Where are ye gone,
And shall we wake from the long sleep of death,
To know each other, conscious of the ties
That linked our souls together, and draw down
The secret dewdrop on my cheek, whene'er
I turn unto the past? or will the change
That comes to all renew the altered spirit
To other thoughts, making the strife or love
Of short mortality a shadow past,
Equal illusion ? Father, whose strong mind
Was my support, whose kindness as the spring
Which never tarries! Mother, of all forms
That smiled upon my budding thoughts, most dear!
Brothers ! and thou, mine only sister ! gone
To the still grave, making the memory
Of all my earliest time a thing wiped out,
Save from the glowing spot, which lives as fresh
In my heart's core as when we last in joy
Were gathered round the blithe paternal board !
Where are ye? Must your kindred spirits sleep
For many a thousand years, till by the trump
Roused to new being ! Will old affections then
Burn inwardly, or all our loves gone by
Seem but a speck upon the roll of time,
Unworthy our regard ? This is too hard
For mortals to unravel, nor has He
Vouchsafed a clue to man, who bade us trust
To Him our weakness, and we shall wake up
After His likeness, and be satisfied.

For thee, my country, thee, do I perform,
Sternly, the duty of a man born free,
Heedless, though ass, and wolf, and venomous worm,
Shake ears and fangs, with brandished bray, at me.

Fortunately the genius of Elliott has redeemed his errors of taste: his delineation of humble virtue and affection, and his descriptions of English scenery, are excellent. He writes from genuine feelings and impulses, and often rises into pure sentiment and eloquence. The Corn-Law Rhymer, as he has been called, was born in 1781 at Masbrough, a village near Sheffield. He has passed an industrious youth and middle age in a branch of the well known manufactures of his native district, from which manual toil was not in his case excluded; and he now enjoys the comparatively easy circumstances merited by his labours as well as his genius.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT. EBENEZER ELLIOTT, sprung from the manufacturing poor of England, and early accustomed to toil and privation, derived, like Clare, a love of poetry from the perusal of Thomson. Being thrown among a town population, he became a politician, and imbibed opinions rarely found among the peasantry.

To the Bramble Florer.
Thy fruit full well the schoolboy knows,

Wild bramble of the brake!
So put thou forth thy small white rose;

I love it for his sake.
Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow

O'er all the fragrant bowers,
Thou needst not be ashamed to show

Thy satin-threaded flowers;
For dull the eye, the heart is dull,

That cannot feel how fair,
Amid all beauty beautiful,

Thy tender blossoms are !
How delicate thy gauzy frill!

How rich thy branchy stem!
How soft thy voice when woods are still,

And thou sing'st hymns to them;
While silent showers are falling slow,

And 'mid the general hush,
A sweet air lifts the little bough,

Lone whispering through the bush!
The primrose to the grave is gone;

The hawthorn flower is dead;
The violet by the mossed gray stone

Hath laid her weary head;
But thou, wild bramble ! back dost bring

In all their beauteous power,
The fresh green days of life's fair spring,

And boyhood’s blossomy hour.
Scorned bramble of the brake! once more

Thou bidd'st me be a boy,
To gad with thee the woodlands o'er,

In freedom and in joy.

The Excursion.
Bone-weary, many-childed, trouble-tried !
Wife of my bosom, wedded to my soul !
Mother of nine that live, and two that died !
This day, drink health from nature's mountain bowl ;
Nay, why lament the doom which mocks control ?
The buried are not lost, but gone before.
Then dry thy tears, and see the river roll

O'er rocks, that crowned yon time-dark heights of yore,
Ebenezer Elliott.

Now, tyrant like, dethroned, to crush the weak no more. He has followed Crabbe in depicting the condition of The young are with us yet, and we with them : the poor as miserable and oppressed, tracing most of O thank the Lord for all he gives or takes the evils he deplores to the social and political in- The withered bud, the living flower, or gem! stitutions of his country. The laws relating to the And he will bless us when the world forsakes ! importation of corn have been denounced by Elliott Lo! where thy fisher-born, abstracted, takes, as specially afflictive of the people, and this he has with his fixed eyes, the trout he cannot see ! done with a fervour of manner and a harshness of Lo! starting from his earnest dream, he wakes ! phraseology, which ordinary minds feel as repulsive, While our glad Fanny, with raised foot and knee, even while acknowledged as flowing from the offended Bears down at Noe's side the bloom-bowed hawthorn benevolence of the poet.

Dear children! when the flowers are full of bees; To flow unseen, repent, and sin no more!
When sun-touched blossoms shed their fragrant snow; For richest gems compared with her, are poor;
When song speaks like a spirit, from the trees Gold, weighed against her heart, is light-is vile;
Whose kindled greenness hath a golden glow; And when thou sufferest, who shall see her smile?
When, clear as music, rill and river flow,

Sighing, ye wake, and sigbing, sink to sleep,
With trembling hues, all changeful, tinted o'er And seldom smile, without fresh cause to weep;
By that bright pencil which good spirits know (Scarce dry the pebble, by the wave dashed o'er,
Alike in earth and heaven-'tis sweet, once more, Another comes, to wet it as before);
Above the sky-tinged hills to see the storm-bird soar. Yet while in gloom your freezing day declines,
'Tis passing sweet to wander, free as air,

How fair the wintry sunbeam when it shines! Blithe truants in the bright and breeze-blessed day,

Your foliage, where no summer leaf is seen, Far from the town—where stoop the sons of care

Sweetly embroiders earth's white veil with green ; O'er plans of mischief, till their souls turn gray,

And your broad branches, proud of storm-tried And dry as dust, and dead-alive are they

strength, Of all self-buried things the most unblessed :

Stretch to the winds in sport their stalwart length, O Morn! to them no blissful tribute pay!

And calmly wave, beneath the darkest hour, O Night's long-courted slumbers ! bring no rest

The ice-born fruit, the frost-defying flower. To men who laud man's foes, and deem the basest Let luxury, sickening in profusion's chair, best!

Unwisely pamper his unworthy heir,

And, while he feeds him, blush and tremble too! God! would they handcuff thee ! and, if they could But love and labour, blush not, fear not you ! Chain the free air, that, like the daisy, goes

Your children (splinters from the mountain's side), To every field; and bid the warbling wood

With rugged hands, shall for themselves provide. Exchange no music with the willing rose

Parent of valour, cast away thy fear! For love-sweet odours, where the woodbine blows Mother of men, be proud without a tear! And trades with every cloud, and every beam While round your hearth the wo-nursed virtues move, Of the rich sky! Their gods are bonds and blows, And all that manliness can ask of love; Rocks, and blind shipwreck; and they hate the Remember Hogarth, and abjure despair; stream

Remember Arkwright, and the peasant Clare. That leaves them still behind, and mocks their change- Burns, o'er the plough, sung sweet his wood-notes wild, less dream.

And richest Shakspeare was a poor man's child. They know ye not, ye flowers that welcome me, Sire, green in age, mild, patient, toil-inured, Thus glad to meet, by trouble parted long !

Endure thine evils as thou hast endured. They never saw ye-never may they see

Behold thy wedded daughter, and rejoice! Your dewy beauty, when the throstle's song

Hear hope's sweet accents in a grandchild's voice! Floweth like starlight, gentle, calm, and strong!

See freedom's bulwarks in thy sons arise,
Still, Avarice, starve their souls! still, lowest Pride, And Hampden, Russell, Sidney, in their eyes !
Make them the meanest of the basest throng!

And should some new Napoleon's curse subdue
And may they never, on the green hill's side,

All hearths but thine, let him behold them too, Embrace a chosen flower, and love it as a bride!

And timely shun a deadlier Waterloo.

Northumbrian vales ! ye saw, in silent pride, Blue Eyebright!* loveliest flower of all that grow In flower-loved England! Flower, whose hedge-side when, poor, yet learned, he wandered young and free,

The pensive brow of lowly Akenside, gaze

And felt within the strong divinity. Is like an infant's! What heart doth not know

Scenes of his youth, where first he wooed the Nine, Thee, clustered smiler of the bank! where plays

His spirit still is with you, vales of Tyne! The sunbeam with the emerald snake, and strays As when he breathed, your blue-belled paths along, The dazzling rill, companion of the road

The soul of Plato into British song. Which the lone bard most loveth, in the days

Born in a lowly hut an infant slept, When hope and love are young! O come abroad,

Dreamful in sleep, and, sleeping, smiled or wept: Blue Eyebright ! and this rill shall woo thee with an Silent the youth-the man was grave and shy: ode.

His parents loved to watch his wondering eye: Awake, blue Eyebright, while the singing wave And lo! he waved a prophet's hand, and gave, Its cold, bright, beauteous, soothing tribute drops Where the winds soar, a pathway to the wave! From many a gray rock's foot and dripping cave; From hill to hill bade air-hung rivers stride, While yonder, 1o, the starting stone-chat hops ! And flow through mountains with a conqueror's pride: While here the cottar's cow, its sweet food crops ; O’er grazing herds, lo! ships suspended sail, While black-faced ewes and lambs are bleating there; And Brindley's praise hath wings in every gale! And, bursting through the briers, the wild ass stops The worm came up to drink the welcome shower; Kicks at the strangers—then turns round to stare- The redbreast quaffed the raindrop in the bower; Then lowers his large red ears, and shakes his long The flaskering duck through freshened lilies swam; dark hair.

The bright roach took the fly below the dam;

Ramped the glad colt, and cropped the pensile spray; [Pictures of Native Genius.]

No more in dust uprose the sultry way; O faithful love, by poverty embraced !

The lark was in the cloud; the woodbine hung

More sweetly o'er the chaffinch while he sung;
Thy heart is fire, amid a wintry waste;

And the wild rose, from every dripping bush,
Thy joys are roses, born on Hecla's brow;
Thy home is Eden, warm amid the snow;

Beheld on silvery Sheaf the mirrored blush ;

When calmly seated on his panniered ass, And she, thy mate, when coldest blows the storm,

Where travellers hear the steel hiss as they pass, Clings then most fondly to thy guardian forin; E'en as thy taper gives intensest light,

A milkboy, sheltering from the transient storm, When o'er thy bowed roof darkest falls the night.

Chalked, on the grinder's wall, an infant's form; Oh, if thou e'er hast wronged her, if thou e'er

Young Chantrey smiled; no critic praised or blamed; From those mild eyes hast caused one bitter tear

And golden promise smiled, and thus exclaimed:

'Go, child of genius! rich be thine increase; * The Geornander Speedwell. Go-be the Phidias of the second Greece!'

simile of the swan flinging aside the turbid drops' [Apostrophe to Futurity.]

from her snowy wing is certainly worthy of Ye rocks! ye elements! thou shoreless main, Byron. In whose blue depths, worlds, ever voyaging, Freighted with life and death, of fate complain.

[To the Duchess of Sutherland.] Things of immutability! ye bring

Once more, my harp! once more, although I thought Thoughts that with terror and with sorrow wring

Never to wake thy silent strings again,
The human breast. Unchanged, of sad decay
And deathless change ye speak, like prophets old,

A wandering dream thy gentle chords have wrought,

And my sad heart, which long hath dwelt in pain, Foretelling evil's ever-present day;

Soars, like a wild bird from a cypress bough, And as when Horror lays his finger cold

Into the poet's heaven, and leaves dull grief below! Upon the heart in dreams, appal the bold. Othou Futurity! our hope and dread,

And unto thee—the beautiful and pureLet me unveil thy features, fair or foul!

Whose lot is cast amid that busy world Thou who shalt see the grave untenanted,

Where only sluggish Dulness dwells secure, And commune with the re-embodied soul !

And Fancy's generous wing is faintly furled ; Tell me thy secrets, ere thy ages roll

To thee-whose friendship kept its equal truth Their deeds, that yet shall be on earth, in heaven, Through the most dreary hour of my embittered And in deep hell, where rabid hearts with pain

youthMust purge their plagues, and learn to be forgiyen! Show me the beauty that shall fear no stain,

I dedicate the lay. Ah! never bard, And still, through age-long years, unchanged remain!

In days when poverty was twin with song; As one who dreads to raise the pallid sheet

Nor wandering harper, lonely and ill-starred, Which shrouds the beautiful and tranquil face

Cheered by some castle's chief, and harboured long; That yet can smile, but never more shall meet,

Not Scott's Last Minstrel, in his trembling lays, With kisses warm, his ever fond embrace;

Woke with a warmer heart the earnest meed of praise ! So I draw nigh to thee, with timid pace,

For easy are the alms the rich man spares And tremble, though I long to lift thy veil.

To sons of Genius, by misfortune bent;

But thou gav’st me, what woman seldom dares,
A Poet's Prayer.

Belief-in spite of many a cold dissent,
Almighty Father! let thy lowly child,

When, slandered and maligned, I stood apart Strong in his love of truth, be wisely bold

From those whose bounded power hath wrung, not A patriot bard, by sycophants reviled,

crushed, my heart. Let him live usefully, and not die old !

Thou, then, when cowards lied away my name,
Let poor men's children, pleased to read his lays,

And scoffed to see me feebly stem the tide;
Love, for his sake, the scenes where he hath been.
And when he ends his pilgrimage of days,

When some were kind on whom I had no claim, Let him be buried where the grass is green,

And some forsook on whom my love relied,

And some, who might have battled for my sake, Where daisies, blooming earliest, linger late

Stood off in doubt to see what turn the world would To hear the bee his busy note prolong;

takeThere let him slumber, and in peace await The dawning morn, far from the sensual throng, Thou gav'st me that the poor do give the poor, Who scorn the wind flower's blush, the redbreast's lonely Kind words and holy wishes, and true tears; song.

The loved, the near of kin could do no more,

Who changed not with the gloom of varying years,

But clung the closer when I stood forlorn, The family of Sheridan has been prolific of And blunted Slander's dart with their indignant scorn. genius, and Mrs Norton, granddaughter of Richard For they who credit crime, are they who feel Brinsley, has well sustained the family honours.

Their own hearts weak to unresisted sin; Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan was, at the age of Memory, not judgment, prompts the thoughts which nineteen, married to the Honourable George Chapple

steal Norton, brother to Lord Grantley, and himself a

O'er minds like these, an easy faith to win; police magistrate in London. This union was dis- and tales of broken truth are still believed solved in 1840, after Mrs Norton had been the ob; Most readily by those who have themselves deceived. ject of suspicion and persecution of the most painful description. In her seventeenth year, this lady had But like a white swan down a troubled stream, composed her poem, The Sorrows of Rosalie, a pathetic Whose ruftling pinion hath the power to fling story of village life. Her next work was a poem Aside the turbid drops which darkly gleam founded on the ancient legend of the Wandering And mar the freshness of her snowy wingJew, which she termed The Undying One. A third So thou, with queenly grace and gentle pride, volume appeared from her pen in 1840, entitled along the world's dark waves in purity dost glide : The Dream, and other Poems. This lady,' says a writer in the Quarterly Review, is the Byron of Thy pale and pearly cheek was never made our modern poetesses. She has very much of that Thou didst not shrink-of bitter tongues afraid,

To crimson with a faint false-hearted shame; intense personal passion by which Byron's poetry is

Who hunt in packs the object of their blame; distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper com

To thee the sad denial still held true, munion with man and nature of Wordsworth. She For from thine own good thoughts thy heart its mercy has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tenderness,

drew. his strong practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an artificial imitation, but a And though my faint and tributary rhymes natural parallel. The truth of this remark, both Add nothing to the glory of thy day, as to poetical and personal similarity of feeling, will Yet every poet hopes that after-times be seen from the following impassioned verses, ad- Shall set some value on his votive lay; dressed by Mrs Norton to the Duchess of Suther- And I would fain one gentle deed record, land, to whom she has dedicated her poems. The . Among the many such with which thy life is stored.

MRS NORTON.

So when these lines, made in a mournful hour,
Are idly opened to the stranger's eye,

The Mother's Heart.
A dream of thee, aroused by Fancy's power,
Shall be the first to wander floating by;

When first thou camest, gentle, shy, and fond,
And they who never saw thy lovely face

My eldest born, first hope, and dearest treasure,

My heart received thee with a joy beyond Shall pause, to conjure up a vision of its grace!

All that it yet had felt of earthly pleasure; In The Winter's Walk, a poem written after walking Nor thought that any love again might be with Mr Rogers the poet, Mrs Norton has the fol- So deep and strong as that I felt for thee. lowing brief but graceful and picturesque lines :

Faithful and true, with sense beyond thy years, Gleamed the red sun athwart the misty haze

And natural piety that leaned to heaven ;
Which veiled the cold earth from its loving gaze, Wrung by a harsh word suddenly to tears,
Feeble and sad as hope in sorrow's hour-

Yet patient of rebuke when justly given-
But for thy soul it still had warmth and power ; Obedient, easy to be reconciled,
Not to its cheerless beauty wert thou blind;

And meekly cheerful—such wert thou, my child. To the keen eye of thy poetic mind

Not willing to be left : still by my side
Beauty still lives, though nature's flowrets die,
And wintry sunsets fade along the sky!

Haunting my walks, while summer-day was dying;

Nor leaving in thy turn; but pleased to glide And nought escaped thee as we strolled along,

Through the dark room, where I was sadly lying; Nor changeful ray, nor bird's faint chirping song.

Or by the couch of pain, a sitter meek,
Blessed with a fancy easily inspired,
All was beheld, and nothing unadmired;

Watch the dim eye, and kiss the feverish cheek. From the dim city to the clouded plain,

O boy ! of such as thou are oftenest made Not one of all God's blessings given in vain.

Earth's fragile idols ; like a tender flower, The affectionate attachment of Rogers to Sheridan, No strength in all thy freshness-prone to fade in his last and evil days, is delicately touched upon Still round the loved, thy heart found force to bind,

And bending weakly to the thunder showerby the poetess :

And clung like woodbine shaken in the wind.
And when at length he laid his dying head

Then thou, my merry love, bold in thy glee
On the hard rest of his neglected bed,
He found (though few or none around him came

Under the bough, or by the firelight dancing, Whom he had toiled for in his hour of fame

With thy sweet temper and thy spirit free,

Didst come as restless as a bird's wing glancing, Though by his prince unroyally forgot,

Full of a wild and irrepressible mirth, And left to struggle with his altered lot)

Like a young sunbeam to the gladdened earth! By sorrow weakened, by disease unnerved Faithful at least the friend he had not served : Thine was the shout! the song! the burst of joy! For the same voice essayed that hour to cheer,

Which sweet from childhood's rosy lip resoundeth ; Which now sounds welcome to his grandchild's ear; Thine was the eager spirit nought could cloy And the same hand, to aid that life's decline,

And the glad heart from which all grief reboundeth; Whose gentle clasp so late was linked in mine.

And many a mirthful jest and mock reply

Lurked in the laughter of thy dark-blue eye! [Picture of Twilight.]

And thine was many an art to win and bless, Oh, twilight! Spirit that dost render birth

The cold and stern to joy and fondness warming; To dim enchantments; melting heaven with earth, The coaxing smile

the frequent soft caressLeaving on craggy hills and running streams

The earnest, tearful prayer all wrath disarming! A softness like the atmosphere of dreams;

Again my heart a new affection found, Thy hour to all is welcome! Faint and sweet But thought that love with thee had reached its bound. Thy light falls round the peasant's homeward feet, At length thou camest—thou, the last and least, Who, slow returning from his task of toil,

Nicknamed 'the emperor' by thy laughing brothers, Sees the low sunset gild the cultured soil,

Because a haughty spirit swelled thy breast,
And, though such radiance round him brightly glows, And thou didst seek to rule and sway the others;
Marks the small spark his cottage-window throws. Mingling with every playful infant wile
Still as his heart forestalls his weary pace,

A mimic majesty that made us smile.
Fondly he dreams of each familiar face,
Recalls the treasures of his narrow life

And oh! most like a regal child wert thou !
His rosy children and his sunburnt wife,

An eye of resolute and successful schemingTo whom his coming is the chief event

Fair shoulders, curling lip, and dauntless browOf simple days in cheerful labour spent,

Fit for the world's strife, not for poet's dreaming; The rich man's chariot hath gone whirling past,

And proud the lifting of thy stately head, And these poor cottagers have only cast

And the firm bearing of thy conscious tread. One careless glance on all that show of pride, Different from both 1 yet each succeeding claim, Then to their tasks turned quietly aside;

I, that all other love had been forswearing, But him they wait for, him they welcome home, Forthwith admitted, equal and the same; Fixed sentinels look forth to see him come ;

Nor injured either by this love's comparing, The fagot sent for when the fire grew dim,

Nor stole a fraction for the newer call,
The frugal meal prepared, are all for him;

But in the mother's heart found room for all.
For him the watching of that sturdy boy,
For him those smiles of tenderness and joy,
For him—who plods his sauntering way along,
Whistling the fragment of some yillage song!

MRS SQUTHEY (Caroline Bowles) is one of the Dear art thou to the lover, thou sweet light, most pleasing and natural poetesses of the day. Fair fleeting sister of the mournful night!

She has published various works—Ellen Fitzarthur As in impatient hope he stands apart,

(1820), The Widow's Tale and other Poems (1822), Companioned only by his beating heart,

The Birthday and other Poems (1836), Solitary Hours And with an eager fancy oft beholds

(1839), &c. The following are excellent both in The vision of a white robe's fluttering folds.

thought and versification :

MRS SOUTHEY.