Beauty's whole soul is here, though shadowed still While thus with earnest looks the people gaze, Nought else is heard some time, the people are so still.. I would fain go on with this procession, which the art of the poet continues to make us see and hear and almost feel, so vividly does he describe the pageantry, the noise, and the jostling. But it fills the whole canto, and there is yet another poem for which I must make room. Every mother knows these pathetic stanzas. I shall never forget attempting to read them to my faithful maid, the hemmer of flounces, whose fair-haired Saxon boy, her pet and mine, was then fast recovering from a dangerous illness. I attempted to read these verses, and did read as many as I could for the rising in the throat, the hysterica passio of poor Lear, and as many as my auditor could hear for her own sobs. No doubt they have often extorted such praises the truest and the most precious that can be given. TO T. L. H., SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A SICKNESS. Sleep breathes at last from out thee My little patient boy; And balmy rest about thee- I sit me down and think Of all thy winning ways; Yet almost wish with sudden shrink Thy sidelong pillowed meekness, The little trembling hand These, these are things that may demand Sorrows I've had, severe ones, Ah, first-born of thy mother My light where'er I go, To say He has departed, His voice, his face is gone! To feel impatient-hearted Ah, I could not endure Yes! still he's fixed and sleeping! Its very hush and creeping Seem whispering us a smile. Something divine and dim Who say, "We've finished here." The name of Percy Bysshe Shelley is united to that of Leigh Hunt by many associations. They were in Italy together; they were friends; and the survivor has never ceased to bewail the untimely catastrophe of that great poet. In how many senses does that early and sudden death appear untimely to our dim eyes! Doubtless all was wise, all just, all-merciful; yet to our finite perceptions, he seemed snatched away just as his spirit was preparing to receive the truths to which it had before been blinded. However this rests with an All-wise, and an Allmerciful Judge, and is far beyond our imperfect speculations. In a literary point of view, there is no doubt but every succeeding poem showed the gradual clearing away of the mists and vapours with which, in spite of his exquisite rhythm, and a thousand beauties of detail, his fine genius was originally clouded. The first time I ever met with any of his works, this vagueness brought me into a ludicrous dilemma. It was in the great library of Tavistock House that Mr. Perry one morning put into my hand a splendidly printed, and splendidly bound volume ("Alastor," I think), and desired me to read it, and give him my opinion: "You will at least know," said he, "whether it be worth anybody else's reading." Accordingly I took up the magnificent presentation copy, and read conscientiously until visitors came in. I had no marker, and the richly bound volume closed as if instinctively, so that when I resumed my task on the departure of the company, not being able to find my place, I was obliged to begin the book at the first line. More visitors came, and went, and still the same calamity befell me; again, and again, and again, I had to search in vain amongst a succession of melodious lines as like each other as the waves of the sea, for buoy or landmark, and had always to shore, and begin my voyage anew. member having been ever in my life more ashamed of my own stupidity than when obliged to say to Mr. Perry, in answer to his questions as to the result of my morning's studies, that, doubtless, it was a very fine poem-only that I never could tell when I took up the book, where I had left off half an hour before; an unintended criticism, which, as characteristic both of author and reader, very much amused my kind and clever host. put back to I do not re Now, could such a calamity befall even the stupidest of young girls, in reading that perfection of clearness and dramatic construction, "The Cenci ?" |