves is the most difficult of all for a lady to write. One can easily comprehend this; the delicate feminine nature is carried along by her musical sympathies, and there is something too independent in a verse which leans not on rhyme for support.

The commencement contains a very startling creed, which we suppose few are ready to give faith to.

"A friend! are you a friend? No, by my soul,
Since you dare breathe the shadow of a doubt
That I am true as truth. Since you give not
Unto my briefest look-my gayest word,

My faintest change of cheek, my softest touch,
Most sportive, causeless smile, or low-breathed sigh-
Nay, to my voice's lightest modulation,
Though imperceptible to all but you;

If you give not to these, unquestioning,

A limitless faith, the faith you give to heaven

I will not call you friend."

It is a pity the fair writer had not put this idea into half the space. She has wiredrawn the sentiment till we lose its form altogether. Every line obliterates a part of the image instead of completing it.

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Deny me faith-that poor yet priceless boon,

And you deny the very soul of love!"

Here we have the whole summed up in a concise manner, which we wish she would more frequently employ. She well

says:

"What though a thousand seeming proofs condemn me?

If my calm image smile not dear through all,
Serene and without shadow on your heart!
Nay, if the very vapors that would visit it,
Part not illumined by its presence pure,

As round night's tranquil queen the clouds divide,
Then rend it from that heart!"

We recognise in every page that tendency to sacrifice sense to sound-the thought to the melody. This, we are aware, is a

lady-like quality, but not the invariable accompaniment of the female muse. In Elizabeth Barrett we have a rare instance of more solicitude for the idea than the words. Miss Fuller likewise treats the melody of her verses as a secondary object; but we fear Mrs. Osgood considers it of primary importance. Music resembles poetry, all admit, and in nothing is the resemblance more complete than in this; that the thought should be in poetry what the melody is in music, and that the versification of the one answers to the bass accompaniment of the other; the thought and the air should of course be the controlling power.

Some of her poems are exceedingly graceful. We take

this as an instance :

"Round a lattice low, to twine,
Rose a graceful cylantine ;

And within the window near

Hung a prism cold and clear,

Where a spirit dwelt apart,

With a proud but pining heart,

Like a weary,

Languid Peri,

Captive in a diamond palace,

Catching sunbeams in a chalice."

There is a great mechanical fancy in Mrs.

some are, indeed, too ingenious to please us.

Osgood's poems;

There is a deter

mination to work up comparisons and fables. In many we have the old style of putting "sermons in stones,” and “breath to the brook !"

"The brook tripped by, with smile and sigh,
And soft in music murmurs sung,

While all the flowers that blossomed nigh,
Were hushed to hear that silver tongue.

“Ah, virgin violet, breathed the brook,

Whose blue eye shuns the light, the air,
I love you! in this true heart look,

And see your own sweet image there.""

This is very well for little children, but one who has pretensions to so high a station in poetry as Mrs. Osgood should not publish them for grown people.

But in the "Dying Rosebud's Lament" she has carried this prettiness to the verge of affectation. We are willing to allow a great margin to a lady's sympathy, but we cannot go the Ultima Thule of Mrs. Osgood.

"Ah me! ah woe is me!

That I should perish now,

With the dear sunlight just let in

Upon my balmy brow.

"My leaves, instinct with glowing life,
Were quivering to unclose,

My happy heart with love was rife,

I was almost a Rose!"

We cannot forget that Keats has said all that can be said of a rose-bud or a rose.

"As though a rose could shut and be a bud again."

In the "Ashes of Roses" we have a more solemn subject for

reflection. It is supposed to be written by a mother on the death of her child, and is certainly a triumph of its kind. It is, however, a painful poem to read, if we believe it is founded on fact. Dryden observes, "great grief is dumb," and we can hardly realize a mother making a song out of a dead child. But when we say this we make every concession the poet's nature may demand, and we know that "the ways of genius are not our ways, nor their thoughts our thoughts." Still, human nature is the same in the poet as in the ploughboy; nay, even in the editor, that sublimation of humanity soaring above the weakness of virtue or the enormity of affection.

In years after, when some casual occurrence reminds the living of the departed, the chords of emotion may thrill at the touch, but even then the music will be fragmentary, and partake more of the accidental than the deliberate design.

It seems almost like digging the dead up from the solemn peace of the sepulchre to gaze once more on that form which should be transfigured in heaven. Nevertheless, with all these considerations, time may soften the grief, and render it susceptible of a poetical apotheosis.

"Truly the memory of the just

Smells sweet and blossoms in the dust!"

The poem which has provoked these remarks is full of truthful, vigorous painting, and if written out of the ideality of the sorrow, and not its reality, secures for its fair anthoress much praise. With this proviso the whole demands unqualified admiration.