A similar error in judgment has been shown by Halleck in

his "Fanny."

"Sleep-sleep, thou sad one of the sea!

The wash of waters tells thee now

His arm will no more pillow thee,

Thy fingers on his brow.

He is not near to hush thee or to save,

The ground is his, the sea must be thy grave."

The author thus violates the great rule of narrative composition, by here anticipating her fate.

The pirates' intention of murdering the helpless lady is graphically portrayed.

"Mourn for the living; mourn our sins,

The wrath of man more fierce than thine;
Hark-still thy waves-the work begins,
Lee makes the deadly sign;

The crew glide down like shadows, eye and hand
Speak fearful meanings through the silent band."

The fate of the fair lady is told admirably. A rapid sketch, and the whole is palpably presented, as a lightning flash bares the scenery for an instant, and then all is dark again.

"A crash! they force the door, and then

One long-long shrill and piercing scream
Comes thrilling 'bove the growl of men.

"Tis hers! O God, redeem

From worse than death thy suffering helpless child!
That dreadful shriek again, sharp, sharp, and wild.

"It ceased, with speed o' th' lightning's flash,

A loose robed form, with streaming hair,

Shoots by. A leap-a quick, short splash!

"Tis gone-and nothing there.

The waves have swept away the bubbling tide,
Bright, crested waves, how calmly on they ride.

"Her home of love

She soon has reached; fair, unpolluted thing,

They harmed her not; was dying suffering?"

This poem is, however, spoilt by its improbable catastrophe. There is a mixture of the terrible and the absurd, which produces an equivocal result altogether destructive of the true purpose of poetry.

The drowned horse rises from the sea and seeks the buccaneers at the anniversary revel of their murderous exploit. Compelled by a supernatural power, the wretched pirate, Matthew Lee, is forced to stride the spectre horse.

"Borne by an unseen power right on he rides,
Yet touches not the shadow beast he strides.

"He goes with speed, he goes with dread!
And now they're on the hanging steep!
And now the living and the dead,

They'll make the horrid leap.

The horse stops short-his feet are on the verge :

He stands like marble high above the surge."

With a true poet's soul, in the midst of this human agony, Dana brings in the contradictory, yet consoling beauty of nature, to relieve the horror.

"Thou mild-sad mother-silent moon,

Thy last, low melancholy ray,

Shines towards him: quit him not so soon!

Mother, in mercy stay!

Despair and death are with him, and canst thou,
With that kind earthward look, go leave him now!

"O! thou wast born for worlds of love;

Making more lovely in thy shine
Whate'er thou lookest on; hosts above

In that soft light of thine

Burn softer; earth, in silvery veil seems heaven.
Thou'st going down-hast left him unforgiven!"

There is a similar instance of throwing the accent from the man to the moon, if we may be allowed such an expression, in a poem of Byron's. We think it is in the "Siege of Corinth," when the renegade is compelled to decide on a momentous question, before a thin filmy cloud has reached the moon. "There is a light cloud by the moon,

"T is passing, and will pass full soon," &c.

Dana has shown great power in this recognition of a wretch's mute appeal to creation for sympathy and support. We were told by a man of great imagination, who had been confined in a lunatic asylum against his will, that he often gazed on the moon, and endeavored to throw his whole soul into the look he gave it, that it might produce a sympathetic effect upon his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, and who was ignorant of his durance. It has been well said by a modern writer, that physical assassinations have gone out of fashion, and that lunatic asylums have been substituted. Our experience is able to confirm this opinion. Let us turn from lunacy to poetry.

"The spectre steed now slowly pales,
Now changes like the moon-lit cloud;
That cold, thin light, now slowly fails
Which wrapt them like a shroud.

Both ship and shore are fading into air,
Lost, mazed, alone, see, Lee is standing there.

"For he's accursed from all that's good;

He ne'er must know its healing power.
The sinner on his sin shall brood,

And wait alone his hour.

A stranger to earth's beauty, human love---
No rest for him below-no hope above!"

The rest of the story is told with equal power: the effect of the whole being somewhat spoiled by the supernatural nature of the denouement. In one sense, we may conclude it is merely a mental power, under which the and which leaves him despoiled of reason.

guilty hero passes, If this be the poet's

intention, he has not achieved his object with These verses have a sweet musical effect:

"And now the mist seems taking shape,
Forming a dim, gigantic ghost,—
Enormous thing! There's no escape,

"T is close upon the coast.

any skill.

Lee kneels, but cannot pray-why mock him so?
The ship has cleared the fog-Lee, let her go!

"A sweet, low voice, in starry nights,

Chants to his ear a plaining song;

Its tones come winding up the heights,

Telling of woe and wrong:

And he must listen till the stars grow dim,
The song that gentle voice doth sing to him.

“O, it is sad that aught so mild

Should bind the soul with bands of fear;
That strains to soothe a little child,

The man should dread to hear!

But sin hath broke the world's sweet peace-unstrung
The harmonious chords to which the angels sung.

As we said before, the defect in this poem is the mixed feelings roused by the perusal. If the events described as being the consequences of the murder are physical actions, the story is so improbable and out of nature as to do away with it altogether as a work of art. If the agonies endured by Lee are mental processes, by a diseased imagination worked on by remorse, then we feel bound to say that the poet has lamentably failed in the execution of his design. Taking it, however, as it now stands, it is a collection of verses powerfully sketched, but deficient in that probability of story which alone can lend a truthfulness to it.

In the "Changes of Home" we recognise a greater consistency of purpose, while the execution is less vivid; the lines are musical and clear, though displaying little imagination. This poem has, however, more tenderness than any of his works.

"Yet there was one true heart-that heart was thine,
Fond Emmeline! and every beat was mine.

It stopt. That stillness! Up it rose and spread
Above me, awing, vast, strange, living-dead!

No feeble grief that sobs itself to rest,—