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UNWRITTEN POETRY.

culture and development peculiar to the age or nation in which they were produced. The gods, the men, the virtues of the Homeric age were heroic; and consequently heroism forms the subject of the Iliad: but the hero is not the highest style of man, nor heroism the highest virtue, nor hero-worship the highest form of religious reverence; and therefore beautiful, and almost incomparable, as is this hoary epic, hallowed by the veneration of ages, it is not the highest form of poetry.

If we come down to a later and more cultivated age, and examine the poetic literature of that most wonderful of all nations, the Roman, the Colossus of History, we find nothing worthy of being the chef d'œuvre of the human mind; for no labored argument is needed here to prove, what critics, as well as popular readers, have so generally conceded, that the Latin poets of the Augustan age are inferior to their Hellenic models. The Eneid has an artistic excellence, which perhaps cannot be surpassed; but it wants elevation of moral sentiment. deed, how could it be otherwise, when the soul of the nation, to whose moral ideas Virgil gave expression, never felt the divine and transforming influence of revealed truth? for a true faith is the only key which can unlock the spiritual fountains of the human soul.

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The Divina Commedia" is the product of a later age than the Augustan; written indeed centuries after the True Light, which lighteth every man, had shone upon the world. But we should remember that the thick darkness of the middle age obscured even the bright shining of Christianity, and that the clouds of superstition had not yet entirely vanished from its face, when Dante produced his immortal poem; and higher than the religious notions of his age, his poetic fancies could not rise, by an intellectual law, as fixed and invariable as that in physics, which prevents the spring from streaming higher than the fountain. In the triple poem of Dante, we find a graceful and artistic blending of Christian mystery with Heathen mythes; and his is undoubtedly the Poetry of Religion, but it is not Religious Poetry. That was reserved for a later age to write-nay, it is yet to be written.

But the Reformation comes, and tears from Christianity the tawdry drapery which Pagan superstition had furtively thrown around her, during the eclipse of the dark age, and then she stands revealed in all her celestial contour

and proportion. Under the rough hand of Pu

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ritanism she was entirely denuded of her gaudy trappings; and the world gazed with wonder and admiration on her severe and awful beauty. Then Milton lived and sang. Truly it was with a divine touch that he waked the harp of Christian poesy, so long unstrung. The genius of poetry acknowledges in him not a disciple, but a master; and what have we still to wish for, that the visions of his creative fancy have not already given us? Milton has given form and place to ideas which lie dim, impalpable and shadowy in the human fancy. Sin, Chaos, Night, Death, take substance, shape, and color under the creative power of his omnipotent genius; and we love to follow the errant flights of his adventurous fancy, as it travels unscathed and unscarred, through eternities and times; renewing the past, anticipating the fur ture, and sweeping the infinite by one glance of his eagle eye. But when our hearts ache and grow weary in the struggle of life, we look in vain in the "Paradise Lost" for those low, deep soul-breathings of pious sentiment, which soothe and cheer us by thoughts of home, and hope, and Heaven.

But if the drama, rather than the sacred epic, charms us-if we would seek our poetic beau-ideal in the portraitures of human character and passion, we are pointed to the myriadminded Shakspeare and his immortal dramas, where we may study humanity outspread, in vivid life-likeness, as on a map before us. We acknowledge Shakspeare's transcendent merit. We admit that sublime greatness of soul-that miraculous power of abstraction from himself-from his own conscious individuality, which enabled him to show us the characters of others everywhere, but mirrored himself nowhere. In fact the individual Shakspeare is lost and hidden, behind the reality and identicalness of his own creations, while the sickly sentimentalism of minor poets, wanting his creative power, and yet attempting to conjure with his magic wand, have produced works which only serve as multiplying glasses, to present us with distorted and caricatured images of their egotistic authors. But still with incomparable poetic beauties, Shakspeare's works are full of moral blemishes; and a pure mind instinctively recoils from soul-contact with many of his grandest thoughts, because tarnished with leprous sin-spots. We yield to no one in just appreciation and admiration of these immortal sons of song; but still we do ardently long, and as earnestly expect a nobler and higher style of poetry

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than the Shakspearian, or even than that of Milton. We do not plead guilty to the slightest degree of fondness for the poor and pious verses, of which the brains of pseudo-poets and poetesses, fostered by the periodical press, are so prolific. It is not the claims of that style of poetry that we now advocate; but of a nobler kind. Its spirit we can conceive, but its form, or the manner of its utterance, whether prose or poetic, we cannot describe, for that were to write it. Yet we think it does not need the inspiration of a seer, but only that ordinary sagacity which can discern the signs of the times, to anticipate a poetry which shall be a deep and fervent expression of the religious sentiment in man--not a poetry which asserts speculative dogmas merely, which explains sectarian creeds, and does homage to church establishments; but that which shall delineate and minutely map out our inner spiritual life. We have already the poetry of Love, the poetry of Art, and the poetry of War! We yet want the poetry of Faith; for its poetry is higher in its moral bearings than is philosophy.

We are conscious of want, of moral wantthe want of utterance to the deepest thoughts and emotions of our souls-those ideas and contemplations which link our conscious existence to God and Heaven, and the unimagined mysteries of spiritual existence. We feel thoughts and spiritual experiences struggling within us, seeking imbodiment and birth in words. Oh! when and where is to be born the poet who shall utter one yet unspoken truth? We hail him yet unborn! Not St. Chrysostom, but he to us shall be the "Golden-mouthed."

We wish to be intelligible, and we think this view of the destined improvement and development of the poetic faculty is neither far-fetched, nor fanciful. If our notions upon this subject seem somewhat transcendental to the material and matter-of-fact philosopher, we are sorry. But before he altogether rejects our views as crudities, we beg leave to remind him, that there is a higher philosophy than that of "Materialism"-that we belong to a different school from himself that we sit as pupils where he would scorn to be a learner; and consequently, of that concerning which he is ignorant he may not judge. In short, it is the philosophy of Christ that we love-yea, that we reverence. We kiss the very hem of its heavenly garment, and deem it no idolatry, since it leads us to the true worship, and to God the Father of our souls.

That is not a profound, but a shallow and

false philosophy, which labors to prove everything to bring everything, even our mysterious moral instincts, into the trammels of scientific arrangement and nomenclature. Doubt was the fashion of the last century, belief of this. Wise and great minds are now not skeptical but believing and adoring, and feel that it is nobler to believe and suffer, than to doubt and dare. It is this tendency of the present age which prompts us to look hopefully towards the future, and predict the advent of a nobler race of poets. The Baconian philosophy taught men to observe, experiment, and generalize; and the exact and demonstrative spirit which it introduced into investigations in physical science, did, in the eighteenth century, unhappily reach the highest department of human knowledge and inquiry-that of revealed religion. Religious truths were then submitted to an alembical process, as searching and severe as that by which a chemist discovers the composition of an acid, or an alkali; and when they failed under this analytic scrutiny, to yield up the secret of their nature and origin, they were rejected and thrown out as worthless dross. Hence the deep, subtle, and widespread infidelity of that reasoning age. But Christian scholars of the nineteenth century, inheriting the wisdom and experience of all the past, have grown wiser than their fathers were. They are willing to receive Christianity as a revelation of vital truths, concerning the origin, nature and destiny of man, which lie above and beyond the province of human reason-truths which so entirely transcend in their nature and scope the power of the human faculties, that in many instances they lie beyond the legitimate bounds of philosophic inquiry. They believe Christianity, not because they have proved it, but because they need it; because an unerring spiritual instinct tells them, that its truths, when properly received, and inwardly digested, are the very pabulum of life to the human soul. When this faith and feeling shall be fully wrought up into the texture of some otherwise gifted mind, and when favoring fortune shall place that anointed one in the midst of such social circumstances and surroundings as shall foster its perfectest development, then shall be sung what nations wait to hear-a Song of Heaven.

The finest fancy and the highest intellectual and artistic culture cannot alone, without the religious element in character, make a true poet. Indeed, the born-poet can better dispense with the learning of the schools, than part with that

UNWRITTEN POETRY.

celestial seed-thought in his soul which blossoms in his verse; for let a mind, the most common and uncultivated, feel the sacredness of worship-let that faith which is altogether practical instead of speculative, take fast hold of the inner life of the soul-and thenceforth all its workings and aspirations, and even its ordinary experiences, will become essentially poetic. Such a soul, while it lives on earth, is yet quite on the verge of heaven. It breathes a heavenly atmosphere, and hears celestial music; and if the power of utterance be given, it will express on earth the glories and beatitudes of heaven. We speak not now of the visions and reveries of the dreamy pietist; but of the calm and sublime experience of the soul that has anchored its hopes "fast by the throne of God"-which can look up trustingly and hopingly from amidst the darkness and mysteriousness which surrounds its earthly fortunes, believing that the Author of its existence will conduct it through all the varied experience and discipline of this human life, to the true issue of its being in the life beyond.

The poetry of Cowper and Young breathes much of this spirit, and indicates a personal and heartfelt experience of the sublime verities of Christian faith. Thomson, too, sometimes utters the language of devout sentiment, and in his sublime "Hymn to the Seasons," there is much of the poetry of natural worship, but little, we fear, of the poetry of true Christian devotion.

Of the late or living poets, the chief of the Lake school may be selected as the nearest approximation in spirit, though not in form, to our ideal of what the best and highest poetry ought to be. Wordsworth has undoubtedly the eye and the heart of a true poet-of a genuine son of song. We recognize in him a spirit, into the very structure of which is woven the poetic faculty. It was no forced baptism in the rills of Helicon and Parnassus, but the inbred stamp of the Creator, a real Theopneusty, which made his a poet's soul. But while his heart beats right, his head goes wrong; and having formed a very erroneous and false idea of what poetic diction ought to be, he follows out his theory so consistently in practice, that "thoughts which breathe" are not always expressed in "words which burn." Indeed we are often astonished at the power and self-sustained energy of the thought, utterly unaided, as it often is, by that studied beauty, and magnificent pomp of diction, by which Milton elevates even

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a common thought into the region of the beau tiful or the dignified, and makes that which is intrinsically grand and noble, absolutely sublime and awe-inspiring.

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Wordsworth is perhaps wrong in thinking, and in striving to impress others, through the medium of his poetic compositions, with the idea, that the proper and appropriate language of poetry does not necessarily differ from that of ordinary prose. Nature is the best teacher on this subject, and she instructs us, nay, she irresistibly impels us to express the lively and vivid picturings of fancy, the depths of feeling, and the elevated transports of excited passion, in a widely different phrase from that in which we talk of last week's business or of this day's Without regalia, the king wants kingliness, and "majesty in misery " commands not homage, but sympathizing pity in its stead; and so, too, poetry must have a purple robing, and a jewelled crown of golden words, before we own her queen, or bow the knee, as her admiring worshippers. Our noble Saxon tongue never fully shows its capabilities, its beauty, and its full expressiveness, till such a hand as Pope's or Milton's tunes its strings, and wakes its slumbering harmonies; and then the ear distinctly recognizes in it a cunning instrument of music, which, when played upon by nice and adept fingers, yields sense and sounds, which harmonize with every varying shade of fancy, thought, or feeling, in the human mind. But whatever theoretical errors the author of the "Excursion" may entertain regarding the diction proper for poetry, they have not repressed the outbreathings of a heart full of all pure, humane and noble thoughts, or checked the play of a fancy as brilliant as it is delicate and pure; and yet it is not so much to this brilliant play of fancy, as to the genial glow of religious and philanthropic feeling, that Wordsworth's poetry owes its attractiveness. Byron's "Thunderstorm among the Alps," where the "live thunder leaps from crag to crag, the rocks among," is the true offspring and fit symbol of the workings of his own wild, disordered fancy; but the softer features of that quiet English landscape which Wordsworth loves, where he delights to dwell, and whose chaste and placid beauty has inspired his song, is a true likeness of his own noble, yet simple nature-free from all affectation and all art, and full to overflowing with all gentle and genial sympathies. We admire the poetry of Byron merely as poetry; but after reading Wordsworth we forget the

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poetry, and love himself-the poet. The very coruscations of Byron's genius, so charged with fiery passions, terrifies us, like the red glare of a threatening meteor in the heavens. We should as soon think of making friendship with Thor, the Norseman's direful war-god, or the awful Odin, who drinks from human skulls in scorn and bitterness, the blood of enemies, as with the dark and gloomy soul of ByBut Wordsworth, were he our friend-how would we cherish in our heart of hearts that friendship! How glad and happy, nay, how justly proud are they, who in the daily and familiar intercourse of social life, enjoy community of thought and feeling with such a mind.

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But the critics perhaps will tell us, that pious sentiment is not always the true Attic salt of poesy--that the "Childe Harold" has incomparable poetic beauties, and is incontestibly the offspring of true poetic inspiration. We admit the grandeur and power of Byron's intellectthe deep and passionate fervor of his soul; but we are amazed and affrighted, rather than attracted, by the lurid and fitful glare of his poetic fancies, flaring out from the dark background of his gloomy and misanthropic nature. He has won for himself, and doubtless will wear, even in the eyes of a far-off posterity, that halo of glory, which surrounds only the brow of the true poet; but it is a radiance which might encircle becomingly the brow of the fallen Lucifer in hell. It is no reflection of that light which is inaccessible and full of glory, by whose divine irradiation the face of the true poet becomes rayonant, as that of Moses, when he descended from the awful mount of converse with Jehovah.

"Marmion," "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," and kindred poems, which mirror the chivalric enthusiasm of a by-gone age, are much admired by many lovers of the poetic art divine. The fictions and poems of Sir Walter Scott are necessarily and deservedly favorites with the young; because they are mirrors, true to nature, in which youths and maidens see reflected the images of their own fancy, in that delightful heyday of existence, when they rejoice and revel in the intoxication of their earliest loves. But the love-lorn poesy of the Metrical Romance is a form of literature that has few charms for a mind which has deeply felt the solemnity and awfulness of this human life of ours-the pressure of its duties-the

canker of its cares--and the heart-crush of its sorrows. A soul which has studied deeply the arithmetic of life, estimates more justly the relative values of the present and the future; and understands well that what is called luck, and chance, and earthly fortune, does not involve the great destinies of our existence, but are merely accidents in the infancy of our being. Such a mind cannot feel its deep and earnest sympathies called out by an exhibition of the little men and women puppets, who flaunt, and flutter, and parade, for a brief hour, in the pages of a modern novel or romance, only to die out of memory again, and be as though they had never been. Fiction, we acknowledge, is beautiful; and the creative power of the human imagination commands our deepest reverence; for it symbolizes that Creative Power which speaks, and it is done--which commands, and it standeth fast. But when the poet or the novelist would please and interest us by the exercise of this divine gift, he must give scope and elevation to his thoughts, and let them range free and untrammelled over all the possibilities of being. The passions and sympathies which he creates and calls into play, must be connected with the highest and noblest interests of our being-with that which links us to the Unseen and Spiritual. It is this quality which gives sublimity and enduringness to Milton's conceptions; and it is here in the moral and spiritual capabilities of our nature that the fictitious writer must seek, if he would find the secret talisman which can rivet the interest and admiration of the readers he essays to instruct and entertain. Heavenliness in the soul of the true poet, is the surest prophecy and pledge of truth and enduringness in his verse; and the German critic Heder evinces not only critical acumen, but a profound knowledge of human nature and its spiritual aspirings, when he says, "mere earth-born poetry, however refined, must be necessarily poor and grovelling? all elevating and sublime poetry is by an influence from above." The modern muse cannot produce her "Opus Magus" till both head and heart are Christian, and not heathen; till after her baptism in "Siloa's brook."

"Heaven breathes the soul into the Minstrel's breast,

But with that soul he animates the rest.
The God inspires the mortal-but to God,
In turn, the mental lifts thee from the sod.
Oh! not in vain the bard to Heaven is dear;
Holy himself, he hallows those who hear."

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For some minutes after his departure, his wife sat, with a dreary face, at the table; then, with a heavy sigh, she arose and, turning to a little work-table, sat down and commenced sewing.

The domestic came in and removed the tea things. The wife was then alone with her own thoughts. Slowly, and almost with the regularity of a machine, moved her hand, as it drew the slender thread. But, every now and then, there would occur a pause, and she would let her work fall into her lap, and sit musing with drooping lids. Sometimes these states of abstraction would continue for many minutes; when she would suddenly recover herself, and with a long-drawn sigh renew her employment. She was thinking of the strange indifference to his home manifested by her husband, who rarely ever spent an evening in her company, or took any pains to provide for her pleasure.

After sewing for a couple of hours, Mrs. Wiley laid by her work, and tried to read. But it was impossible to fix her thoughts upon the page before her-they kept wandering off to her absent husband. And where was he? In company with some friend after his own

heart, while she sat lonely and grieving for his absence at home.

Slowly the time moved on. All day Mr. Wiley had been at his place of business, and his wife had only seen his face, and hearkened to his voice when he came home to his meals. But it was all right that he should attend to his business, and his absence through the day was no cause of grief, though she thought the hours long between the time of his going and returning. But now his absence was voluntary. He had gone out in search of pleasure for himself-pleasure in which he did not, and, perhaps, could not, ask her to share. And thus had it been for a long time. The more Mr. Wiley separated his pleasures from those of his wife, the more careless about her happiness he became. He did not treat her unkindbut she could have borne harsh words better than confirmed neglect and indifference.

ly;

Slowly the time moved on; and the streets grew more and more quiet. The sound of wheels was still, except at intervals, and footpassengers came no longer in a continuous stream. At length all was hushed into a silence only broken now and then by the rapid steps of some lingerer too long from home.

"So late! so late!" murmured the unhappy wife, as she turned from the window at which she had stood listening for a long time, as the city clock rang out upon the quiet, air its notice of the passing hours. It was twelve at night.

Weary with watching, she at length threw herself upon a sofa, and, for the first time since parting with her husband at the tea-table, the tears came stealing out from beneath her shut eyelids. She had been very lonely and sad, but controlled her feelings until now, when weak nature gave way.

It was one o'clock before Mr. Wiley returned, expecting to find, as had often been the case before, his wife in bed and asleep. He had been enjoying himself more than usual, and was in excellent spirits. But these were rather dashed on entering his house to find his wife in the

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