Never is Nature mute; each leafy bower
Has gentle speech the poet's soul can hear.
Yes, the rich perfume of each beauteous flower,
Is the sweet eloquence of love most dear.
There is a language in the dew-drop's tear;
There is expression in each herb and tree;
There's harmony in heaven's starry sphere,
And on the earth, and in the bounding sea;
For Nature's heart, Great GOD, doth ever worship THEE.

The lordly mountains sleeping in the sun;

The lowly mosses lying at their feet;

The sturdy oaks with ivy over-run ;

And the frail bind-weed round a stalk of wheat;
Yea, all things, from the orb whose light and heat
Make flowers of beauty from the world to rise,
To the small dew-drops which the flowers greet
As sister-spirits from the starry skies,

All worship HIM whose love their daily life supplies.

The gentle murmur of each rippling rill,
The roar of torrents rushing to the main;
The wind's lone wailings over vale and hill,
The dew's soft footfall on the grassy plain,
The sigh of autumn leaves, the sound of rain,
And deep-toned thunder with its awful chime;
All are but grace-notes in an anthem's strain
From Nature's wild æolian harp sublime,
Sounding GOD's ceaseless praise throughout the course
of time.

G. W. M.

"This perpetual personification springs from that principle of love which teaches the poet not only to regard all men as his brethren, but to regard the whole earth as his home, and to throw the excess of his soul into dumb, deaf and dead things, and to find

even in them, subjects of his sympathy. It was in this spirit that poor Burns did not disdain to address, as his fellow-mortal, the mouse running from his ploughshare; and to express his sympathy for the ill-fated daisy which the same ploughshare destroyed, or rather, transplanted into the garden of neverdying song."

One of the most sublime personifications of inanimate nature that we have in our language is Coleridge's Address to Mont Blanc; indeed, it is in its personification that the secret of its thrilling interest lies.

Poetry is language in its highest attainable perfection, winning the ear by the harmony of its cadence, warming the heart by the glow of its diction, stimulating thought by the grandeur of its imagery, and commanding the passions in the dignity of its march.

"Poetry," says Shelley, "is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Poetry makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man. Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed. It transmutes all that it touches; and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes."

"Poetry," says Hazlitt, "is the universal language with which the heart holds converse with Nature and with itself. Wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the

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sea, or in the growth of a flower that 'spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun'—there is poetry in its birth."

"Poetry," says Wordsworth, "is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science."

"No man," says Coleridge," was ever yet a great poet without being, at the same time, a profound philosopher; for poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, and language."

"There is," says the late Henry Reed, "no great philosopher in whose genius imagination is not an active element; and there is no great poet into whose character the philosophic element does not largely enter."

Willmott says:-"Whatever of beautiful, instructive or alluring, belongs to philosophy, history or fiction, is wrapped up in poetry. Poetry multiplies and refines our pleasures, endears loneliness, embellishes the common, and irradiates the lovely. It is the natural religion of literature; and next to the beauty of its language is the charm of its voice."

Poetry makes love to the ear, and wins the heart by its music; for the sympathy of its melodies thrills the finest chords of our being, making them vibrate in harmony with the song, till the heart is carried away captive by the ecstasy of its own feelings. But poetry, to reach the heart, must come from the heart. From such a source came the following lines:

THE LOVERS.

The silvery moonlight, chequered by the trees,
Falls, as in worship, dearest, at thy feet;
And, with the breath of flowers, the evening breeze
Wafts to us distant music, low and sweet

As the sweet voice of love. In this retreat,
So calm and peaceful, let me, dearest, own

My heart's deep love, and hear thy lips repeat Those words more sweet than music's sweetest tone, Telling my loving heart that thou art mine alone.

Thy beauteous eyes-love's messengers to me-
Look into mine and read love's language there.
And, as I kiss thee, our hearts seem to be

Mingling their very life's-blood in one prayer
For love, more love! Oh, ever thus to share,
Each other's fond affection, and to feel,
That neither time nor death itself can e'er

Dissolve the union of our souls, or seal
The fountain of that love we each to each reveal.

G. W. M.

"The poet is a translator of the inner life of man, with its wonder-world of thoughts and feelings-its unspeakable love and sorrow, its hopes and aspirations, temptations and lonely wrestlings, darings and doubts, grim passions and gentle affections, its smiles and tears-which in their changeful lights or gloomy grandeur play out the great drama of the human heart."

Coleridge, speaking of poetry, says, in the closing paragraph of the preface to his Poems :-"I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and

"North British Review," No. 55.

I consider myself as being amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has soothed my afflictions, it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments, it has endeared solitude, and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."

"Such," says Symington, "is also the experience of every sincere lover of poetry; for to all who are capable of appreciating its fairest flowers, whether by the golden river of Shakspeare's thought, broad and deep, or by the crystal well of Burns, it is an influence for good—'a thing of beauty,' and therefore a joy for ever.'

"Its ministrations to whatever is noblest, brightest, and best in humanity, whether in sorrow or in joy, are only second in their universality and efficiency to the teachings of Christianity itself, and are never more winning or potent than when conjoined therewith; for 'religion,' it has been said, 'exhibits the beauty of holiness; and poetry the holiness of beauty.'"

There is in "Rasselas " an admirable dissertation upon poetry, showing very truthfully the studies necessary to enable the Poet to give expression to the exalted feelings of his nature. The passage is as follows:

"Wherever I went," says Imlac, "I found that poetry was considered as the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to that which man would pay to the angelic nature. . I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fraternity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia,

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