Brother, we don't want you. There! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the flower-vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman. Hush! Preaching, you mean, Eliza. Pshaw! FRIEND. Well then, I was saying that Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world: and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, "John Anderson, my jo, John," in addition to a depth and constancy of character of bility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional comno every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensimunicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within-to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life-even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, and which, in all our From a man turned of fifty, Catherine, I imagine, lovings, is the Love;——— expects a less confident answer. ELIZA. There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to understand you, but wants the word that would make it understand itself. CATHERINE. I, too, seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for us. FRIEND. -I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a gener. ous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own-that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart mo mently finds, and, finding, again seeks on-lastly, when "life's changeful orb has pass'd the full," a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience: it supposes, I say, a Say another word, and we will call it downright heart-felt reverence for worth, not the less deep be affectation. cause divested of its solemnity by habit, by familiar. CATHERINE Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me despair of finding a "John Anderson, my jo, John," to totter down the hill of life with. ity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of guise of playful raillery, and the countless other modesty which will arise in delicate nunds, when infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial they are conscious of possessing the same or the feeling. correspondent excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call Goodness its Playfellow, and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged VIRTUE the caressing fondness that belongs to the INNOCENCE of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies as had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty. ELIZA. What a soothing-what an elevating idea! CATHERINE. If it be not only an idea. FRIEND. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife! A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbor, friend, housemate-in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment, save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this! Pride, coldness or fastidionsness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper-one or the other too often proves "the dead fly in the compost of spices," and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive by sucking the paws of its own selfimportance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of preserving the same but by negatives-that is, by not doing or saying any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical,-or (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most worthless object they could be employed in remembering. ELIZA (in answer to a whisper from CATHERINE). To a hair! He must have sate for it himself. Save me from such folks! But they are out of the question. FRIEND. FRIEND. Not so! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue. ELIZA. Surely, he who has described it so beautifully, must have possessed it? FRIEND. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment! (Then, after a pause of a few minutes). Yes, yes! that boon, life's richest treat, Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish! But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain Faith asks her daily bread, That boon, which but to have possess'd True! but the same effect is produced in thousands fortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum Those sparkling colors, once his boast, Where was it then, the sociable sprite It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow, O bliss of blissful hours! The boon of Heaven's decreeing, Dwelt the First Husband and his sinless Mate! THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO. Of late, in one of those most weary hours, The love, the joyaunce, and the gallantry! Of music soft that not dispels the sleep, Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan Of manhood, musing what and whence is man Thanks, gentle artist! now I can descry Sit on the ground-sward, and the banquet share. The brightness of the world, O thou once free, But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's dream, Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span, Gazed by an idle eye with silent might A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest, And Nature makes her happy home with man; See! Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees Where, half conceal'd, the eye of fancy views of poetry, to observe, that in the attempt to adapt the Greek metres to the English language, we must begin by substituting quality of sound for quantity—that is, accentuated or comparatively emphasized syllables, for what, in the Greek and Latin verse, are named long, and of which the prosodial mark is; and vice versa, unaccentuated syllables for short, marked ˇ. Now the hexameter verse consists of two sorts of feet, Fauns, nymphs, and winged saints, all gracious to thy the spondee, composed of two long syllables, and the muse! Still in thy garden let me watch their pranks, MY BAPTISMAL BIRTH-DAY. LINES COMPOSED ON A SICK BED, UNDER SEVERE BODILY SUFFERING, ON MY SPIRITUAL BIRTH-DAY, OCTOBER 28th. Bow unto God in CHRIST-in Christ, my ALL! The Heir of Heaven, henceforth I dread not Death, FRAGMENTS FROM THE WRECK OF MEMORY: OR PORTIONS OF POEMS COMPOSED IN EARLY MANHOOD. [NOTE.-It may not be without use or interest to youthful, and especially to intelligent female readers *Boccaccio claimed for himself the glory of having first in troduced the works of Homer to his countrymen. I know few more striking or more interesting proofs of the overwhelming influence which the study of the Greek and Roman classics exercised on the judgments, feelings, and imaginations of the literati of Europe at the commencement of the restoration of literature, than the passage in the Filocopo of Boccaccio; where the sage instructor, Racheo, as soon as the young prince and the beautiful girl Biancafiore had learned their letters, sets them to study the Holy Book, Ovid's Art of Love. Incomincio Racheo a mettere il suo officio in essecuzione con intera sollecitudine. E loro, in breve tempo, insegnato a conoscer le lettere, fece legere il santo libro d' Ovvidio, nel quale il sommo poeta mostra, come i santi fuochi di Venere si debbano ne freddi cuori occendere." 16 dactyl, composed of one long syllable followed by two short. The following verse from the Psalms, is a rare instance of a perfect hexameter (i. e. line of six feet) in the English language: Gōd came up with a shout our | Lōrd with the sound of a | trumpēt. But so few are the truly spondaic words in our language, such as Egypt, úprōar, turmōil, &c., that we are compelled to substitute, in most instances, the trochee, oră, i. e. such words as merry, lightly, &c. for the proper spondee. It need only be added, that in the hexameter the fifth foot must be a dactyl, and the sixth a spondee, or trochee. I will end this note with two hexameter lines, likewise from the Psalms. There is a river the | flowing where | ōf shall | gladden the city. Hallě | lūjah thě | city of | Gōd Jēhōvăh! hăth | blést hěr.j I. HYMN TO THE EARTH. EARTH! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother, Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail! Blest be thou! and, blessing, I hymn thee! Forth, ye sweet sounds! from my harp, and my voice shall float on your surges — Soar thou aloft, O my soul! and bear up my song on thy pinions. Travelling the vale with mine eyes-green meadows, and lake with green island, Dark in its basin of rock, and the bare stream flowing in brightness, Thrilled with thy beauty and love, in the wooded slope of the mountain, Here, Great Mother, I lie, thy child with its head on thy bosom! Playful the spirits of noon, that creep or rush through thy tresses: Green-haired Goddess! refresh me; and hark! as they hurry or linger, Fill the pause of my harp, or sustain it with musical murmurs. Into my being thou murmurest joy; and tenderest sadness Shed'st thou, like dew, on my heart, till the joy and the heavenly gladness Pour themselves forth from my heart in tears, and the hymns of thanksgiving. Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother, Sister thou of the Stars, and beloved by the sun, the rejoicer! 235 Guardian and friend of the Moon, O Earth, whom IV. THE OVIDIAN ELEGIAC METRE DESCRIBED the Comets forget not, AND EXEMPLIFIED. Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round, and In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column ; again they behold thee! Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of In the pentameter aye falling in melody back. Creation?) Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamored! Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great Mother and Goddess! V. A VERSIFIED REFLECTION. [A Force is the provincial term in Cumberland for Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap any narrow fall of water from the summit of a moun was ungirdled, Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and won thee! Fair was thy blush, the fairest and first of the blushes of morning! Deep was the shudder, O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention : July thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre! Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty embracement, tain precipice. The following stanza (it may not arrogate the name of poem) or versified reflection, was composed while the author was gazing on three parallel Forces, on a moonlight night, at the foot of the Saddleback Fell.-S. T. C.] On stern BLENCARTHUR'S perilous height Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thou- Beneath the moon in gentle weather sand-fold instincts, on their channels; Filled, as a dream, the wide waters: the rivers sang But oh! the Sky, and all its forms, how quiet! The things that seek the Earth, how full of noise and riot! Laughed on their shores the hoarse seas: the yearn. ing ocean swelled upward: Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains, Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled in blossoming branches. LOVE'S GHOST AND RE-EVANITION. AN ALLEGORIC ROMANCE. Like a lone ARAB, old and blind, And now he cowers with low-hung head aslant, And listens for some human sound in vain : And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant, That once had made that heart so warm, And LovE stole in, in maiden form, Toward my arbor-seat! She bent and kissed her sister's lips, The Asps of the sand-deserts, anciently named Dipsads. |