ODE ON THE DEATH OF MATURIN.
BY MR. S. L. BLANCHARD.

AND he is dead that drew

The breath of many a wounded day,

Of watchful nights, alike perchance in hue,

And no voice heard to wail!

Shall no hand strew

Leaves for his fame to sleep on, wearied of its way.

May not some arm be raised

Unto the banner which he poized so well,

The poet's sign, that from dark times hath blazed,
Making chill reason stand amazed,

Warmed by the flame he could not quell,-
May not this banner of bright bards be wound,
A winding-sheet of life, betwixt him and the ground.
The world must hold

An echo of the wondrous things he told;
The pictures he hath wrought,

Forth from the womb of phantoms brought,
Live based on everlasting thought:
All, all that he hath done

Is of the sea and sun!
He (another prophet) saw

A moving hand along the thunder-cloud,
And knew the language of that law,
And read it to a Babylonian crowd:
But men in peril are most proud,
And laugh to scorn

The voice that comes to warn;
And so he died, but not unheard-
Although the meaning of his mighty word

Only to a few was given

[riven?

And who that felt the tone, knew how the harp was

O cold neglect,

And cruel tauntings of the ruffian wind!

Why work ye upon nature's calm and kind,

To rush on deadly waters, whirled and wrecked?

Because the earth be blind,

Is there no blue upon the brow
Of that rich heaven that did endow
Mankind with wisdom, to behold
Glories of earthly and ethereal mould!
But when man darted up to grasp
The fire of sceptred cherubim,

And to his poisoned eyeball clung the wasp,
And all its lighted world was dim,
Day perished not,

Nor the pale patience of the night,-
Only the tear-lit orbs of human sight.
And such the poet's lot-

To have his glorious lineaments forgot;
And when most radiant to be most assailed
As dark, because the mortal gaze bath failed.
And such was thine!

Such, such the lot of many a hand divine,
That with bruised and blighted pen,
Filled with the bosom's living dew,
On the world's green surface drew
The fine similitudes of men,
Such as ne'er again shall press

The earth, made Edenless.

But thou! O wheresoever

Thou sleepest in white dreams at the moon's foot,
Almost a star!

Or sailest, leaf-like down heaven's wreckless river,
Wheresoe'er thou twin'st thy root,
Bending near to man, or far-

O trust

The lightning of our dust,

The flashings of poetic frostless strings ;-
O, think that there are things,
Here in the world whose waxen hearts reveal
The print of thine, and burn religiously,
Their life as on an altar, whereat kueel
The poet worshippers, that seal
Their knowledge of a dawn to be-
Whose firmest wing shall have a throne for thee.
For these he held

His course awhile on high, and now lieth felled;
For these he sported on the brink

Of the gray mountains, and the shelly shore,

And dared, amid a thoughtless land, to think, [wore. And shook, with heaving heart, the star-chain which it

The wide wood bowed its sable plumes,

And wrapped him from the following blast; And ocean found him stretched upon its tombs: Where'er he passed,

Some graven tokens rest,

Save only on man's printless breast,
Who looked not on his dazzling way,
Except to mark if once he turn'd astray
They deemed not that his flame
Was damped by tears, and so it waved
Unsteady in the sullen gust it braved,
But still ascended whence it came.
Who could be wise,

Holding the reins along such roadless skies?
Yet not with hoary hairs is judgment twined,
But in the senate of the mind
It weighs the worth of age,

And flings to youth the mantle of the sage.
His was a cloak

Made from the pall of buried years, the gold
Of the deep future blazing through each fold;

He spoke

To heaven and to the waters, to the souls
Which beam from every orb that rolls;
And on the snaky storm

That looked down from its battlement,
A glance of answering anger sent.
The giant and the worm,

The infant love of woman

(Life's down upon the breast of time), The fevered manhood and the flash of crime, The veins of misers mad with molten gold, The helmet and the cowl,

The burning foot-track of a thing not human, The sun-struck matins and the midnight howl. Of these he told,

Pouring like a stream along

All the sorceries of song;

And o'er his heart, as on a map,

Linked by fine veins the rosy countries spread-
The heart, now dumb and dead!

What glory next shall time and sorrow sap?
Three mighty ones lie low,

As struck by a rebounding blow.

One died amid the laughing foam,

And one (an eagle) on a sun-bank perished-
And, lo! a third, begirt with all he cherished,
Is borne from out a desolated home!

And on his grave,

Yet beaming with the vital warmth he gave,
To which the messaged meteor shoots,
The grass already feeds its roots:
So o'er the green and gentle spot,
Wherein a fame that will not rot

Is shut from ears to which he never sung,
There memory shall relume the lamp within;
As on her plaintive tongue

Is trembling-' MATURIN!'

Thou, Eriu, whom he loved, oh! mourn-
Not that the spirit of thy child,

Here in its dungeon so reviled,

Through life's relenting bars hath torn,
But that thine isle

In him so rich, could tempt him scarce to smile -
That noble things must live alone,

And see the sun which cheered them turn to stone.

MATRIMONIAL LOTTERY.

A SHORT time since, it happened at a wedding in South Carolina, a young lawyer moved, "That one man in the company should be selected as president; that this president should be duly sworn to keep entirely secret all the communications that should be forwarded to him in his official department that night; that each unmarried gentleman and lady should write his or her name on a piece of paper, and under it place the name of the person they wished to marry; then hand it to the president for inspection; and if any gentleman and lady had reciprocally chosen each other, the president was to inform each of the result; and those who had not been reciprocal in their choice, kept entirely secret." After the appointment of the president, communications were accordingly handed up to the chair, and it was found twelve young gentlemen and ladies had made reciprocal choices; and eleven of the twelve matches were solemnized.

"Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakspeare, and trash will remain,"

Lacone

NO literary complaint is more frequent and general than that of the insipidity of Modern Poetry. While the votary of science is continually gratified with new objects opening to his view, the lover of poetry is wearied and disgusted with a perpetual repetition of the same images, clad in almost the same language. This is usually attributed to a real deficiency of poetical genius in the present age; and such causes are assigned for it as would leave us little room to hope for any favourable change. But this solution, as it is invidious in its application, and discouraging in its effects, is surely also contradictory to that just relish for the beauties of poetry, that taste for sound and manly criticism, and that improvement in the other elegant arts, which must be allowed to characterize our own times. The state in which poetry has been transmitted to us will probably afford a truer, as well as a more favourable explanation of the fact. It comes to us, worn down, enfeebled, and fettered.

The Epopea, circumscribed as it perhaps necessarily is within narrow limits, scarcely offers to the most fertile invention a subject at the same time original and proper. Tragedy, exhausted by the infinite number of its productions, is nearly reduced to the same condition. The artificial production of the Ode almost inevitably throws its composer into unmeaning imitation. Elegy, conversant with a confined, and almost an uniform train of emotions, cannot but frequently become languid and feeble. Satire, indeed, is still sufficiently vigorous and prolific; but its offspring is little suited to please a mind sensible to the charms of genuine poetry. It would seem, then, that novelty was the present requisite, more, perhaps, than genius: it is therefore of importance to enquire what source is capable of affording it.